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Harley Quinn and Darkseid just had an unlikely team up against a powerful threat — and actually make a pretty good duo.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the story “Bloody Mary” from Are You Afraid Of The Darkseid #1, now on sale
Harley Quinn has skyrocketed to popularity in the years since her debut, becoming one of DC’s most popular characters. Her transition from villain to anti-hero has also allowed her to effectively team up with almost every major character in the universe, including some that largely outclass her in terms of sheer power and relative importance on a universal scale.
In the story “Bloody Mary” from Are You Afraid Of The Darkseid #1 by Kenny Porter, Max Dunbar, Luis Guerrero, and Becca Carey, Harley Quinn and Darkseid are forced into a reluctant (but surprisingly capable) team-up.
On paper, Harley Quinn and Darkseid couldn’t be more different. Created as a part of Jack Kirby’s 4th World Saga and going on to become one of DC’s most fundamental villains, Darkseid is usually considered a galactic-level threat — especially recently in storylines like Infinite Frontier. Meanwhile, Harley Quinn began life as the Joker’s most prominent henchman in Batman: The Animated Series before making the leap over to comics. Starting as a villain, she’s grown into one of the DC Universe’s most compelling figures — an anti-hero who has been trying to become a better person after spending years on bordering the line between hero and villain.
In Gotham City, the classic Bloody Mary myth has been gaining traction as the cause for multiple deaths across the city. Harley sets out to locate the killer and protect a trio of teens in an abandoned hotel. But Harley is caught by surprise when Darkseid himself arrives on the scene. Batting Harley aside, Darkseid reveals that Bloody Mary is actually a former member of the Female Furies, lost into the matrix of an experimental Mother Box and left in a place between life and death. Spreading out of a mirror, Mary quickly attacks all of them. But Mary is fast and powerful enough to injure Darkseid, while his Omega Beams can’t catch her she moves between reflections.
Quickly surrounded and their backs to one another, Harley and Darkseid reluctantly team up. Luckily, the pair work well together — Harley’s quick-thinking and sharp eye pointing her to the mirror shard Mary is using to ground herself in the world, and Darkseid quickly using his Omega Beams to empower and steer Harley’s mallet into it. Shattering the piece, Bloody Mary is forced back into her mirror dimension. Satisfied with her defeat (and unaware that Bloody Mary seems to reconstitute herself within Mirror World), Darkseid uses a Boom Tube to return to Apokolips — with both he and Harley claiming the other is only alive because of them.
While it’s clear they don’t care for another — Harley’s “got a rule” against helping despotic space gods while Darkseid looks at Harley as nothing more than a particularly annoying mortal, they do actually work well together. Darkseid’s sheer strength allows him to absorb far more deadly blows than someone like Harley could manage, allowing her to play to her strengths and locate a chaotic and unexpected way to win. There have been other incarnations of Harley Quinn who has been enticed and even empowered by the powers of the Fourth World (such as her role in the Post-Crisis DC Universe Countdown to Final Crisis series or her brief time as commander of Apokolips’ army in the animated Harley Quinn series), but their latest team-up proves how surprisingly effective the pair can really be.
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