Spoiler Alert
This post contains spoilers for HARLEY QUINN: RECKONING and HARLEY QUINN: RAVENOUS.
HARLEY QUINN: REDEMPTION is the final novel in Rachael Allen’s DC Icons Harley Quinn trilogy, wrapping up Harley’s arc from Harleen Quinzel — a curious and brazen student of science — to Harley Quinn — a brilliantly anarchic and transformed student of both science and law-breaking and violence, all for her perceived notion of aiding others.
REDEMPTION kicks off with Harley on summer vacation at Ivy’s parents overly spacious home. Harley’s single-mindedly trying to cobble together an intimacy solution to prevent Ivy’s lips from killing Harley upon contact. Is it going well?
No, it is not going well. Failure upon failure.
On top of that frustration, her prior Reckoning partners have abandoned her and she’s getting daily creepy stalker missives from an unknown person, each note accompanied by a heavily altered doll.
Harley, with Ivy by her side, piece together that the sender of these disturbing packages is abducting youths and young women from the streets and the dolls Harley receives? Each are small facsimiles of how he sculpts each victim or, as he — often referred to as The Dollmaker — sees it, transforming them and bringing them to a higher aesthetic and physical plane by bending, warping, appending and removing facets of their body.
(For those familiar with Batman lore, yes, there have been a number of iterations on The Dollmaker, although none who match the very specific kind of self-perceived physical abuse that he enacts.)
The Dollmaker is partnered up with the Mad Hatter — a mainstay of Batman’s lineup of villains — who requests that The Dollmaker occasionally shape one of the abducted into an ‘Alice’ and hand them off to him. Unfortunately, often The Dollmaker’s Alices don’t always match Hatter’s tea party expectations, resulting in the need for a new Alice.
To keep their victims placated, The Dollmaker and Hatter utilize an improved iteration over the inferior mind-altering chips they handed off to Scarecrow in REDEMPTION. These chips last longer and allows for them to mentally mould their victims to their whims and desires, which essentially means making them subservient and as happy with their new twisted and weaponized bodies as possible.
Harley becomes ever-increasingly embroiled in The Dollmaker and Hatter’s activities and that’s when REDEMPTION pivots to something far darker than explored in the prior two novels. Bodies are chipped and ground away and turned into something both inhuman and super-human, the latter for the benefit of crime bosses and governments who want some additional protection. Or just a novelty to show off at galas.
Even for this trilogy, The Dollmaker’s ‘artistic endeavors’ are cruelly outlandish and upsetting, although it ultimately works against him in ways that I will not spoil, in ways that underscore the trilogy’s overall message of women turning the tables on the abuse that men inflict.
It’s not all body horror and torture, however. As Harley often does, she imparts herself on friends new and old, and builds and rebuilds a found family and support network. Harles and Ives go to pride! King Shark wears a shark costume! Fun is had and cotton candy is consumed!
If anything, Harley is too exuberant and bubbly. (I didn’t know such a thing was possible.) She banters around the term ‘love language’ quite a bit. She is exponentially more elated at the slightest bit of physical or emotional shiny she comes across than the prior two novels. While Harley is always a bit much, here her gushing and wide-eyed wonder at the world occasionally comes across as a titch too much, even for her. I kept waiting for someone to ask if she’d take it down a notch — even a resigned ‘Harrrrleey’ utterance from Ivy — but no dice.
Allen dedicates REDEMPTION “To everyone who loves Harley Quinn and sees a piece of themselves in her.”
It’s clear, even from the beginning of the trilogy, that Allen knows how Harley has resonated with so many, even to those like myself that don’t exactly fit the Harley mould. Allen also deftly excises the more fraught, subservient and coercive facets of what normally constitutes Harley’s history, making her even more of an inspirational figure without sandpapering over Harley’s impetuous and occasional blinkered flaws.
As I mentioned in my write-up of RECKONING — the beginning of the trilogy — there are many different Harleys. Allen’s Harley can be inspiration. Her Harley is a tale of a lower-class misfit who has lived through and endured a lot of lows and abuse in her life. Despite that, Harley is smart and is determined to be herself, to push herself further and help people in need when she can, of aiding those taken advantage of, of those who are abused, of exacting vengeance on those who abuse their power and mentally or physically tear others down.
This trilogy is part of the DC Icons series, a young adult imprint of Penguin Books. Each work examines popular DC characters when they were teens. That’s… seemingly all that exists of the DC Icons mission statement. It’s questionable whether it exists as an entryway to comic book for teens who eschew the funny pages which, given the wide financial disparity between how much the movies gross and how low actual DC comic books sell, might not be the worst idea. Especially since some of them are New York Times bestsellers.
It also helps that Harley’s mercurial, impetuous, extremely emotional nature mirrors life as a teen, and because the world is harsh and people are cruel, and it is hard to go through life without putting yourself in danger and Harley is all about reckoning with these dangers.
(Worth noting is Allen’s series isn’t even the only YA Harley work out there, as there’s also Mariko Tamaki’s HARLEY QUINN: BREAKING GLASS which examines a different youthful life for Harleen.)
For those whose first encounter with Harley are these books — I know, that’s highly unlikely but bear with me — I can’t help but wonder the rude awakening one might have upon reading some of the earlier solo works, Amanda Conner & Jimmy Palmiotti iconic run, or newer flights-of-fancy such as HARLEY QUINN: BLACK & WHITE & RED, the multiverse tales of Harleys, or even going way back to the source BATMAN: THE ANIMATED episodes as well as MAD LOVE.
I can’t help but think it’d be a rude awakening to go from the very queer, very scholastically and scientifically minded Harley, someone who has a staunch sense of morality, someone who is very, very queer, to then see her constantly shackled and emotionally abused and toyed with by the Joker; to experience a Harley with an extremely cavalier disposition towards maiming and murder and mayhem and meta-commentary, not to mention often serving as eye candy in the worst ways that comics can be.
Oddly, HARLEY QUINN: THE ANIMATED SERIES comes closest to the young Harley & Company portrayed in Allen’s trilogy, and while swearing and sexual content are absent from those novels, every minute of Harley’s animated work is crammed full of heart-warming filth.
All of my question and speculations are besides the point. I will set those aside and simply state that REDEMPTION is propulsive, thrilling, heartfelt, inventively unsettling, and perfectly brings the arc from Harleen to Harley, from orphan to having a found family, of growing and learning while leaning into her strengths and being aware of her weaknesses.
Regardless of whether it’s your first Harley-go-round or hundredth, Allen succinctly weaves the totality of Harleen and Harley’s experiences and growth — even if they don’t match with what one may have previously read — this Harley is one to aspire to.
