DC Comics novels - Harley Quinn: Mad Love Paperback – September 10, 2019

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. I'd heard that the first one in the novelization series (Killing Joke) wasn't very good. But I'd already pre-ordered, so I decided to give it a chance. WOW. You could completely forget the entire idea that this has anything to do with Batman, comics, a TV show, or any character you've ever seen before. You could come to this book completely fresh, knowing absolutely nothing about who Harley is, and still get at least as much out of it. This is just an amazingly well-written story.What makes it so good? I think the biggest reason is that the author weaves together a lot of the backstory we already know in a very clever way BUT also makes the entire story seem so fresh. You'll recognize a number of elements that we've seen in Harley's story before, in some cases, pieces that were there from the very beginning. But they're put together in new ways (sometimes even neatly retconning things that didn't make sense at the time.) And it somehow all seems so new and unexpected.Even though we KNOW that Harley is going to have to end up with the Joker, for example, it really seems like she might not, like she might be able to pull herself back from the edge in time. We feel her conflicted emotions and thoughts, and we feel how she's pulled into his seductive web, day by day. This is when we really see how smart it was to turn this story into a book. There are ways that we just can't get into the character's head from visual media, but in a book, we can. Harley's motivations have never felt so understandable before, and I think that the author also does a good job of showing how and why she was able to escape the Joker's spell. But the ending of the book is also understandable (I won't give it away here, because even though we've seen the events before, I don't think readers have ever really understood so completely why Harley ended up where she did at the point where she finally got away from the Joker.)If there's a weakness in the writing, I think it's that we're never really shown exactly why the Joker continued to be so appealing to Harley after she got him out of Arkham. This is not a book meant for little kids, so couldn't we have seen a little of the intimate spell he clearly cast over her? There are hints that the sex was amazing, but really... I think we could have gotten a little more, and it could have seemed more believable that Harley would have stuck with him.On the other hand, one thing the author does that is very clever is to shorten the amount of time that Harley was actually in a relationship with the Joker. We never know exactly how long it was, but there are enough pop culture and current tech references so that it's easy to figure out that it couldn't have been too long. My guess is about a year, no more than two, and the way that he treated her really started to go downhill a few months before the end. Keeping her with him as long as they were together in the comics would have made Harley's character ridiculous.Overall, I guess I would say that with a few flaws, this is a really good book, probably much better than it had any right to be. You don't need to have read every single comic that ever existed and dissected them all on your own Youtube channel to appreciate this. (I guarantee that I haven't.) Pick it up for an engaging, fascinating, and thought-provoking read.

Paul Dini and Pat Cadigan’s “Mad Love: A Batman Novel” retells Harley Quinn’s origin. Dini and Cadigan begin with Quinn as a child, seeing her happy world shatter when police arrest her father after a wonderful day on Coney Island, thereby giving Quinn an early distrust of authority. They follow her through her gymnastics training and college, before showing how Quinn was a rising star at Arkham Asylum until she grew fixated on the Joker. The story follows Dini’s original one fairly closely from there, but expands on it so that Quinn’s time at Arkham and her growing dependency on the Joker develop gradually. Dini and Cadigan also demonstrate how Quinn’s early distrust of authority led her to distrust Batman, viewing him as someone who harms the sick patients that end in Arkham. Here, too, they break from many portrayals of mental illness in Batman by avoiding the common tendency to equate mental illness with violence in the Batman mythos. The story also has a different ending than the original, with Harley undergoing treatment at Arkham after her arrest in order to accept that any relationship with the Joker is abusive and to develop strategies to overcome her dependency.The story itself has appeared several times. “Mad Love” first appeared as a one-shot comic from Paul Dini and Bruce Timm in December 1993, tying into “Batman: The Animated Series” and exploring Harley Quinn’s backstory. Dini later adapted the comic into a teleplay for Butch Lukic’s January 16, 1999 episode of “The New Batman Adventures,” also titled “Mad Love.” In October 1999, Dini again adapted parts of his “Mad Love” story with Yvel Guichet for the “Batman: Harley Quinn” one-shot comic that introduced Harley Quinn into the mainstream Batman comics continuity. Since then, elements of the story have appeared in Karl Kesel, Terry Dodson, and Rachel Dodson’s “Harley Quinn” comic series that ran from December 2000 – January 2004, Dini and Guillem March’s “Gotham City Sirens” series that was published between August 2009 – October 2011, and in Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti’s “Harley Quinn” series that began in January 2014 and have been part of the New 52 and DC Rebirth. Finally, Dini’s story also played out in the 2016 Academy Award-winning “Suicide Squad” film. In September 2019, Stjepan Šejić began his own take on Harley’s origin in “Harleen” for DC Black Label.Dini and Cadigan’s latest retelling includes all the story beats fans expect, but also offers the greater character development and sense of pacing of a prose novel. They update the story for 2019, with modern technology and a better understanding of domestic violence and mental illness. Fans of Harley Quinn looking for a serious, yet familiar, take on the character are sure to enjoy “Mad Love: A Batman Novel.”

This novel is entertaining but also very heartbreaking. One realizes that Harley never really had a chance. The manipulative ways of the Joker combined with her unconventional childhood makes the reader realize that Harleen disappearing and being replaced by Haley Quinn was completely expected. The reader feels her pain as she falls in love with the Joker and the sadness that he might like her but love the way she hopes is something that will never experience. The Joker may love her as only he know how but it’s not something that matters to a narcissistic person like him. The invisible triangle between Harley, The Joker and Batman makes the reader want to scream, “ he doesn’t love you, leave don’t fall for it” but sadly we are also rooting for Joker to love Harley and let it be a happy ending.