Mallet And Moves

Once upon a time, someone asked a very good question about Harley Quinn: does she fly? Does she have super strength? Laser eyes, maybe?

The answer to all three was no. Harley didn't need any of that. What Harley had was something quieter, and in its own way, just as remarkable — a body that moved like a rubber band, a mind that never once stopped finding a clever way out of trouble, and, of course, her mallet.

Long before Gotham City had ever heard the name Harley Quinn, there was a girl named Harleen Quinzel who spent her summers on a gymnastics team. She tumbled across soft blue mats after school. She swung on the uneven bars until her palms were rough and calloused, and her coach used to say she had the fastest cartwheel on the whole team. She practiced her landings over and over, again and again, long before any chemical vats or costumes had entered the picture at all. Nobody back then could have guessed that one day those same skills would help her outrun Batman across the rooftops of Gotham City.

That training never left her, not even after everything changed.

Even now, Harley can cartwheel right across the narrow ledge of a rooftop without a single wobble. She can flip off the hood of a moving car and land neatly on her feet, arms out for balance like a circus performer taking a bow. She can stick a perfect somersault after a ten-foot drop from a fire escape, all without missing a single beat of whatever joke she happens to be telling at the time. It drives both Batman and Batgirl a little crazy, honestly, trying to guess where she'll land next. One moment she's balanced on top of a lamppost, and the next she's cartwheeling across a rooftop three buildings away, laughing the whole time.

Her costume is built for exactly that kind of movement. It's a red-and-black jester suit with a diamond harlequin pattern stitched across the fabric, light and stretchy enough to tumble in without ever slowing her down. If you listen closely when she moves, you'll hear a soft jingle-jingle-jingle — tiny silver bells sewn along the collar, announcing her arrival before you even see her coming.

She usually finishes the whole look with a small domino mask over her eyes and her hair pulled up into two pigtails, tied off with bright red and black ribbons. It's a look that makes her instantly recognizable from one end of Gotham City to the other, even at a distance, even through a thick swirl of confetti smoke drifting across a rooftop.

And then, of course, there's the mallet.

It looks enormous. It looks a little frightening, if you catch it swinging through the air on a dark night. But here's a secret that most people in Gotham eventually learn: the mallet is mostly for show. It's stuffed full of soft padding on the inside, more of a big dramatic prop for an even bigger, more dramatic BONK than any kind of real weapon.

Harley finds all sorts of uses for it. Sometimes she swings it just for the sound effect, just to hear that satisfying BONK echo down an alley. Sometimes she uses it to pole-vault clean over a fence, tucking her knees and sailing right over the top. She's even used it, more than once, to prop open a stuck window, fish a stray cat out of a storm drain, or to balance a tray of snacks on her way through a hideout. It's loud. It's theatrical. And it's almost never quite as dangerous as it looks — which, if you think about it, sounds an awful lot like Harley herself.

So whenever Harley Quinn shows up somewhere in Gotham City, the heroes who chase after her have learned exactly what to expect: cartwheels, jokes that never seem to run dry, and one very silly, very loud mallet. Catching her usually takes a great deal more patience than force, a good bit of quick thinking, and a whole lot of guessing which direction she's about to flip next.

And even then — even after the chase is over and the handcuffs finally click shut — Harley Quinn almost always manages to squeeze in one last good laugh before anyone can stop her.

That, everyone in Gotham has learned by now, is just Harley being Harley.