Gotham City Sirens #21 preview

[sherkahn]

The preview for issue #21 is out. Harley Quinn is breaking into Arkham, per the last issue, to finish the Joker.

Why finally get an idea of what that nail in her collection of four tools is so vital.





Kind of like that seen in the movie Seven.

Comments

[auggie18]

I know they'll never actually go through with it, but I hope Harley kills the Joker. He's brutish, has an insanely high body count, and hasn't lived up to his name in a while.

Also, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy should get married, adopt those orphans Ivy was raising during No Man's Land, and live happily ever after.


Y'know, since I'm wishing for impossible things and all.

[okkult3000]

Ivy's not exactly a healthy alternative. More of a lateral move.

[auggie18]

Healthier for Harley. Outside of the first time they met, she's never tried to kill Harley. Even took a bullet for her once.

[misterbug]

I'd like to see Harley really, really grow as her own character and abandon the Joker. Maybe even revise her costume (keep the identity though) in order to personalise it and 'start fresh'.

Call me odd, but I really like this character when she isn't a Joker-groupie.

[arcath]

I would love to see the same. But we all know she will never leave Mista J.

[auggie18]

Did you read her mini? It was pretty good. She has a nice speech were she tells Ivy she wants to be more than the Joker's henchman or Ivy's sidekick, she wants to go out on her own and define herself.


The bit with her recruiting her gang was fairly funny.

[flash_fan]

I'm usually all for dynamic character development but this would be an exception IMO. The very basis of the character is based on another character. Kind of like Batman and Robin. It's cool to see Robin in his own series but severing the connection to Batman kind of kills the character to some extent.

[mrstatham]

Yes, but unlike the Robins, where there's been five of them and each has had a very different dynamic with Bruce (and some have had a different purpose in Bruce's eyes), Harley has one dynamic that never changes with Joker, especially in the DCU proper, where he rarely even shows her that slight bit of affection the DCAU version did.

I don't think breaking her apart from the Joker and letting her stand on her own two feet is a particularly bad thing. If the basis of the character is based on another character, then there's nothing wrong with trying to break her away from him. Robin might be known predominantly for 'Batman and Robin' - he's part of that pairing, but unless you try it, how do you know it 'kills the character'?

Joker and Harley have never been that close anyway, given it's more on her side.

[01d55]

It's cool to see Robin in his own series but severing the connection to Batman kind of kills the character to some extent.

Nightwing.

Just sayin'.

[icon_uk]

True, though the fact that by the time he got his own series he hadn't been properly affiliated with Batman for approaching ten years, and Dick had left home to go to college 15 years before that, makes it a different scenario.

One of the problems I had with Tim's solo Robin series was that he was supposed to be LEARNING to be Robin, picking up the skills and methods from Bruce, and we hardly ever saw anything like that in the entire Dixon run (of all the Bat-titles), He always already knew how to do things, or muddled through, it never felt quite right that Tim, a cautious kid who became Robin with a different motivation, should pick up quite so many unrelated skills without any apparent training.

[recognitions]

Yeah, not really so much.

[pallas_athena]

Tthat character tag should be "char: harley quinn/harleen quinzel"

[lissa_quon]

Okay...this is interesting. Though would someone care to explain to me what the nail has to do with his kid being dead? I'm apparently dense and not understanding.

Also I'm really liking this development of Harley and I hope she does get to kill him. He of course won't STAY dead but I do like the idea that Harley is the one with the balls to finally put him down.

[auggie18]

Or, dare I say, the bells to put him down?

Nope, because that would send me straight to pun hell.

[gehayi]

I'd say that Aaron pushed the nail through the back of the baby's head or through the soft spot at the top of his head, and then pulled it out again. Harley found out what he'd done.

So she's threatening him both to expose him as the murderer of his own child OR to kill him the same way he killed his baby. And her threat is ambiguous enough to not tell us which one she'd go for.

That's my take, anyway.

[midnightvoyager]

I don't think HE did it. Maybe the Joker?

Because of the thought bubbles. There are things you shouldn't know about your life... I think he'd know if he killed his kid!

[superfangirl1]

"I don't think HE did it. Maybe the Joker?"

That was my line of thinking as well.

[midnightvoyager]

Sorry, not thought BUBBLES, brain elsewhere... The narration bits.

