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In Future State: Gotham, Harley Quinn is about to face off with her Infinite Frontier rival in an epic rematch in Gotham’s dystopian future.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Future State: Gotham #3 by Joshua Williamson, Dennis Culver, Giannis Milongiannis and ALW’s Troy Peteri, on sale now.
The Future State of Gotham is a grim one, but many of its heroes are still active, trying to do right by the people of Gotham even when they have chosen to replace their masked protectors. Among them is Harley Quinn, who managed to elude the Magistrate but has now been forced to come out of hiding.
In the wake of a mass prisoner escape from Blackgate, Punchline managed to free herself and is now on the loose in Future State: Gotham #3. Naturally, this didn’t sit well with Harley, who decided to come out of hiding to remind the world that Gotham is her playground, not Punchline’s.
When these two last fought in Batman #98, by James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez and Clayton Cowles, their battle was an examination of their relationships with the Joker. Harley had assumed up until that point that Punchline had been twisted into what she is now by the Joker. Punchline shot this idea down by explaining that she sought out the Joker. She believed that Joker was the answer to the crumbling illusion of society. To her, Harley was just a clueless fangirl who couldn’t realize that she was a means to an end whereas the Joker was Punchline’s means to her end.
It did differentiate the two. Harley was twisted into a monster by the Joker, but Punchline was already one well before she met him. And yet, Harley still saw the two as similar, because they both had deluded themselves into believing in a quality the Joker doesn’t possess. Harley had once believed he had a heart, and now, Punchline believes he has a mind capable of conceiving more than simple chaos.
So as much as Punchline wishes to be the improvement over Harley, viewing her as a pathetic little follower who is trying and failing to be her own person, she ultimately is just a more complicated version of her. She tried to deny this, intending to kill Batman to prove her point, ending their fight before a victor was truly decided. Batman took her down quickly and Punchline was thrown into jail.
But now she’s free, and if the news report about her escape is accurate, then she is no longer the Joker’s girlfriend. Like Harley, Punchline has evolved and become her own person in the near future. But unlike Harley, she seems to have retained whatever twisted worldview she started out with. Leaving the Joker didn’t help her, it made her more dangerous.
Punchline being free in the city is a disaster-in-the-making that she has to stop. But now the two women are free of their former partner and have come into their own. It will lead to a clash where the two pit everything they have against each other as they try to determine which one of them is truly the superior survivor.
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