"There's a small, lucid part of me that wants to wake up. The dream has lasted quite a while. A long time in the dark. I mean, even the darkest night must end... Right?"
—Harley Quinn
In 2017, artist-writer Stjepan Šejić posted a series of "little storytelling practices", fanart/story snippets detailing Harleen Quinzel's fall to the Joker and the creation of Harley Quinn, their abusive relationship and a possible salvation aided by Poison Ivy. While the snippets were well received, Šejić always insisted nothing more would come of them since the only place this story could be told well would be DC's Black Label which was a tier above him. In September 2019, DC's Black Label published the first issue of artist-writer Šejić's Harleen.
The reimagined origin story of Harley Quinn starts with Dr. Harleen Quinzel as an up-and-coming psychologist with clever ideas on how to lower the horrific crime rates of Gotham City. According to her hypothesis, many criminals diminish their capacity for empathy through constant stress until singular events have them Jump Off The Slippery Slope. Find the ones in danger of such events, prioritize them for psychological treatment and the recidivism rates should go down. To test her ideas, she just needs to interview the supervillains of Arkham Asylum. What could go wrong?
See the book's very own trailer here
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A one-shot follow-up to the series, "Harleen: Red", by Šejić, was released in June 2020 in the first issue of the digital comic, Harley Quinn: Black + White + Red. A further short, "Submissive" was included in the 2022 Harley Quinn 30th Anniversary Special.
The series provides examples of:
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Poison Ivy saves Harleen's life and encourages her to flee, because Harleen was the one psychiatrist that actually seemed to respect her.
- Big Damn Heroes: During the mass breakout of Arkham, Ivy saves Harleen from Killer Croc before escaping.
- *Bleep*-dammit!: The series inconsistently flip flops between Symbol Swearing and uncensored cursing.
- Broken Bird: Quinzel's story here is less that of mad love and obsession corrupting her into madness as commonly believed of Harley Quinn (although that remains part of it), but of professional promise and idealism gradually broken away by circumstances — along with the Joker's manipulations — coming to a head to one traumatic day that leaves her a shattered woman embracing madness as comfort and escape.
- Cardboard Prison: Harvey Dent points out, not without merit, that Arkham Asylum has a reputation as one. He is afraid that if Harleen doesn't stop her studies, legions of corrupt lawyers will use her work as they prepare an Insanity Defense for their clients, which would see them land in Arkham rather than Blackgate.
- Cerebus Retcon: "Harley" started out as a derogatory nickname for Harleen at university because of her exaggerated reputation for sleeping with faculty.
- The Con: The investigation Bruce launches into the mass breakout brings this to light. It turns out that Joker got his hands on Harleen's research and used it to set himself up as the perfect patient for her theories. Falling in love with him and becoming his sidekick was an unexpected bonus, but all of it was just him playing Harleen to get himself set free. That said, the incident that actually frees him was Two-Face's Gambit Roulette—albeit it does also serves Joker's purpose to become the "one bad day" that cements Harleen's Despair Event Horizon.
- Costume Evolution: The brief flash-forwards to Harleen as Harley Quinn depict her both in her original harlequin costume, and in a more casual and revealing cropped halter top and leggings similar to some of her costumes in her post-Flashpoint solo series.
- Darker and Edgier: While not without humor, the series will not be sugarcoating the abusive nature of the relationship between Mister J and Harleen.
- Deconstruction: Of the entire traditional backstory of Harleen Quinzel and how she became Harley Quinn.
- Depraved Bisexual: Played with, Ivy asks if Harleen is attracted to her at one point (which she will be eventually). However, in spite of her evil, it's treated more as genuine curiosity than Ivy's usual use of sex to control her victims.
- Despair Event Horizon: The long, slow road to that moment for Harleen Quinzel.
- Driven to Madness: It is Harley Quinn's origin story.
- Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: As is typical with Sejic's work, all the characters are beautiful, even the Joker, which makes a certain sense, as we're seeing him through Harley's eyes.
- Foreshadowing:
- Arkham's chief, Prof. Hugo Strange, makes apparent his contempt towards the inmates and other therapists, hinting to his eventual "career".
- Ivy asks if Harleen is attracted to her during one of their later interviews. While the reader knows Harley will eventually fall in love with Ivy, this is years early for that so Harleen doesn't reply and leaves the room in a flustered state. The variant covers also do this, depicting the characters as playing cards, having Joker as (well) a Joker but Harley and Ivy are both Queens, a small nod towards the far healthier relationship the two women will build in the years to come. One of the proposed excerpts for a second volume shows Ivy comforting Harley after she escaped the Joker and kissing her.
- I Can Change My Beloved: Nope, we all know her beloved will change her. But Harleen believes it to the core.
- In Love with the Mark: Discussed by Bruce and Alfred. Bruce thinks the Joker was just using Harleen and uses that fact that Joker had obviously read up on her research as proof. Alfred thinks there may be some mutual attraction between the two.
- Insert Cameo: A tray of take-out coffees has cups labeled "Timm" and "Dini", the creators of Harley Quinn.
- Irony:
- Dr. Quinzel's hypothesis, which brought her to Arkham for research, is proven accurate... on herself.
- During Dent's confrontation with Harleen, the two repeatedly moralize about their ideologically opposed attempts to stop Gotham's criminal element. Harleen's narration cynically points out that in a few months, both of them will be supervillains themselves.
- Lower-Deck Episode: Harleen's first meeting with the Joker feels like this—she walks across the street when something explodes, the Joker almost murders her on the spot and Batman appears, with most of the combat seen in silhouette through his smoke bombs only. It's clear that the only things Harleen and two police officers can achieve are "stay alive" and "stay out of the way" as the titans fight.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Harleen initiates sex with Joker in the interview room on the table, starting their twisted relationship.
- Malicious Misnaming; Zig-Zagged: While some misspell/mispronounce Harleen's name out of malice or anger at her, others seem to be honestly mistaken or just couldn't be bothered to correct themselves.
- Mental Handicap, Moral Deficiency: After Dent is scarred by Sal Maroni with hydrochloric acid, he suffers severe brain damage that causes him to experience hallucinations and develop a Split Personality, which drives him into becoming Two-Face.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Quinzel's breaking point that completes her fall after she accidentally shoots a guard dead to save the Joker. Certain her life to be irreparably over, compounded by everything else that's been happening, she turns Laughing Mad. And then the Joker comforts her.
- Mythology Gag:
- Harleen sleeping with her professor earned jokes about how he "rode his Harley." Which itself is a reference to an infamous joke from the Harley Quinn Origins Episode from The Batman Adventures adapted to the episode "Mad Love" from Batman: The Animated Series.
- Every appearance of Batman displays glowing eye lenses in his cowl.
- "Bob, you're my number one guy now."
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Batman was intrigued by the possibilities of Dr. Quinzel's hypothesis and so had his Wayne Foundation support her research, which brought her to work in Arkham. In the aftermath, Batman realizes the role he played in what happened to her.
- Origin Story: Not just for Harley Quinn, but Two-Face's origin ends up playing a big role in the plot as well.
- Pet the Dog: Poison Ivy, an ecoterrorist with no empathy for people, saves Harleen's life, no strings attached, and this is before they're dating.
- Precision F-Strike: Harleen freely throws around "fuck" whenever it feels like it.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Dr. Mathews. She believes in Harleen, and helps her get the Wayne Foundation grant to finance her research. Despite Harleen's scandal involving sleeping with a professor during college, Dr. Matthews hires her anyway because the scandal only involved one professor, and if Harleen had gotten all her stellar grades through Sextra Credit, she would've been accused of sleeping with the entire staff. In Dr. Matthew's own words, everyone has a past, and if she couldn't look past it, she would have made a bad psychologist.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Harvey Dent wants Harleen to stop with her work because he believes it will increase crime by bringing more people to Arkham rather than Blackgate where they can escape more easily. Not because, say, it will lead her to be influenced by a mass murderer and become his minion, racking up a body count of her own.
