Valentine's Day is almost here and Harley Quinn is looking to celebrate, with the help of Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti. The writing duo's latest release shows Harley wanting to win an auction to go on a date with Bruce Wayne (you can read our review HERE).
During a conversation with the two writers, we found out where they get their ideas for the series and specials, how they feel about being auctioned off for a date, and what is better than using a pick-up line at a bar. Keep reading to take in their eternal wisdom.
COMIC VINE: You two have a Harley ongoing, an upcoming mini with Power Girl, and we’ve seen a few ‘specials’ including this one. How many Harley stories do you have inside you?
[laughs]
AMANDA CONNER: We don’t know yet, but they seem to be unending.
JIMMY PALMIOTTI: Amanda keeps this little iPad list and every time we have an idea for Harley, no matter where we are, if we’re traveling, bowling, or chasing down assassins, she makes a note and says, “Okay…that could…no, that would be funny. What if Harley did this?” So we have a lot of stories and a lot of times it comes down to doing an idea. We just said, “What would Harley do with Batman? What if it was Valentine’s Day?” You’ll know when we run out, I guess, because it’ll just be the end. For now, hopefully the audience still wants us and we’ll be doing it for a while. We have a bunch of crazy things planned into the Summer. We have the Gang of Harleys, which is pretty much a story engine in itself. We have a lot going on.
CV: Where did the idea for Harley wanting to win an auction date with Bruce Wayne come from?
AC: My brain is so far forward, thinking about the next one. I forget where that came from. Where did that come from?
JP: Probably…I want to say I probably came up with it because it just sounds like something stupid.
AC: But people do do that. They auction off dates.
JP: I think I would’ve liked, in some alternate life, to be auctioned off on a date to see who would pay and what would they pay.
AC: [laughs] I would have paid for you.
JP: Yeah, well you would. I appreciate that. I would hope you’d be out there, outbidding people, you know?
AC: Yes.
JP: But…come one Tony, think about it. Aren’t you a little curious? If they put you on stage, put you in a tux, and women were fighting in the auction to buy you?
CV: But what if they weren’t? You’d be standing there alone.
JP: It’d be a horror show, right? It’d be a horror show that they wouldn’t. But that’s millionaire Bruce Wayne.
AC: Yeah…the ladies want to date him.
JP: The guys want to date him. Everybody wants to date him.
CV: Maybe we should make this happen at San Diego. We’ll auction Jimmy off.
AC: [laughs]
JP: You know what the problem is? I guess if we specified what we’re giving them, like a dinner and…let’s see, what would we do in San Diego?
AC: Dinner and…
JP: I’ll sign your books? No, no.
AC: I don’t know. You can charter boats, right?
JP: You’d be okay if they auctioned me off? In San Diego?
AC: Well, I mean, there’d have to be parameters.
CV: It would depend on the cause too. Maybe it could be for the Hero Initiative.
JP: Right, it’d have to be for charity.
AC: Right.
JP: And there’s no…you know. It’s just a date. On the first date you don’t really…
AC: How would you feel if I auctioned myself off?
JP: Yeah, I’d be fine with that.
AC: Yeah?
JP: Yeah, just don’t come home pregnant.
AC: [laughs]
JP: That’s the best way I could put it.
CV: Alright, let’s shift back to the book. What’s the best part about writing Harley?
JP: Getting paid? I like that. I like getting paid.
AC: I like seeing where she’s going to go. I think that’s the best thing about her. Sometimes we don’t even know where she’s going to go. All of a sudden, like we’ll see something crazy on TV or we just look at something sideways and say, “That’s very Harley-like.” Then, all of a sudden, we have ideas for her.
JP: I think my favorite part is sitting in a convention and somebody coming over and going, “Okay, in issue 7, in one panel, I saw some shoes sticking out from under the bed. Whose shoe is that? I think I know whose show that is.” I love the people looking at it so much and looking at the backgrounds. And Chad [Hardin] is going in and adding more. I love the fact that the people that are reading it and enjoying it are enjoying it. They’re having a good laugh. They’re really enjoying it. That’s extremely satisfying. That’s probably the most satisfying part, that people are actually enjoying it.
CV: Was it easy or hard to write an extended one-shot story compared to the normal-sized single issue?
JP: Yeah. We started this thing with the specials where we added the dream sequences.
AC: So that we could get a whole issue done. I think it’s really difficult for most artists to do a whole 38 pages in the amount of time that they have.
JP: The dream sequences are like a nice sort of thing we just started doing and I think they’re going to be in every annual and special. I think they give us some room to go extreme.
AC: Yeah.
