Secret Origins #4

[history79]

3.75 pages of 12

Comments

[starwolf_oakley]

I understand this "version" of Harley's origin has the tank at Ace Chemicals, and a few skeletons in said tank. (Which never got drained or cleaned because Gotham City.) Which is odd, unless the Joker just tosses dead bodies into the tank sometimes because he's the Joker.

[mrstatham]

I think the skeletons were meant to imply he a - had tried to make 'Harleys' prior to/since her, or b - that he was basically trolling her or trying to make her feel small (I remember him showing her the tank during the present, maybe during DOTF?) by trying to show her how replaceable she was to him.

[deh_tommy]

During Death of the Family, the Joker had taken Harley and chained her in a dungeon filled with skeletons, where he said that she wasn't the first. However, she later escaped and when he discovered this, I believe he said that she "might just become [his] Harley yet".

I think the story left whether or not Joker actually cared for her up to a small degree of interpretation (I'm an idiot if this isn't true, so I apologise).

[mrstatham]

I think that they've basically ramped up the Joker's abusive behaviour and implied things about him at this point (especially during Endgame) that make it kind-of impossible for him to genuinely care for her. And I don't think he really cared for her prior to the New52 - it was still a really abusive relationship prior to that.

[alicemacher]

Yeah, for him genuinely to care about anyone other than himself would be inconsistent with the Joker's psychological profile under pretty much any writer in any era. Except maybe the period from the late Golden Age through the Silver Age (including the 1960s TV series) when he was an eccentric prankster and thief, rather than a psychotic manipulator and murderer. And even then I don't think he was ever in love, or in like, with anyone...was he?

[skemono]

Well, there was Going Sane, kind of.

[alicemacher]

Of course! Going Sane, how could I forget. One of the very best Joker stories, too.

And I think I see what you mean by "kind of," in that his fragile and tragically short-lived Joseph Kerr personality, because it was kind and loving, wasn't really "the Joker" at all, as it were.