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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gotham's sexiest sociopaths, March 18, 2008
This review is from: Batman: Harley & Ivy (Paperback)
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 coloured) mess. The occasional excellent panel or humorous line of dialogue could not save this story, but is still readable if not entirely memorable.
Fortunately, Timm and Dini's three-part `Harley and Ivy' mini-series caps off this book, and with the expected consummate flair of two well-known and highly praised professionals. Just seeing the two working together is joy enough, but the work itself is some of the best, taking a slightly more adult tone than the original cartoon series. Harley must win back Red's favour after smashing a pot containing the only specimen of an extremely rare and valuable plant over Batman's head. Between Red's idle fantasies of decapitating/asphyxiating/incinerating her `pal', the adventure takes the two ex-best-friends to a corrupt South American country where they enslave the corrupt dictator with a kiss, do battle with a pair of psychotic homosexual lumberjacks, and accidentally knock-out one unfortunate frog. The crazy ladies then cap it all off by producing and directing an (eerily familiar) flashy, expensive, and over the top flick about themselves, complete with day-glo paint on the set. Harley of course spends the whole budget on a diamond-studded Harlequinn outfit, and quite a few Batman stunt-men get mangled, much to the girls' delight... until the Batman steps in to put a stop to their mad-cap antics (and as far as Ivy's concerned, not entirely a bad thing). The jokes throughout Dini and Timm's rollercoaster ride are fast and furious, as are the entertaining and varied fight sequences. Litter in a healthy helping of subtle adult humour, some cheesy fan-pleasing shower scenes (curse those conveniently placed soap bubbles!), and lightening-fast dialogue, and the story becomes one of the most enjoyable and hilarious superhero comics in recent memory.
"Harley and Ivy" is a gem, a must-read for fans of the animated series, and a joy for fans of light-hearted and humorous comics. Despite the weak middle story, the Dini/Carmen and the Dini/Timm stories are both perfectly crafted and overall FUN stories, and the book is cheap enough that there's simply no excuse to not pick it up. The stories carefully tread the `all-ages' line, with just enough adult content to be sly and suggestive, but subtle enough that the kids won't notice. Buy and enjoy.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Harley and Ivy remain a hot duo, August 29, 2007
This review is from: Batman: Harley & Ivy (Paperback)
So if you couldn't already tell from the title, this trade contains 3 stories starring the ditsy, Joker loving, Harley Quinn, and the irresistible protector of plants, Poison Ivy.
Writer and Harley creator, Dini, writes two of the stories in here. The first is a short story taking place in Arkham where the girls in adjacent cells start a bet to see who can kiss the most guards. Batman and Joker make brief cameos. Nothing too spectacular about it, just a silly story.
The second story is written by Judd Winnick and painted by Joe Chiodo. The story isn't too bad. Harley tries to pull off a big heist in order to get back in the Joker's good graces with the help of Ivy. My biggest complaints here are while the painted artwork is good, it's a little too cartoony in places, and Batman is completely out of character here, with his dialogue and his facial expressions when he's spewing out lines like, "Hey! That tickles!". Surprising, since Winnick wrote a much better interpretation in Under the Hood, albeit with better artwork.
The last and best story is also written by Dini and illustrated by Bruce Timm, both producers on the fantastic animated series. Dini, of course, is the best Harley writer and her personality rings true with every word. Timm's art isn't the best ever, but it works really well with Dini's writing, especially since he draws it in the animated series style (which is based off his concept art) and here he is able to get away with drawing the girls half naked and quite sexy which would never make it past television censors.
The story is spread out over three parts, with Ivy trying to create slaves with the help of an ancient zombie root and Harley accidentally foiling their plans. The story takes them to a rain forest in Costa Mesa and eventually Hollywood where they attempt to halt production on a movie based on them. Once again, Batman only plays a minor role but the girls keep things moving and you hardly even notice his absence because you're too busy checking out Harley and Ivy in the prison shower at Arkham.
Overall there's nothing groundbreaking in these pages, but that's not the intention. If you're looking for a Batman story, you won't find it here. This is a quick, fun read and a must for fans of the title characters.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Plenty of laughs, if not much content, September 1, 2009
This review is from: Batman: Harley & Ivy (Paperback)
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.)
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