JP: Especially like in the Valentine’s Day one, we see Harley fantasizing what it’s like to be with Bruce and then vice versa. If we did that in the regular comic, in the regular story, it might be too much. In the dream sequence, fish can talk and craziness can happen. It’s definitely something I think we’re going to keep doing, like a tradition in the specials.
CV: Were the dream sequences written at the same time as the regular story or afterwards?
AC: No, they were done at the same time.
JP: They’re linear. We just have to figure out the page count for them.
CV: Who came up with the design for Harley’s dress she wore to the auction?
AC: Oh that! That was John [Timms]. He did that.
JP: John’s brilliant, man. I mean, we’re lucky with him, Ben Caldwell, Aaron Campbell, and Thony Silas. John is really creative. He has an animation background and boy, can you see it sometimes. He just digs in with the design stuff and it’s beautiful. We hope to see a cosplay of that outfit somewhere.
AC: Yeah.
JP: Or go to Hot Topic and see it.
CV: Where does Harley get all her outfits from?
JP: Hot Topic, it seems.
AC: [laughs]
JP: No, I’m kidding.
AC: Well, she came in a lot of her own clothes in issue 1, but what we’ve discovered is that Queenie, one of the girls that lives in her big apartment building, knows how to sew really well. I think she sometimes gives Queenie a break on the rent payment if she makes clothes for her.
JP: Yeah, Queenie is designing the clothes for the Gang of Harleys. Queenie is making them, fitting the girls, so we’re going to see a lot of crazy Harley suits coming up.
CV: Can we expect more holiday-themed “specials”?
AC: Oh yes.
JP: Yeeeah. You know, it’s funny because we were thinking, there’s only a certain number of holidays in a year. It’d be kind of fun to take the really obscure holidays.
AC: Like Groundhog Day?
JP: Like Groundhog Day.
AC: Or…Arbor Day.
JP: Halloween is one.
AC: That’s not that obscure but we could do it anyway. Halloween is fun.
JP: Hanukkah Harley would be fun.
AC: Oh yeah.
JP: What do you think, Harley Hanukkah?
AC: That’s one of the Gang of Harleys - Hanu-quinn.
JP: That’s true. We represent everyone in this Gang of Harleys. The specials are sometimes themes or ideas like San Diego was one. We thought it would be funny if she went to San Diego Comic-Con. The Scratch ’n Sniff one…
CV: Rub ’n Smell.
JP: Yeah, I’m sorry, Rub ’n Smell. Thank you, Tony. Tony’s there. [To the PR person] Make sure Tony gets a biscuit. He’s always there to correct me. Yeah, he knows his stuff, this guy.
The Rub ’n Smell was a theme around smell. Rubbing and smelling, which you can’t have enough of, I hear. Maybe we could figure out some other ways to create comics you could rub and smell.
CV: It seems a couple readers are still having difficulty embracing light-hearted fun of your direction. Anything you’d want to say to them?
JP: "Lighten up"?
AC: I just think if the heavy stuff, like the very grim and gritty and heavy stuff is what you’re in to, Harley makes a really excellent dessert.
JP: There you go. I would also tell those people, sadly, everything that happens in HARLEY matters. So they’re going to have to get over it and push through it. And realize there are things happening in these issues of HARLEY that are going to change the DC Universe forever. Just because they don’t happen to like that particular version doesn’t mean there’s not crucial infomation they’re going to need to move on. I think it’s very important they understand that. They don’t know what they’re missing. But I hear if you bring an issue of HARLEY to a bar, you meet people. If you just put it down on the bar and order a drink, I hear it’s better than actually opening your wallet with hundreds sticking out. It’s actually better than that. It gives you something to talk about.
AC: It’s the best pick-up line.
JP: It is. If you’re a guy, you can go up next to a girl and say, “Hi, how’re you doing?” and put your HARLEY QUINN down.
AC: Yeah, it works with girls.
JP: How does it work with girls?
AC: They do the same thing. They bring the HARLEY to the bar and the guy’s like, “Whoa.”
JP: I think they dress up like Harley at the bar.
AC: Well, they could do both.
JP: …and guys would be like, “Whoa!”
AC: Well, it’d be better if they were bringing a HARLEY comic.
JP: That’s true. They should bring the trade and multiple copies of every issue. That way they can give them away.
AC: Definitely give some away to your friends.
CV: So people need to buy more HARLEY.
JP: You know, always. What we do, we give them out to people that come to our house. We always need more.
And it sounds like we will indeed be getting more HARLEY from Amanda and Jimmy. That sounds good to us. Be sure to pick up HARLEY QUINN VALENTINE'S DAY SPECIAL, now on sale. HARLEY QUINN #15 is on sale March 4.