I was initially skeptical when the announcement came that DC was creating a character to fill the role that Harley Quinn USED to hold in The Joker’s retinue. The reveal of Punchline actually made my reservations that much worse, as the character design combines several oddly fetishy elements into a costume that’s at once off-putting and dull. Now that she’s getting her own solo book (which, by the way, was announced well before the fans could actually have demanded it), the whole thing feels like an attempt to engineer the Next Big Thing, regardless of whether or not the readers are interested. It makes me wonder who this character might be for, leading to today’s sidekicky query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) really wants to hear from people who feel like she’s exactly what Batman comics have been missing, asking: Is replacing Harley Quinn with Punchline an example of genius or trying too hard?
3 Comments
Trying to hard. The original Harley was lighting in a bottle. It seems like they want to recreate her success.
She’s a real Artemis. A veritable Jean-Paul Valley. An Adam X the X-Treme, even. I predict grab-and-slab, variant-cover-snarfing, CGC buyer-traders will love her for a quick turnaround buck.
But then again, Deadpool was a real Poochie until Joe Kelly came along and found a niche for the character to occupy that was being underserved, so there’s always a chance.
But, yeah, they’re trying hard to be hep, Daddy-O
Not read any comics she’s in so can’t really tell. I feel its about doing what comics have always done, trying to recreate what worked back when these writers were fans. Harley is about now in that range, 25-30 years old.