- Running Gag: Everybody keeps getting Dr. Quinzel's name wrong on the first meeting and some on repeated meetings. She's later surprised that Dent, after he's become Two-Face, remembers it correctly.
- Sense Loss Sadness: The chemicals that caused the Joker's appearance also caused irreparable nerve damage, leaving him unable to feel bodily sensations unless they're extreme. Allegedly.
- Sextra Credit: Played with. The first issue takes the old "Harley slept her way through college" origin and gives it a new twist: Harleen was legitimately brilliant and had no need to enhance her grades; she slept with her professor simply because she was attracted to him. Unfortunately, they were found out and she got this reputation anyway.
- "Success Through Sex" Accusation: Harley is accused by gossips of sleeping with her supervisor to get her psychology qualification, (which she may have done in some other continuities), but the story points out that it would be impossible for anybody really unqualified to do that in modern times, due to degrees needing the approval of much more than one person. In fact, she did have sex with her supervisor, but it was because of genuine mutual attraction rather than a quid-pro-quo.
- Start of Darkness: Yup. This comic provides a version of how Dr. Harleen Quinzel, a promising psychiatrist, wound up as the depraved lover of Joker, Harley Quinn.
- Stealth Pun: Quinzel realizes and Lampshades one. After both she and Dent have crossed the line, and believing that the Joker's twisted view of the world turns out to be correct, she points out that "Harvey" and "Harleen" start with "Ha Ha".
- Teacher/Student Romance: Harleen once had an affair with her professor in college, and the two were caught having sex together. Given this, she gained a false reputation for sleeping her way to the top, though she really earned her degree through hard work and talent (he didn't give her help, and in fact before he figures out she's flirting with him, is seen to be sincerely confused during their first after-class meeting, pointing out that she doesn't need any assistance).
- There Are No Therapists: There obviously are therapists. Unfortunately, Harleen brushes off the question whether she sees one with a flippant "every morning when I brush my teeth".
- Toxic Friend Influence: This starts low-grade with Shondra, Harleen's only friend who has a more cynical outlook. She tries to convince Harleen that to get grants, the first thing to establish is how her research will make her corporate sponsors tons of money. Then there's obviously the Joker, taking the trope up to eleven.
- Vigilante Militia: The Executioners are a small militia of vigilantes who believe that Batman's no-kill policy is too soft and Arkham itself a Cardboard Prison full of monsters who the police are hilariously out of their depth in facing. Thus, they take it upon themselves to capture and kill criminals they deem to be Karma Houdinis. They're later revealed to be members of the GCPD who have snapped and gone rogue, later becoming Two-Face's Mooks.
- Villain of Another Story: In the first issue, Harleen comes into contact with Prof. Hugo Strange, Mr. Zsasz, Poison Ivy, the Riddler, Killer Croc, the Mad Hatter, Harvey Dent, and the Joker. Strange is currently Arkham's chief, and all the others but the last two merely serve as interview partners, giving a one-panel insight into their world view. Dent (who is still a few months away from becoming Two-Face) tries to get Harleen to abandon her work, and only the Joker has a major villainous role. The Penguin and Mr. Freeze then appear in the next issue.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Discussed and indeed the central theme of a bulk of the casts' dilemmas—and to what extent they remain here and eventually deteriorate towards being not so:
- Harleen, for the most part, was ground down by professional and social disappointment in finding support for her research, career path, and life in general (the Wayne Foundation grant notwithstanding). Finding "the perfect patient" in the Joker who could/will prove her research hypothesis right (together with her own duty of care) drives her not only to be more partial to him and the other criminal Arkham inmates to extremes, she even stands up to Batman and accuses him of being part of the problem, unaware he is the guy funding her work and perhaps the one who is most wishing her success. This culminates in her warped idea of emotionally-connecting with the Joker, helping pave the way to her psychological fall.
