DC Comics novels - Harley Quinn: Mad Love Kindle Edition

Films, comics and animated shows have often utilized the character of Harley Quinn. This novel is a well executed character study of Harley and it dives perfectly into her mindset and her reasons for falling for a psychopath.The only thing disappointing is the sudden turn back to “saneness” in the final chapters. It’s like the authors wanted to adapt the past and present standing of the character. So while it s a great character study and well executed, the ending felt rushed. Still an enjoyable, absorbing read.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. I'd heard that the first one in the novelization series (Killing Joke) wasn't very good. But I'd already pre-ordered, so I decided to give it a chance. WOW. You could completely forget the entire idea that this has anything to do with Batman, comics, a TV show, or any character you've ever seen before. You could come to this book completely fresh, knowing absolutely nothing about who Harley is, and still get at least as much out of it. This is just an amazingly well-written story.What makes it so good? I think the biggest reason is that the author weaves together a lot of the backstory we already know in a very clever way BUT also makes the entire story seem so fresh. You'll recognize a number of elements that we've seen in Harley's story before, in some cases, pieces that were there from the very beginning. But they're put together in new ways (sometimes even neatly retconning things that didn't make sense at the time.) And it somehow all seems so new and unexpected.Even though we KNOW that Harley is going to have to end up with the Joker, for example, it really seems like she might not, like she might be able to pull herself back from the edge in time. We feel her conflicted emotions and thoughts, and we feel how she's pulled into his seductive web, day by day. This is when we really see how smart it was to turn this story into a book. There are ways that we just can't get into the character's head from visual media, but in a book, we can. Harley's motivations have never felt so understandable before, and I think that the author also does a good job of showing how and why she was able to escape the Joker's spell. But the ending of the book is also understandable (I won't give it away here, because even though we've seen the events before, I don't think readers have ever really understood so completely why Harley ended up where she did at the point where she finally got away from the Joker.)If there's a weakness in the writing, I think it's that we're never really shown exactly why the Joker continued to be so appealing to Harley after she got him out of Arkham. This is not a book meant for little kids, so couldn't we have seen a little of the intimate spell he clearly cast over her? There are hints that the sex was amazing, but really... I think we could have gotten a little more, and it could have seemed more believable that Harley would have stuck with him.On the other hand, one thing the author does that is very clever is to shorten the amount of time that Harley was actually in a relationship with the Joker. We never know exactly how long it was, but there are enough pop culture and current tech references so that it's easy to figure out that it couldn't have been too long. My guess is about a year, no more than two, and the way that he treated her really started to go downhill a few months before the end. Keeping her with him as long as they were together in the comics would have made Harley's character ridiculous.Overall, I guess I would say that with a few flaws, this is a really good book, probably much better than it had any right to be. You don't need to have read every single comic that ever existed and dissected them all on your own Youtube channel to appreciate this. (I guarantee that I haven't.) Pick it up for an engaging, fascinating, and thought-provoking read.

Paul Dini and Pat Cadigan’s “Mad Love: A Batman Novel” retells Harley Quinn’s origin. Dini and Cadigan begin with Quinn as a child, seeing her happy world shatter when police arrest her father after a wonderful day on Coney Island, thereby giving Quinn an early distrust of authority. They follow her through her gymnastics training and college, before showing how Quinn was a rising star at Arkham Asylum until she grew fixated on the Joker. The story follows Dini’s original one fairly closely from there, but expands on it so that Quinn’s time at Arkham and her growing dependency on the Joker develop gradually. Dini and Cadigan also demonstrate how Quinn’s early distrust of authority led her to distrust Batman, viewing him as someone who harms the sick patients that end in Arkham. Here, too, they break from many portrayals of mental illness in Batman by avoiding the common tendency to equate mental illness with violence in the Batman mythos. The story also has a different ending than the original, with Harley undergoing treatment at Arkham after her arrest in order to accept that any relationship with the Joker is abusive and to develop strategies to overcome her dependency.The story itself has appeared several times. “Mad Love” first appeared as a one-shot comic from Paul Dini and Bruce Timm in December 1993, tying into “Batman: The Animated Series” and exploring Harley Quinn’s backstory. Dini later adapted the comic into a teleplay for Butch Lukic’s January 16, 1999 episode of “The New Batman Adventures,” also titled “Mad Love.” In October 1999, Dini again adapted parts of his “Mad Love” story with Yvel Guichet for the “Batman: Harley Quinn” one-shot comic that introduced Harley Quinn into the mainstream Batman comics continuity. Since then, elements of the story have appeared in Karl Kesel, Terry Dodson, and Rachel Dodson’s “Harley Quinn” comic series that ran from December 2000 – January 2004, Dini and Guillem March’s “Gotham City Sirens” series that was published between August 2009 – October 2011, and in Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti’s “Harley Quinn” series that began in January 2014 and have been part of the New 52 and DC Rebirth. Finally, Dini’s story also played out in the 2016 Academy Award-winning “Suicide Squad” film. In September 2019, Stjepan Šejić began his own take on Harley’s origin in “Harleen” for DC Black Label.Dini and Cadigan’s latest retelling includes all the story beats fans expect, but also offers the greater character development and sense of pacing of a prose novel. They update the story for 2019, with modern technology and a better understanding of domestic violence and mental illness. Fans of Harley Quinn looking for a serious, yet familiar, take on the character are sure to enjoy “Mad Love: A Batman Novel.”