She's sorry to tell him this. Not to use this against him, to TELL him this. It seems like it is something he does not know.

[sherkahn]

I believe she is going to show him how some infection or poison was passed on the father to the newborn son because the nail was tainted with it, that he had been inadvertently duped into doing so. And that the Joker was the one behind the "rusty nail" for some reason or another. Had he remained ignorant, he would have had the bliss of knowing how was was played.

[gehayi]

What I was getting was that she was sorry to tell him that someone knew. You're almost certainly right, though.

[deepspaceartist]

It don't think that's it at all. Harley's narration talks about 'things you should never learn about your own life', which implies that he doesn't already know about how the nail killed his son.

That, and I don't want Aaron Cash to be a baby killer. From what I've seen of him (which is admittedly just the Arkham Asylum game), he seems like a pretty aswesome dude. And you can never have too few baby killer charcters.

[whitesycamore]

That would be the most moronic way to kill an infant, like... ever. : /
I doubt the book is going to go with something that stupid *and* tasteless.

There is very little to gain from killing a baby; most people who DO kill their babies usually do so spontaneously, triggered by stress, and at least partially accidentally. Pushing a nail through a babies fontanelle would suggest a deliberate decision, at least some premeditation, but an *enormous* lack of common sense (it's easily detectable, incredibly hard to pass off as an accident, etc.)

The only person I can imagine doing that would be someone in the grip of extreme psychosis.

[pallas_athena]

Maybe it was rusty and he got tetanus?

And motto on hoping Harley puts Mr J in the ground. If only because of the ensuing story where Batman would then be obliged to bring *her* to justice.

[philippos42]

You mean, like Bruce having to let a murderer be pardoned when the whole rest of the city gives her a parade?

[retro_nouveau]

Oh, Harley, just stay away from him. (1) Don't give him a chance to get inside your head.

In my own personal canon: They let Harley out of Arkham because she actually got better, and even though she was aiding and abetting and all that, she never directly killed anyone. (2) She shouldn't start now.

I like Aaron Cash a lot already, he should survive and be a part of Arkham's staff long-term and/or graduate to costumed crimefighter.

[deepspaceartist]

I'm with you on hoping Cash sticks around. From his video game appearance(as like the only guard with a name) , he seems like the perfect guard for Arkham. The kind that ignores villain attempts to get into his head and is not afraid to use violence and/or weapons to keep the dangerous villains contained.

[cainofdreaming]

He's been around for a while. He and Croc in particular have had some memorable parts in some stories.

[thehefner]

I'm curious, have any Gotham City Sirens readers been liking Calloway's run? Because what I've seen has seriously left me cold, largely because no one's voices sound right, and his Joker's Asylum: Riddler story was similarly disappointing.

[chipsnopotatoes]

I loathe his Catwoman. After the abysmal almost-mind wipe arc, he should never be allowed to write the character again.

[benicio127]

Yeah, I stopped liking Sirens a looooong time ago. I really hated the Talia vs. Selina thing they did a few issues ago. It was basically like: Sweet! Two women fighting over a man! Haven't seen that before!

[red_menace]

I stopped reading after he took over. The concepts are there, but he doesn't get the characters at all.

[mrstatham]

I've been loathing the book since Dini got it going and didn't really provide anything in the way of justification for these women living and working together. The art kind of distracted from that in the same way the ridiculous visuals help distract in a Michael Bay film, but otherwise, I was never that impressed with GCS.

[protogarrett]

I thought Poison Ivy gave her some level of invulnerability, super strength, and resistance to poison. With the invulnerability would bullets do anything?

[icon_uk]

Harley hasn't got invulnerability. She's more agile, faster and has greater endurance, is immune to a great many poisons, and may have a slightly tweaked healing factor, but invulnerability to the point of bullets NOT hurting her has never been within her abilities.

[protogarrett]

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. =)

Still, this is comics. She can probably anticipate gun and shooter movement and dodge accordingly.

[recognitions]

"Harley, this isn't a game."

"Why does everyone keep saying that to me? You know, if I had a nickel--"

[redkingcrab]

I like the idea of Sirens, but I don't really see the point of it any more. They're not doing anything remotely with the setup or the characters. It just seems like the thought process behind it was not 'Hey, these three characters interact interestingly and are beloved by the fanbase' but rather 'Hey, we could put three pairs of breasts into one comic!'