8 Things DC Want You To Forget About Harley Quinn

4. Nightwing Did What?

Bruce Timm is one of the best and brightest minds to have lent his talents to the DC Universe these last few decades, having been instrumental in the success of Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and countless other animated features adapted from the DC library. Batman & Harley Quinn, however, does not speak well for that reputation.

Neither does 2016's adaptation of The Killing Joke, which, having already taken the trope of refrigerating women by default, managed to cool the temperature even more by introducing a bizarre and frankly creepy romance between Bruce Wayne and Barbara Gordon. At the time it felt like nothing more than inappropriate fan-service, especially since past Timm works had intimated a romantic interest between the pair previously.

Unfortunately, the same feeling pervaded last month's Batman & Harley Quinn - another Timm-led project that, while admittedly distant in tone to TKJ, was no less adamant with its bizarre ships. The ship this time was, of course, between Nightwing and Harley, and it's about as awkward and off-putting as you can imagine.

The two end up bumping uglies at one point (although the film is polite enough to cut away as things get going), and yeah, it's just there, isn't it?

It'd be nice to see Harley and Ivy together in a medium other than the comics themselves, but for now, fans will have to tolerate... whatever this was.