To mention a few, Clark and Lois, Barry, and Iris are the first couples you would think of when DC romance is brought up. But the most infamous villain relationship involves the Joker’s Girlfriend.
The Joker and Harley Quinn’s relationship has one of the best backstories, creating a new villain. The reason is that their relationship is one of the most realistic in the DC universe. Their relationship is dark, sinister, and quite funny.
The Joker’s Girlfriend and The Joker Backstory
The Joker’s first encounter with Harley was in Arkham, where she worked as the facility’s psychiatrist. She took a liking to the Clown Prince of Crime and was exceptionally kind to him. This went on until he manipulated her and used her to take over Arkham’s facility. And there, a new romance was born…
The story speaks to how manipulative the Joker really is. He finds a way to take good people with a small weakness and destroy them for his own bidding.
It was a realistic relation and one that most people could relate to. It wasn’t a relationship that promised happily ever after. In fact, ‘happily ever after’ could be cut short by the flick of a finger of the Caped Crusader’s worst nightmare.
The Joker’s Girlfriend and Their Not-so-Funny Relationship
Right from the start, the Joker and Harley’s relationship has been abusive. Harley had been at the receiving end of both physical and emotional abuse.
It got so bad that Harley had to run from him occasionally. For instance, the Joker pushes a Harley off a desk in her lingerie as she tries to impress and seduce him. When she tries again, he sends her packing.
His words were:
“Face it, Harl, this stinks. You’re a certified nutso wanted in 12 states and hopelessly in love with a psychopathic clown.”
To impress the Joker and win his favor, Harley goes behind His back and takes on the Dark Knight by herself. She ends up capturing him, and she was almost sure that things would become normal if Batman were out of the picture.
But the Clown Prince does not normally do. In fact, he was unimpressed and expressed this by beating Harley to the pulp and proceeds to push her out of a window.
The obvious abuse in the relationship began to get driven home the more when the popular Batman: Arkham Asylum game was released. The relationship was still mighty abusive from the looks of it. In a scene in the game, Joker explicitly stated to Batman that one of his greatest hobbies was “slapping Harley around.”
The Joker Tried to Kill Harley Many Times
As the story rolls on, the joker became more and more abusive. He did everything from kicking her in the face to whopping her on the face with the butt of his gun. Occasionally, he took this a notch higher by almost murdering her.
For instance, in her first appearance in Batman’s No man’s Land comic, he almost kills her with a rocket. This was not because she did anything wrong to Him. According to the Joker, he was getting so attached to her, and it had begun to get him annoyed. His words were
“I hate having those feelings. They’re upsetting, confusing, and worse, distracting me from getting my share of Gotham.”
The Joker has gone one to try to kill Harley various times since that occurrence and several ways. In a flashback scene from Peter Calloway and Andres Guinaldo’s Gotham City Sirens #21, he applied pressure on Harley’s fingers as she held on to a ledge, hanging on for her life.
He also once shot her in the stomach with a gun he hid in a bouquet, claiming that it got his day going at a “wonderful start.” He also rigged some flowers he sent to Harley with dynamites at some point. Honestly, Harley should be dead already. But her brazenness and sheer will have probably been what has kept her alive for so long.
Harley’s Children
The Joker is not a father Material. He is more likely to strap a crying baby on a space jet and launch it to the moon for his own amusement. Harley Quinn recognized this side of him even though she was in love with him.
This was why she had to keep the birth of their first child away from the Joker after she got pregnant. The name of their first child was Lucy.
Harley Quinn opened up about Lucy during a fight with Black Canary in Injustice: Gods Among Us: Year Two #13. Harley was able to recognize that the Black Canary was pregnant when she vomited during their fight.
She stopped the fight, and they engaged in an emotional discussion. Harley told the Canary that she had a four-year-old daughter whom she left in her sister’s care. According to her, “Mistah J didn’t know about her. I knew that wouldn’t … that he wouldn’t … his work was too important. He couldn’t have a daughter.”
She actually left his side for a year to conceal the existence of a child. When she got back, The Joker just went on with her like she hadn’t even left at all.
And to top it all off, she went on to get pregnant for him again. In the recent Batman: White Knight, she ran off again to give birth to a second child. Here, with her sanity intact, she had finally left the Joker. She reaches out to Batman, who later finds out why she had been in incognito. She was heavily pregnant with the Joker’s second child.
The likelihood of these two getting a happily ever after is almost non-existent. Harley’s love for the Joker has begun to wane with children in view, of course. Also, the fact that he kept taking his villainous side a leap farther with each passing day was another major propellant towards Harley’s decision to let go of the relationship finally.
Final Thoughts On The Joker’s Girlfriend
Even the Joker has to have his main squeeze. As you would imagine, their relationship is not one you should look up to. There are a lot of issues, but without the Joker, there is no Harley Quinn. She owes everything she is to him.
The Joker’s girlfriend and the pain between them can be clearly seen in Birds of Prey. The movie futures the Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad dealing with her break up with the Joker, and it’s a lot of fun.