Went into this book with no expectations and was surprised at how well it kept my attention throughout. You can clearly see early signs of Harley's mental composure being 'not quite right' even before she met the Joker. It lends the story a bit more realism when we see how she goes off the deep end. Also I like how it showed Joker's true colours and abusive behaviour, how it subverted the 'happy ever after' delusion she clung to. This book's characterization is on-point. I was eager to read it to the finish and that doesn't happen often.

As a Harley superfan I can say without hesitation that this is NOT the definitive story of Harley Quinn. What it actually is is a transcript of the 'Mad Love' episode from 'Batman: The Animated Series', sandwiched between a newly written prologue and epilogue... and quite frankly all three pieces are at odds with one another. This story is supposed to be about 'classic' Harley (or so the cover illustration would have us believe), but it soon becomes obvious that this is not the story of a beautiful, intelligent, courageous and fiercely loyal woman, caught up in a intricately complex relationship of love, devotion, need, domination, oppression and abuse... physically, mentally and emotionally. Those concepts are now politically incorrect in our 'enlightened' world, and so it has just become a story about a woman who throws off the shackles of male oppression and strikes out on her own as an independant icon of female empowerment. Now while I in no way support, advocate or tolerate the domination and abuse of either gender, the true story of Harley Quinn concerns an intricate and sensitive relationship between two emotionally fragile and mentally unstable individuals that need each other as much as they don't. That is not a story that can easily be told in a book that tries to be a gritty novel and a slapstick comic book all at the same time.I had great hopes for this book in the first few chapters as it laid out an evenly paced backstory of Harley's early years before becoming an intern at Arkham Asylum. However, after reading what was basically an almost word for word transcript of the TV and comic book versions of 'Mad Love' (with a couple of unnecessary changes), the book was painfully vague about exactly the reasons why and how Harley fell in love with The Joker and missed out a whole period of time when the two would have gone on the numerous crime sprees covered in other graphic novels, madly in love like Gotham's very own Bonny and Clyde. The story then became rushed, and seemingly just to move Harley's character onto that depicted in the Amanda Conner comics in order to explain to newcomers why Harley is now an unhinged misandrist.I really wanted this book to be the definitive story, but it's a Frankenstein's monster of incomplete, undeveloped ideas, hashed together in a confusing world of pseudo-reality where references to real-world companies like Google, Amazon and YouTube and real-world places like Coney Island and Brooklyn sit alongside unreal and farcical ones like 'Happy Happy Joytown'. In an attempt to give the story some credibility by offering real-world references, all that happens is that the story gets lost between the realms of our world and the comic book world. As a Harley fan, from her earliest appearance, I really wish I hadn't read this book now as it gave me so little that was new or insightful about such an incredibly interesting character and went some way to ruining all that I do already know. I'm just glad that I didn't waste my money on purchasing the hardback edition.That being said, if I had purchased the hardback edition, I would at least have a physical copy of the beautifully illustrated cover artwork, which in my opinion, is this book's only redeeming feature.

Good things: I don't get along with comics so well, so being able to experience it in a medium I engage with better was quite good. You certainly won't be disappointed in any way, it's just not "great". I wasn't expecting a historic piece of literature of course, but still, decent-ish.Bad things: With Batman, Harley and Joker, you have some of the most iconic and greatest comic book characters of all time, but it just felt like we were scratching the surface. I understand there may be limitations for getting too creative and telling your own story, but it just felt like there was no real diving into the characters and their psyche.What was going on inside Harley's mind? Why the Joker? What made him so much better than every other man?it's worth getting, but don't expect something brilliant.

Loving this book. Its not what initially expected. Its a novel not a graphic novel.Saying that its great. Its a crime thriller that again is not my kind of book but I'm halfway through and it paints a vivid picture of life in Gotham's high-security psychiatric lockup.Well worth the money.

I've been a fan of Harley Quinn and the Batman mythos for years now, and whilst I love the classic comics, I also love a good book, and that's what this is. An amazing adaptation of both the original comic and the animated tv episode, whilst also going into greater depth about Harleen's past and her motivations. Though I will warn that this is a very adult version of the story, holding nothing back when it comes to the brutality of crime.

This is a good take on a origin story for Harley Quinn. Needs a follow up story, as this only shows her becoming Harley Quinn and nothing else. 8/10