(WARNING: If you haven’t read Batman: White Knight or Batman: Curse of the White Knight — which have been out for quite some time now — there are spoilers ahead.)
Sean Murphy’s Batman: White Knight universe, also known as the Murphyverse, has been a game-changer for DC Comics. The gem of the Black Label brand has shown why writers need the chance to operate outside the main continuity — it allows them the opportunity to try different things with the characters we love.
When it comes to the Murphyverse, specifically, everything is grounded — so we won’t see Joker again, outside of a flashback or a hallucination.
That means these characters have to deal with the consequences of their decisions. Random actions from another multiverse aren’t going to awaken someone from beyond the grave.
So, that’s an issue Harley Quinn is still dealing with in Katana Collins’ spinoff miniseries, Batman: White Knight Presents: Harley Quinn.
“What I really wanted to explore when we started talking about this spinoff was this idea of a woman who not only lost the man she loved, but she was the one who killed him,” Collins said on GWW Radio’s Change My Mind podcast. “I wanted to really explore what that looks like for her, two years from now. Basically suffering from postpartum depression, and being a single mom. And her one friend that she had left was Batman, who’s now in jail. I really wanted to explore the humanity of that.”
But that wasn’t the only thing Collins wanted to delve into further when writing the book that she says, “Reads like a Law & Order episode.”
There’s also the matter of her relationship with Bruce Wayne.
“To me, they have a very special connection,” Collins told Change My Mind. “What we are kind of exploring in this book and in this world is the fact that — at least for Harley — she’s only ever had that one connection with one other person, which was Jack Napier/Joker. It’s the yin to the yang. That fine line between what love, hate and friendship all can be.”