DC’s Love Is A Battlefield #1: Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy in “The Beginning”

Someone at DC clearly needs to learn that is ok to put gay kisses on a panel and we don’t need to see them die to realize they’re actually in love.

This Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy recap of their best adventures/love story is as beautiful and messy as they deserve, with witty dialogue that will make you laugh and smile through all of it. The art by Rebekah Isaacs is on point with flawless composition, lovely face and body expressions and lots of well-paced action, with expressive cartoonish early 2000s-like coloring by Kurt Michael Russel. It seems you’re in for a treat, but the context and absence of certain details of this treat make me feel skeptic and, honestly, a bit disappointed.

While Seeley’s dialogue does go into some subtle sexual innuendos, it’s disappointing that this story doesn’t have a single kiss on the lips, not even at the end, not even with Harley and Ivy deciding to die together. And, while I appreciate that romantic big gesture of a story that cleverly cements a lifelong love for them, in the middle of an anthology where the only other gay story contains a tragic death and straight characters are definitely not dying at the end of theirs, this ending falls more than flat and makes me wonder if this is Valentines in 2021 or in 1971. With DC having gone through some recent years of friendzoning Harley & Ivy’s relationship with both articles and recent runs erasing their romantic background, a love story in which we don’t even get a kiss and that ends tragically (even if by all lights sweetly), placed within a preposterously almost-all-straight-couples anthology, is No Fun. No matter how you dress it.