- Poison Ivy's eco-terrorist sentiments are portrayed quite sympathetically if not impartially, and we don't even see her wreaking havoc against any particular innocents. The worst collateral damage she causes was during the Arkham breakout. She is also the sole patient who eventually commiserates with Harleen.
- Harvey Dent, for his part, is the much-overworked and cynical district attorney of Gotham, who sees his work further made difficult by the faulty and corrupt prison and criminal-justice system, which he sees as ping-ponging his prosecutions between Arkham and Blackgate — Cardboard Prisons that they are. Further struggling with the political weight of his work, which culminates with Salvatore Maroni's acid attack on him, he eventually comes to the conclusion that if the city's systems won't work as he wants it too, he'll have to tear it down himself.
- The Gotham City Police Department — both its leaders such as Commissioner Gordon, and the rank-and-file — are portrayed with disturbingly close Truth in Television, particularly on police brutality, and is in fact at the heart of Harleen's study of how PTSD victims are formed; in that because of their institutional training, the increasingly bizarre nature of crimes in Gotham, and their growing alienation from public sympathy, is what drives them to be on the defensive and become Obstructive Bureaucrats to system reform advocates like Harleen. Radicalized GCPD personnel eventually choose to become Executioners, and chose to ally with Two-Face to become his Mooks.
- Batman, ironically enough, gets it both ways. While sections of the public support him, others precisely see him as a dangerous Vigilante Man. At the same time, those within the GCPD and Harvey Dent eventually come to believe he is, in fact, not extremist enough to their liking or sense of justice/effectivity. This is ultimately the rallying cry of Two-Face and the Executioners.
"Harleen: Red" provides examples of:
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Harley has a number of thin scars on her face and arms.
- Call-Back: Panels and narration flashback to events from Harleen.
- Call-Forward: This takes place about five or so years since the events in Harleen (which concluded at, "Four years later...").
- Quinn and the Joker's relationship has since ended... violently.
- Now, she and Poison Ivy have become romantic partners. Importantly in-story, their association has not become known to anybody else yet.
- Color Motif: As the title of the story and of the comic advertise, in this black & white comic the only color is red. And as narrated by Harley herself, red is the in-story motif and metaphor of herself, her fall, her criminal career, her relationship(s), and — specifically today — her pet name for Ivy, of course.
- Noodle Incident: An incident regarding Hugo Strange is mentioned without details, only that he's not at Arkham anymore.
- Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: A career in violence while also in a violent relationship will leave permanent scarring.
- Tempting Fate: It's declared that Quinn will never leave Arkham again. Yeah, right.
"Submissive" provides examples of:
- Casual Kink: The focus of the story, with Selena using her experience as a pro-domme to give Harley and Ivy some relationship advice. She calls Harley out for being the Joker's sub, causing her to go on a rampage to prove that she isn't. When Ivy rescues her from the Penguin and his thugs by tying everyone up with vines, she threatens to keep Harley tied up and on a lead... which Harley doesn't see as a threat so much as a promise.
- Leeroy Jenkins: An enraged Harley charges into Penguin's nightclub and attacks him in his office with a hammer, in front of several of his men.
- Mexican Standoff: Harley ends up holding Penguin at gunpoint while all his men have guns aimed at her.
- Mythology Gag: While rummaging through her clothing, Harley gets hold of her "Daddy's Little Monster" T-shirt from the 2016 Suicide Squad film.
- Navel Window: Harley's costume in this is a harlequin catsuit that has a very large cut-out diamond over her belly.
- Romantic Wingman: Catwoman gives Harley and Ivy some relationship advice.
