It's happened to me, it's probably happened to you, and if it hasn't happened yet, rest assured someday it will. At some point you will meet that one special person who will put their fist through your heart. Forgive the gory allusion, but if you've ever been in mad love, you know what I'm talking about. Mad love is when you fall so passionately for a person (particularly the wrong person) that nothing else in the world matters. You find yourself thinking about your heartthrob constantly, creating fantasy scenarios that bring you together and trying your damnedest to make thosе scenarios happen in real lifе. You believe that you have finally found that one magical being who suddenly brings a sense of meaning to your existence and you will pursue them with all the fervor of Wile E. Coyote after a Roadrunner dinner — with, I might add, about as much success.
We've all done it. We've all selected the wrong partners, all gotten hurt, and hopefully all moved on wiser for the experience. But there are those who, even in the face of constant disappointment, continue to believe that the intensity of their desire will be rewarded by an eventual jackpot of affection. And if that's the slot machine you're playing, friend, you'd better leave the casino— 'cause that one don't pay out. Advice to someone in the throes of mad love is pretty meaningless, because any capacity they once had for rational thought has long since split for Aruba. Despite the setbacks and heartaches, the pursuer tunes out their inner voice of sanity and is more than willing to swallow the tears, paint on a smile, and once again resume the chase.
Welcome to the world of Harley Quinn. Or the version of Harley I was writing in 1993. I originally created Harley as a sideline character in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Joker's Favor." Later I saw in her the chance to tell a story about her past that would lift her up from being just another goon in a funny suit. The fact that Harley felt affection for the Joker was bizarre; adding the idea that she had once been his therapist made it tragic. Batman producer/director/pal Bruce Timm and I had been invited to do a special issue of DC's BATMAN ADVENTURES, and we had been toying with a Harley origin story. When I told Bruce of this weird twist I wanted to bring to Harley's history, he enthusiastically went for it. Like two kids working out a jigsaw puzzle, we fit the rest of the story — now appropriately titled MAD LOVE — into place over bad hamburgers at a crummy tropical restaurant.
Two years before, Bruce and I (among many others) started production on Batman: The Animated Series with a feeling of elation, high expectations, and the nagging fear that we would probably fall on our butts. And now that he and I were taking the plunge into comics, we found ourselves feeling the same way again. Though we knew failure might be in the offing, we soon began having too much fun with the story to care. We'd be constantly running into each other's office — Bruce to show me cool page layouts and sexy Harley poses, me to deliver rewritten script pages that Bruce had already cut out for length. Mind you, I'm not complaining. As a director and gifted storyboard artist, Bruce knew where to focus on the story for maximum impact and move it with a cinematic drive. Seeing him work that way was a learning experience for me, and it definitely helped my later comics writing (to say nothing of showing me how to keep the page count down on my animation scripts, a rule I still manage to blow fairly often — sorry, Bruce). One more thing about Bruce Timm: he draws great animals. He claims he doesn't but I think he gave the Joker's hyenas a lot of appeal while still keeping them menacing. Besides, look at that big seaweed serpent in the Poison Ivy story. That's practically an animal and it rules.
After MAD LOVE, Bruce and I worked together on many other comic stories, all of which are contained here. Some, like the Batgirl and Ivy stories, were fun romps. Others, like the Demon tale, were epics. Bruce's afterword to this volume goes into the creation of those stories with more detail and accuracy than I can muster here, so I'll leave that to him. I'll just say they were all a blast to work on, and I welcomed every opportunity to work with Bruce whenever our insane schedules would allow it, and still do.
It's been a while since we created these stories, but I always look back on them with a lot of pride and affection. I don't think of MAD LOVE as a victim's tale, but a cautionary one about what happens when someone loves recklessly, obsessively, and for too long. Through Harley's tragicomic experiences, we catch a glimpse of ourselves in a funhouse mirror, distorted and all too willing to play the fool for someone we'd be much better off without. But through that awareness can come change, and that's a good thing indeed.
And even Harley has changed a little in the interim. No longer content to follow after the Joker, she's off on new adventures, both on screen and in the comics. Sometimes she's paired up with her gal pal Poison Ivy, sometimes she's out causing mischief on her own. In a way that's gratifying, as no one should stay pining for someone (particularly that someone) too long. And even when she slips and links up with her old beau again, Harley's his equal partner in crime, and not the eager-to-please hench-wench of old.
That's not a reformation by a long shot, but it's a tentatively hopeful step in a debatably right direction. And if there's hope for Harley Quinn, then there's hope for the mad lovers in us all.
