The newly released photo by DC of the Suicide Squad movie cast nearly blew up the Internet, especially since it gave us our first real look at Harley Quinn's costume in the movie.
Some fans loved it, some fans hated it, but everyone seemed to have an opinion about the ponytailed squeaky-voiced Harley and her costume in that photo.
But fans' opinions aside, what did the man who created the iconic character think? Meredith Woerner of io9 asked Bruce Timm, the man who created Harley Quinn during his Batman: The Animated Series days, if he'd seen the new photo and what he thought.
His answer seems almost ambivalent, but also hopeful.
"It was interesting," says Timm. "I was frankly a little nervous about what Harley would look like, but I thought she looked really cool. So I'm optimistic, we see."
Let's face it, the word "interesting" is often used when no other word comes to mind, or when you're trying for a polite way of saying that something isn't all that great. Of course, we don't think that Timm believes this new version of Harley is awful, but fans of the character are very well aware that this new look isn't as in line with the comic books as many of us would like.
Gone are Harley's signature black and red colors from the comic books, replaced by red and blue, which is the color scheme she adopted during the recent Suicide Squad comic book run.
The bottom half of the costume looks stolen directly from Tank Girl, and in other photos, we also see that Harley has lost her mallet in lieu of a baseball bat like in the upcoming Arkham Knight video game.
Timm also spoke about Harley's creation: she was originally a joke, but the character grew throughout the years into something that became extremely popular. He pointed out that with her stories, they "always have to be fun, if not flat out hilarious."
"That's one of the things I like about the current comic," he says. "They understand that, they're not treating her as another angsty bizarre superhero type character. She's really weird and funny and kind of chaotic."
Here's hoping that the Suicide Squad film gets this aspect of Harley's persona right in the movie: DC has a reputation of making characters very serious in their films (they seem to have fallen down the Dark Knight rabbit hole), but Harley is anything but a serious character. Hopefully, she's the jokester of the Suicide Squad, possibly even the comic relief.
If you're looking for comparisons of other Suicide Squad character costumes to their comic book counterparts, be sure to read our analysis here.
[Photo Credit: DC]
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