Punchline, the latest of the Joker’s “girlfriends”
The more I got into last week’s Worldbuilding Wednesday post the more I realized how convoluted the history of Harley Quinn really is. For one thing, she wasn’t the Joker’s first female sidekick. That honor belongs to Duela Dent, who originated in 1976. She claimed to be the Joker’s daughter. and wanted to join the Teen Titans to make amends. The would-be crime fighter, however, also turned out to be a pathological liar, claiming at times to be the offspring of ALL the major Batman villains with different names and identities to match. Finally Robin sussed out the truth and discovered her true heritage: she was Two-Face’s daughter. Which makes sense, given her first name (Dual-a, get it?) and problems of identity.
Despite this, she kept a spiritual connection to The Joker. On finally joining the Titans she became known as the jovial but deadly Harlequin, a test run for the future Harley Quinn. She went through many other changes over the years, from criminal to do-gooder, sane to insane, and as time went on she became less of a character in her own right and more of a coat hanger for the writers to hang outrageous metaverse plots on (she existed on three different Earths, for example with different, often grisley, backstories) before vanishing altogether in 2007. It was the waste of a good concept.
Harley Quinn eventually realized the error of her ways and became a force for good, leaving the Joker adrift. But The Joker wasn’t lonely for long. A young bank teller, Marian Drewes, became the second Harley Quinn after he took her hostage during a bank robbery (Joker being so insane at the time he thought she was the real thing.) Unlike the original Harley Quinn, she, now calling herself Neo Joker, eventually married him. Since all this happened in a limited edition DC series, who knows if it’s part of the main continuity or not.
And there was yet a third lover/sidekick for the Joker, this time a college student named Alexis Kaye, whom Joker also took hostage during his takeover of a TV station her class was visiting as part of a field trip. Like her forbears, she became obsessed with her captor, starting a podcast about him and running about in a homemade costume and poisoning homeless people to gain his attention. The evil antics certainly did: taking the name of Punchline, she became his main underboss. As a villain she was the inverse of Harley Quinn rather than her imitator: cool and quiet instead of histrionic and flashy, more cruel and less fun.
(Side comment from me: I’m getting of Batman comics being so bloody. They’re superheroes, not Clive Barker characters!)
All that put me in a mind to come up with some future Joker girlfriends, with pun-filled names of course.
Some Future Harley Quinns
| Caricature | Carrie Cacciaratti. An Italian-American woman trying to make it in the competitive field of stand-u comedy. |
| Carnival | Valerie Carney. A small-time grifter and hustler, and a more ebullient and colorful sidekick than Punchline. I can see her throwing knives and lobbing spinning lottery wheels at people like frisbees. |
| Chuckles, Giggles, and Snickers | A trio of ladies all equally enamored. |
| Hilarity | Hilary Ross. Hilary-ous, get it? |
| Irony | Irene Ni. A Japanese girl equally infatuated with Joker and anime. Her humor is on the arch side. |
| Jester |
Her first name would be Jessie, of course. |
| Lampoon | A former writer for a comedy show who was fired for not being funny enough, and now she’s out for revenge! She’d be a younger version of Tina Fey. |
| Laughtrack | This would fit the character above too. |
| Ludicrous | Lydia Cross. |
| Meme | Miriam “Mimi” Parker. A good content creator gone bad. |
| Mischief | Melissa Cheever. I can’t see her staying evil for very long. |
| Repartee | Stacy Witt. Her sense of humor is more dry and intellectual. |
| Screwball | Harley Quinn 3.0. I can see her sticking around for a while. |
| Sidesplitter | Truly a deadly clown prone to completely mangling her targets. |
| Zinger | If the Joker had a 12-year-old daughter who followed him she’d take on this identity. |
