Batman: Harley and Ivy

Harley and Ivy collects three fairly mindlessly entertaining Batman story arcs starring villainesses Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, all based on episodes from Batman the animated series, though kicked up with darker touches and sexual innuendo. - "The Bet:" Harley makes a bet that Ivy can't win a kiss from every man in Arkham Asylum, only to have the bet backfire on her when her main man, the Joker, joins the list of kiss-ees. - "Love on the Lam:" Harley once again attempts to get back into the Joker's good graces by pulling off a heist of her own, enlisting Ivy's help to do so. This was so unmemorable that I couldn't even remember the plot without flipping back through again. - "Harley and Ivy:" The gals pack off to South America in order to recover a specimen of a rare zombie root central to Ivy's new plans for world domination. From there, they make their way to Hollywood, where they begin filming a big-budget, diamond-studded movie glorifying their own escapades. Catfights, shower scenes, and gay lumberjack encounters ensue. Overall, very silly and rife with absolutely shameless fanservice. The stories themselves are hardly memorable and simply retread Harley and Ivy's well-established character dynamics (i.e. bubbly and annoying vs. sultry and sarcastic), but the madcap humor (the title story is particularly outrageous in this respect) and fluid, expressive art, either by Timms himself or styled after his work on the series, make for a fun, quick read. If you're a Harley/Ivy fan, this is worth a look, so long as you're not expecting masterful storytelling or anything. This is one of those books that makes you laugh so hard your brain hurts, with you feeling possibly the worse for it afterwards. (or at least I did.)

The nice thing is that Harley can be presented in a new medium and in a different way than with animation but still retain all the magic.

"Harley And Ivy, v.1" by Paul Dini (DC Comics, 2007) ------------------------------------------- A great collection of lighthearted adventures featuring the delightfully mismatched super-villainess buddy duo of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy... This series begins and ends with the gals in jail, but busting out is no problem for this terrible twosome, and soon they're wreaking havoc on Gotham City and the world beyond. Most of the stories feature cartoonish artwork, drawn in the style of DC's various animated series, but the scripts are a little bit on the mature side, with some good-girl T & A and a few mildly raunchy asides. It's all in good fun, but I wouldn't recommend these comics for, say, a six-year old. That caveat aside, I thought this book was a blast. Author Paul Dini has fun playing with the conventions of the superhero world, including making Batman out to be something of a total tool. Ditzy Harley and grouchy Ivy blast their way through banks, museums, high society parties, banana republics and even Hollywood, with plenty of banter and a slow burns from Ivy as Harley gets on her nerves. It's a fun book, definitely worth checking out. (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain book reviews)

The early nineties were a special time for Bat-fans of my generation. Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski (with a lot of help from a talented bunch of animators, directors, voice-actors and writers, including Paul Dini) brightened the afternoons of countless wide-eyed kids with the Emmy award winning Batman: The Animated Series. The show broke barriers in scripting, design, story-telling, voice acting and all-ages entertainment, forever raising the bar for animated television. On top of this achievement, Paul Dini and Bruce Timm also gave the world Harley Quinn. A hopelessly romantic goofy hench-girl, Harley Quinn irreparably added `puddin' to the Clown Prince of Crime's list of aliases. But for many, the event which catapulted Harley into fame and `top-10' popularity was the master-stroke of teaming the crazy hyperactive goofball with Gotham's deadliest, sexiest sociopath environmentalist: Poison Ivy. These memories leapt at me when I spied the gorgeous and unmistakably Bruce Timm style cover of the Harley and Ivy trade paperback on the shelf at my local comic store. I was barraged with a tidal wave of childhood nostalgia (adult nostalgia for some of you), but also a healthy dose of scepticism. Sure Dini and Timm are both named on the cover, but how could a comic-book ever hope to recreate the spirit of the animated series and its iconic portrayal of the characters? Well, I'm happy to say, this book delivers. This volume collects three different stories. The first is artist Ronnie Del Carmen and writer Paul Dini's short and sweet "The Bet". Originally only seen in black and white in the pages of Gotham Knights #14 (and collected in Batman Black and White Volume 2), this trade presents the story in full glorious colour for the first time, and the experience is truly a joy. Locked away in Arkham Asylum, cell-neighbors and bosom pals Harley and Ivy make a simple bet: that Ivy can't get a kiss from every man in the asylum... of course, things become complicated when Harley's object of eternal affection, the Joker, is next in line for the smooch... Dini's attention to detail and cheeky humour is perfectly complemented by Del Carmen's smooth professional cartooning. The length is just right, and the story is the perfect introduction to these characters. The second story, writer Judd Winnick and artist Joe Chiodo's "Love on the Lam" is unfortunately somewhat weaker. After negotiating a peaceful compromise between Joker and Two-face simultaneously attempting to rob a museum, Harley is kicked out of the hide-out, and decides to get back in her puddin's good graces by pulling off her own job. But (of course) not without first enlisting some help from an old (and thoroughly unimpressed) friend Ivy. Batman steps in to foil the game, same old, same old. Chiodo's artwork here is a disappointment. Attempting to straddle the line between Timm's Animated look and a more abstracted expressionist painted style, the result is an inconsistent (yet very well coloure

Dini's writing is outstanding, and Winnyck ain't notin' to sneer at. The art is great, making the most out of the 2 main characters. Chiodo is a good artist choice, BTW. Humor abounds, and you WILL have a good time reading this. Well worth the money. I'd also recommend these-- Evil Inc Annual Report 2005 Evil Inc Annual Report vol. 2 Humor & villainy make a great combination.