harley quinn

This past weekend at Comic-Con, fans attending the Batman vs. Superman panel were treated to an additional surprise: the entire cast of Suicide Squad appeared on stage (minus Jared Leto) and introduced our first ever look at footage from the upcoming supervillain film. Despite their pleas to not record any of the footage, someone of course did, and it leaked online shortly thereafter in a really crappy quality. Well, director David Ayer and Warner Bros. feel your pain and have decided to do the right thing and just release the whole trailer online.

There’s a lot of things about David Ayer’s Suicide Squad movie that seem pretty goofy, like Jared Leto’s method acting approach to playing his scuzzy street thug version of the Joker. But Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn looks downright delightful, and it appears that she had an equally delightful day on set for her birthday, as the cast and crew of the upcoming film gave her a very comic book appropriate birthday cake.

When San Diego rolls around next week, it'll be time once again for the Eisner Awards, the comics industry's second-most prestigious honor. The first, of course, is our own ComicsAlliance Memorial Awards, but for some reason, those don't get the press that the Eisners do. Go figure. Point is, DC is celebrating the occasion with a digital sale this week that seems like it's designed to remind you that they've put out a lot of award-winning comics over the past decade. But as always, that comes with an interesting problem, although it's not the one that we usually have when it comes to sifting through the dollar-book sales: In this case, it's pretty likely that you already have this stuff. I mean, look, if you're the one person still waiting on a price drop to grab All Star Superman, then by all means, get over there, drop the twelve bucks and come back when you want to talk about how great that Jimmy Olsen issue is, but I suspect that if you're reading comics news online, then you probably already have Watchmen in one form or another. There is, however, one title, buried way at the end of the list, and if you don't have it already, it's one you need to pick up: 1994's Batman Adventures Holiday Special.

As readers will know from our weekly Best Cosplay Ever feature, we’re big fans of cosplay at ComicsAlliance. The comics, sci-fi, gaming, and fantasy communities have proved time and again their exceptional talents for homemade disguises and superheroic sartorial excellence, and all of their craft and skill will be on display this weekend at HeroesCon. Our chief cosplay correspondent Betty Felon is on hand to document as much of it as she can. Scroll down for some of the very finest cosplay from HeroesCon!

A few days ago DC casually outed two characters that everybody had always thought were a couple, even if it had never been actually stated on-panel anywhere. Responding to the question, "Are Harley and Ivy girlfriends?" the official DC Twitter account confirmed: "Yes, they are Girlfriends without the jealousy of monogamy." That's a breakthrough of sorts, but it’s not as though DC could do anything but confirm the relationship, at this point! The best creative team in comics could tell a decade-long story in which Harley falls in love and marries a man, has kids, and settles down into monogamy, and fans would still stoke the fires driving the Harley/Ivy ship onwards.

As we near the release of Batman: Arkham Knight, Warner Bros. Interactive and Rocksteady Studios are in full hype mode. Nary a day has gone since the Memorial Day holiday that we haven't gotten some new promotional materials focused solely on putting Rocksteady's third Bat-game in the spotlight. With E3 just around the bend, it's traditionally rather hard to get any attention for a title releasing during the month of June, but perhaps the Arkham Knight team is hoping to break through to potential players by bombarding them with endless trailers and incentives. Today, we get our first decent look at the Harley Quinn story missions offered as pre-order downloadable content. Serving as a preamble to the content of Arkham Knight proper, the Harley Quinn DLC finds the widowed villainess in Blüdhaven, where she's focused on saving Poison Ivy from some sort of trouble. Along the way, she's picked up some new duds, and according the this trailer, has managed to draw the ire of Blüdhaven's guardian, Nightwing.

Over three seasons Arrow has been no stranger to the Suicide Squad (though perhaps less now with a movie in the works), but few could forget the excitement of the CW drama first teasing Harley Quinn with a brief cameo. That said, it seems Arrow may have had larger plans for Dr. Harleen Quinzel, ones that DC smashed with a giant sledgehammer.

Welcome to Recon:Vergence, a weekly look at what’s going on throughout DC’s new reality-smooshing event storyline, Convergence.This week, having revealed his big gun - a Brainiac in a Bottle, which I’m assuming DC will be making into a collectible for my mantelpiece any day now - Deimos starts to crack down on the isolated pockets of opposition across the Covergence world.

Girls need role models. This is an old canard, though it’s tempting to see its genesis in 1990s girl power — it’s just that it hasn’t always meant warmed-over Gloria Steinem quotes and the Spice Girls. June Cleaver was a Good Role Model for Girls. The Virgin Mary is a Good Role Model for Girls. Their ranks have swelled with Buffys, Lara Crofts, and Wonder Women, but they stand, toned of arm and glossed of lip, beneath the same banner. In response to a dearth of women, mainstream comics now turns to the Good Role Model for Girls as a panacea. Spider-Gwen! Spider Woman! Batgirl! Hawkeye! Black Widow! All the women in X-Men! She-Hulk! Even Suzie in Sex Criminals! And oh, how the little girl marooned in 90s comic dungeons within me sang! It’s a new age, I thought; a turning point. The first issues fly by, and I purchase every single one. And I am bored.

Ever since the first issue of DC's Batman '66 comic climaxed with an honest-to-Gotham airplane chase scene that ended in a fiery explosion, it's been pretty obvious that one of the goals of that book is to do things that they never could have done on the TV show. As much as the comic has captured the tone of the series, it's also made it a point to go bigger, throwing in bigger set pieces for the action, exotic locations and stories that literally go to new places that we never saw on the show. But there's one other way that the comic has been expanding on the show that's even more interesting than just pitting Gotham City's arch-criminals against a giant crime-fighting robot. Over the past two years, writer Jeff Parker and a rotating cast of artists that includes Joe Quinones, Jonathan Case, Rubén Procopio, Sandy Jarrell and Giancarlo Caracuzzo have been introducing villains that never appeared on the show to the world of Batman '66, bringing pop-art takes of characters like Harley Quinn and Killer Croc to the comics. And they've been doing it in a way that's absolutely fascinating.