The New 52 Suicide Squad series might be partially responsible for how readers perceive Harley today, but that doesn't mean that the character was painted glowingly - quite the opposite.
During the fallout of the Joker losing his face and apparently dying at the start of the reboot, in a story-arc that also detailed Quinn's controversial new origin, Harley leaves Task Force X in search of her puddin's face. Amanda Waller then instructs the team to bring her in, but Harley complicates things once she manages to corner Deadshot (Floyd Lawton) away from the rest of the group.
Now in possession of the aforementioned face, Harley places it on a bound Lawton and proceeds to talk to him as though he's actually the Joker. It's all kinds of creepy, especially given the pair's connection, and though this was the first of many storylines that attempted to separate Quinn from clown, the origin was infinitely less compelling than the one detailed in Batman: The Animated Series.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
