Posted in: Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: booster gold, dc comics, harley quinn, heroes in crisis, poison ivy, sam humphries

Was Heroes In Crisis About Harley Quinn Falling For Booster Gold?

Published Tue, 12 May 2020 08:00:42 -0500

by Rich Johnston

Last updated Wed, 13 May 2020 13:04:03 -0500

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Everyone has hot takes about one thing or another. I was of the opinion the Principal Honey was the good guy of Riverdale since day one, and trying to cancel the school's annual musical was proof positive. Also, the TV series of Heathers was ace, especially before it was bowdlerised. Oh and Bojeffries Saga is better than V For Vendetta and Marvelman combined. These are the things that online debate is made for. But some of us get to take out hot takes and make it into a comic book with Booster Gold in them.

Was Heroes In Crisis About Harley Quinn Falling For Booster Gold? Art from CBR.

Such as Sam Humphries and the current Harley Quinn series he is writing, that has just seen Booster Gold start guesting in it – and which gets a new issue this week. He tells CBR that

It was about the first five pages of Heroes in Crisis that made me want to bring them together. When I was reading the book, I thought Tom [King] had pulled a Crazy Ivan and changed his plans and started fostering something between them. To me, this is very much a continuation of their appearance in Heroes in Crisis because it seemed like a very natural next step based on what Tom had built…

Yeah, I thought Tom was going to get them together, sure, but it turns out I was just reading into it — and then I thought that that's not a bad idea to play with. Without saying how it's going to end up, I think that these two characters have a relationship where they're polar opposites in some ways; like, in high school, Booster would be the high school quarterback and Harley would be the outsider smoking cigarettes under the bleachers [laughs]. They kind of have a little bit of a John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John dynamic but also they have a lot of things in common that strike super into the core of who they are as characters.

I am going to say this, after reading Heroes In Crisis intently, and seeing Harley mourning for her true love before moving heaven and earth to get Ivy back again, believing that Booster was the one who killed her, I didn't see her giving Booster the googly eyes.

The question that CBR didn't ask was about the absence in the series of Poison Ivy, after Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner were off the book. Poison Ivy had been portrayed as Harley's other half – often better half. A girlfriend that was good for Harley, kept her grounded, gave her someone to fight for, and was a cost to Harley whenever she did something she might later regret. She is not even mentioned in this article about her new love, Booster. You know, this guy.

As Bleeding Cool has repeatedly pointed out, something at DC changed. DC was no longer interested in portraying Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn as a couple – despite the popularity of that cosplay. Projects were edited, Poison Ivy was switched to being a homicidal villain again, and was written out of Harley's life. And so Harley has now got good ol' Booster and Poison Ivy is trying to kill kids. You can see how some fans of Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn together are not entirely down with that.