Few comic creators bring the fun back into comics with the style of Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti. From Power Girl on up, the duo of Conner and Palmiotti bring a certain level of insanity to what they do. Cue Harley Quinn, a beloved character due for a facelift. Originally introduced in the brilliant Batman: The Animated Series, the last few years of the character had seen her become dark, and rather gothic. Still not right in the head, Harley had lost some of her charm.
DC decided to unleash Harley Quinn in her own series, and to bring the controlled chaos of Conner and Palmiotti into it. Now Harley is back. Insane. Murderous. Charming. Sexy. Conner and Palmiotti have brought Harley home in a big way. I managed to corner the two at NYCC and get the low down on the rebirth of one of my (and the world’s) favorite characters.
CraveOnline: So was the plan from day one to make Harley fun and crazy again?
Amanda Conner: Yes definitely. We know she’s a villain, but in her head, in Harley’s head, she’s the hero. She thinks she’s a do-gooder. Even though she’s a murderous psychopath, she thinks she is doing the right thing
Like when she feeds a would-be assassin to her dogs.
Conner: Exactly. She thinks she’s getting a bad guy off the streets by feeding him to her dogs.
Power Girl has shown up in Harley Quinn in an odd way. Is it fun to work with her again?
Jimmy Palmiotti: I think it’s great you use the term “with” because I get this image of you (Amanda) and Power Girl and I sitting around trying to figure out what we’re going to do today. Power Girl was one of our favorite characters, and one of our favorite books to work on with Dustin, so we knew we wanted to get her in there. At the same time, we wanted to approach it differently.
In what way?
Palmiotti: If it’s just Power Girl being Power Girl it’s “meh.” Power Girl flicks Harley with her finger, and sends Harley into another universe. Giving Power Girl amnesia, and teaming them up, was the most absurd thing we thought we could do, and that’s just so much fun.
How has Harley’s odd slant on the world worked with Power Girl?
Palmiotti: In our first issue there’s a scene where all Harley wants to do is get Power Girl’s costume off. She just wants to slip another suit on her that looks like Harley’s, so she can convince Power Girl they’re a team. It’s pages of Harley trying to get Power Girl’s clothes off and it’s just absurd. Then they go shopping in a mall. That’s the kind of thing we like to do. People are used to heroes beating up on villains so we decided to go sideways with it.
With this book you never know what will happen page-to-page, much less month-to-month. How do you write something this frenetic?
Palmiotti: We get the rub and smell book in advance and then we rub it a lot. (Laughs) We discuss it over dinner and figure what’s fun to do so we’re not really like the other books. We don’t plan a giant storyline. As spontaneous as it is in the book, it’s often that spontaneous when we write it. We’ll be somewhere and think it would be funny if Harley ended up there.
Conner: It’s more that the book reads like Harley’s brain.
Poison Ivy has stopped by, and now Power Girl. Are you worried this might become a team-up book?
Palmiotti: With Power Girl it’s definitely not a team up
Conner: Well to Harley it’s a team up!
Palmiotti: True, and they do have to deal with two villains. It’s not a linear three-part storyline but it does wrap up.
How will this wrap up?
Palmiotti: When you present a story arc where Power Girl has lost her memory, eventually it is going to come back. How and when is it going to come back? Part of the fun is the tension of when will the memory return and when will Power Girl start asking Harley what’s going on. We think part of what makes Harley so great, will become contagious to Power Girl. Power Girl will actually start liking elements of Harley so when she does get her memory back, it won’t be as abusive as it might have been.
You’d handed art duties to Chad Hardin, as such visual storytellers, how has it been working with him?
Conner: We picked somebody we thought would be perfect for it. Chad is fantastic. He’s gotten better as time goes on. In the beginning we might have asked for a little more of this or a little more of that, but now it’s like he can read our minds. It’s great to have that relationship. I don’t have to say it out loud.
Talk to me a little about the upcoming Christmas Issue.
Palmiotti: The Christmas Issue is three stories. Two are already drawn out, one by Darwyne Cook and it’s amazing, wait until you see it.
Conner: Harley gets her first grey hair. She wants to know who is responsible for this and so Tony makes an off-the-cuff remark about Father Time. He’s busy or something, reading the paper, and he just comments “Yeah blame father time” and Harley thinks he’s a real person and goes after him with a vengeance.
Like a twisted version of Rudolph’s Shiny New Year. Awesome! I must ask one thing for my fellow heavy metal fans out there. Is the character Tony in the book supposed to be Glenn Danzig?
Palmiotti: (Laughs) Okay, here’s the thing. When Chad started doing the book, we described Tony as a heavy metal guy, we wanted him to look like a tough guy. I said just like Glenn Danzig. We love Glenn, he’s a friend of ours, and so we told Chad to think like Glenn. Don’t make him Glenn Danzig, but use the idea with muscle shirt and leather jacket, Glenn’s cool. Then Chad comes back with Tony and he looks just like Glenn. I even said to Chad, could you make him look less like Danzig? I just wanted Tony to be really cool. So, Glenn, when you hear this don’t get mad at me, blame it on Amanda.
Conner: (Laughs) It’s always my fault!
Palmiotti: We did it with love. You gotta love Glenn!
