This is a bit of odd timing. I'm glad to finally see this long talked-about project by Batman animated series creators Dini and Timm hit the market, but coming out now, it's almost a swan song for their version of the character, what with a new animated series coming out and the last iteration of the Batman Adventures comic coming to an end. Which is all contextual stuff, really, the important question is, do these creators deliver? And indeed, they do, because it's clear the love that these creators have for these two characters, a surprise pairing from the animated series who became a classic not unlike Batman and Robin. Or maybe Laurel and Hardy. Harley & Ivy is a fun read, playing nicely off the sweet incompetence that Harley has brought to the schemes of master criminals Joker and Ivy and winking just a little bit at the sexy fantasy that the two women have represented visually for many a fanboy.
It was while reading this issue that I finally realized why Harley Quinn has worked so rarely for me in comics: It's because she's missing Arleen Sorkin's perfect comedic timing and delivery. So it is the highest compliment that I can pay Paul Dini and Bruce Timm that I can hear Sorkin's voice in every line delivery of this comic. There's still a little something missing with Sorkin not actually speaking the lines, but this is as close as you'll get to a great Harley Quinn episode like "Harlequinade" or "Harley's Holiday" without animation and sound. Harley's failure to schedule the heist right, or her complete inability to pick up on Ivy's very real anger, hits just the right childlike yet sociopathic note that made the character one of the best things about the animated series, and Dini provides the character with any number of laugh-out-loud lines.
While I've always loved the animated Harley, however, even in animated form, Poison Ivy was a hard sell for me. She's just never been a character I've been all that enamored of, except when she was paired with Harley. That pairing continues to work here, as she plays frustrated straight woman to Harley's madcap antics, but what surprised me was that Dini and Timm also make her more dangerous than we've seen previously. Instead of just being the girl who kisses men to get power over them (a simultaneously empowering and somewhat demeaning take on the power of female sexuality), she's a thinker and a planner, and someone who can MacGyver her way out of her cell using just a random plant. There's some great comedic value in Ivy as well, though, especially when the cops react with a straight-faced "that poor devil" to a guy who is lying in the throes of Ivy-induced ecstasy.
Given how often his art style has been imitated, I have to admit that I'm not as blown away to see Bruce Timm's work in comics as I used to be. It's not quite as special, even though Timm working in comics is something of a rarity. That said, Timm (and inker Glines, another animated show vet) shows why he was the originator and not the imitator, and the work here is indeed terrific. Much of Ivy's anger at Harley is expressed through emotional images rather than dialogue, and Timm does some very dynamic action as well. He gives a real sense of Harley and Ivy plummeting, of the violence in the fight with Batman and in the overwhelming power of Ivy's plants. And then there's the shower scene, which is a hilarious nod to the adolescent male fantasy of these characters' relationship, in which Timm captures both humor and makes cartoonish characters hotter looking than they have any right to be.
When you hear that something was years in the making, you tend to expect an earth-shaking venture of creative genius. That's really not what Harley & Ivy is all about, though. Instead, this is a story that exists for just one reason, and that's to have a great deal of fun. These characters have taken on a life of their own in the DC Universe and in DC licensing, and one of them of course had many stories before this interpretation, but seeing this classic pairing rendered once more by the two men most responsible for setting it up has a charm and style that puts a smile on the face of this Harley & Ivy fan.
