| Batman: Harley and Ivy |
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| Posted by Mladen Luketin |
08:34 AM Wednesday, 21 November 2007 |
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 The early nineties was a special time for Bat-fans of this generation. Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski (with a lot of help from a talented bunch of animators, directors, voice-actors and writers, including Paul Dini) brightened the afternoons of countless wide-eyed kids with the Emmy award winning Batman: The Animated Series. The show broke barriers in scripting, design, story-telling, voice acting and all-ages entertainment, forever raising the bar for animated television. On top of this achievement, Paul Dini and Bruce Timm also gave the world Harley Quinn. A hopelessly romantic goofy hench-girl, Harley Quinn irreparably added ‘puddin' to the Clown Prince of Crime's list of aliases. But for many, the event which catapulted Harley into fame and ‘top-10' popularity was the master-stroke of teaming the crazy hyperactive goofball with Gotham's deadliest, sexiest sociopath environmentalist: Poison Ivy. These memories leapt at me when I spied the gorgeous and unmistakably ‘Bruce Timm' cover of the Harley and Ivy trade paperback on the shelf at my local comic store. My heart literally skipped a beat, barraged with a tidal wave of childhood nostalgia (adult nostalgia for some of you), but also accompanied with a healthy dose of scepticism. Sure Dini and Timm are both named on the cover, but how could a comic-book ever hope to recreate the spirit of the animated series and its iconic portrayal of the characters? Well, I'm happy to say, this book delivers. This volume collects three different stories. The first is artist Ronnie Del Carmen and writer Paul Dini's short and sweet "The Bet". Originally only seen in black and white in the pages of Gotham Knights #14 (and collected in Batman Black and White Volume 2), this trade presents the story in full glorious colour for the first time, and the experience is truly a joy. Locked away in Arkham Asylum, cell-neighbors and bosom pals Harley and Ivy make a simple bet: that Ivy can't get a kiss from every man in the asylum. Of course, things become complicated when Harley's object of eternal affection, the Joker, is next in line for the smooch... Dini's attention to detail and cheeky humour is perfectly complemented by Del Carmen's smooth professional cartooning. The length is just right, and the story is the perfect introduction to these characters. The second story, writer Judd Winnick and artist Joe Chiodo's "Love on the Lam" is unfortunately somewhat weaker. After negotiating a peaceful compromise between Joker and Two-face simultaneously attempting to rob a museum, Harley is kicked out of the hide-out, and decides to get back in her puddin's good graces by pulling off her own job. But (of course) not without first enlisting some help from an old (and thoroughly unimpressed) friend Ivy. Batman steps in to foil the game, same old, same old. Chiodo's artwork here is a disappointment. Attempting to straddle the line between Timm's Animated look and a more abstracted expressionist painted style, the result is an inconsistent (yet very well coloured) mess. The occasional excellent panel or humorous line of dialogue could not save this story, but is still readable if not entirely memorable. Fortunately, Timm and Dini's three-part ‘Harley and Ivy' mini-series caps off this book, and with the expected consummate flair of two well-known and highly praised professionals. Just seeing the two working together is joy enough, but the work itself is some of the best, taking a slightly more adult tone than the original cartoon series. Harley must win back Red's favour after smashing a pot containing the only specimen of an extremely rare and valuable plant over Batman's head. Between Red's idle fantasies of decapitating/asphyxiating/incinerating her ‘pal', the adventure takes the two ex-best-friends to a corrupt South American country where they enslave the corrupt dictator with a kiss, do battle with a pair of psychotic homosexual lumberjacks, and accidentally knock-out one unfortunate frog. The crazy ladies then cap it all off by producing and directing an (eerily familiar) flashy, expensive, and over the top flick about themselves, complete with day-glo paint on the set. Harley of course spends the whole budget on a diamond-studded Harlequinn outfit, and quite a few Batman stunt-men get mangled, much to the girls' delight... until the Batman steps in to put a stop to their mad-cap antics (and as far as Ivy's concerned, not entirely a bad thing). The jokes throughout Dini and Timm's rollercoaster ride are fast and furious, as are the entertaining and varied fight sequences. Litter in a healthy helping of subtle adult humour, some cheesy fan-pleasing shower scenes (curse those conveniently placed soap bubbles!), and lightening-fast dialogue, and the story becomes one of the most enjoyable and hilarious superhero comics in recent memory. "Harley and Ivy" is a gem, a must-read for fans of the animated series, and a joy for fans of light-hearted and humorous comics. Despite the weak middle story, the Dini/Carmen and the Dini/Timm stories are both perfectly crafted and overall FUN stories, and the book is cheap enough that there's simply no excuse to not pick it up. The stories carefully tread the ‘all-ages' line, with just enough adult content to be charming, and obscure enough for the kids not to notice. Buy and enjoy. Comments (0) |
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