THE JOKE'S ON ME
New York City, 1974
I. Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself
Liv
"Yeah, yeah. The Joker did it to Batgirl, and the Comedian did it to Silk Spectre and now you're gonna do it to me, right? Well? Well?"
Blood and sweat ran from his hair and dropped into my face.
Well, Eddie told me, you gotta ask nice, and I was asking this son-of-a bitch nice, wasn't I?
His mask had been nothing more than a cheap knit ski mask, which I tore off his head after the first punch I threw at him.
He was an amateur, a fucking mook, and this was probably his first outing as a costumed villain, but he took the beating I gave him fairly well and I was impressed by that.
Impressed enough by his Ox-like build and his rough, Big Bad Wolf features to decide it was time for a bit of fun.
Now he was looking confused; I suppose my sudden willingness to ball him after I just finished beating him around the room was fucking with his mind.
What can I say? I was in one of my dangerous moods.
I decided to help him out a little.
I opened my legs.
Wide.
"See? I'm not tryin' to trick you, am I? The suit unzips, and I'm not wearing panties. They look like shit under the suit, yunno? C'mon, man, you're goin to jail, right? Might as well have a little fun before you go."
But I saw that lusty light go out of his eyes, and I knew I was out of luck.
I asked nice, and he turned me down.
Now, I know I'm not supposed to beat him up cos he turned me down, but nobody ever said I couldn't be mad.
"Shit! Another fucking candy-pants faggot prick! You supervillians aren't worth dick."
"Don't hit me again! I surrender!"
"Shit, if you woulda surrendered a coupla minutes ago, we coulda got somewhere! Now the only place you're goin is jail, asshole."
"Awww, fuck you. Like they say in the papers, you superhero chicks are crazy."
Fuck me, he says?
What a rude prick!
If he ain't gonna be nice, then neither am I.
So I got my hand out from under his arm, which I could have done at any time, and I gave him the old roundhouse to the face, and he was kissing the carpet.
I picked him up by the cowl of his stupid fucking plastic cape and dragged him all the way down into the street.
Eddie was still standing next to the bodega where the Green Jackal had pulled off his fabulous crime, forever to be recorded in the annals of supervillainy.
Tried to rob the store with a cheap switchblade.
Fucking amateurs.
Eddie hadn't thought the kid was worth it, and I could tell he still didn't from the way he was smirking at me from around his cigar.
"Another fuckin' mook. Jesus Christ." I said, tossing the Green Something-or-Other at the Comedian's feet.
"Wasted effort, kid. That was fast." He said.
"Yeah, faster than I wanted it to be. I coulda got lucky if I had my old costume."
"Lucky? With this prick? More like unlucky. Still, you prob'ly coulda taken this piece of shit in your old fuck-me-daddy costume. You never know, kid. Maybe he wasn't in the mood."
"Prob'ly not. I don't think the poor stupid bastard was trying to get somewhere; he was prob'ly holding me down so I'd quit beating the shit out of him. Where the fuck are the cops? Shit, do they think we've got all day?"
I started looking for my smokes. I keep them in the left holster with my gun, but they must have fallen out.
"Son of a bitch! You lost me my fucking smokes, you prick!"
I kicked him, just for good measure, the Green Whatever-the Fuck.
Every day it seems you get another fuck in a costume who wants to be a supervillain, and none of them are worth a shit.
Eddie laughed at me.
"Are you in a big hurry for something?"
"Yeah. It's Friday. I gotta go see my father today, and visiting hours at Arkham will be over if I sit around all day with this prick."
"Go ahead. I'll take care of it."
"Will yuh? You're the best partner a girl ever had, Eddie. Yunno I wasn't serious about fucking this asshole, right?"
"Sure you were, kid. You're the sexual revolution all by yourself. One more thing, kid. Don't you get into any of your fuckin' Trouble tonight. If you do, don't come cryin' to me unless you want me to give you somethin' to cry about."
I just looked at Eddie.
Why, I hadn't had my Troubles for almost three years.
"That's not what I was thinkin' about you givin me, Eddie."
"Yeah, yeah. I'm serious, kid. Go see your old man and then go home."
I couldn't figure out why Eddie was so fuckin' serious all of the sudden. I decided it was probably the crack I made about the Green Asshole.
At least that's what I thought at the time.
Good old Eddie Blake. Knows me better than I know myself, it turns out.
He gave me a chance where nobody else would. I know most people think Eddie' s a mean, rotten, son of a bitch.
Me, I know him, I'm his partner.
He's a mean, rotten, two-tone motherfucker of a son-of-a-bitch and you'd need a hell of a lot of powder to blow him to Hell.
But he's my partner, and I think he's a good guy.
You see, I couldn't get arrested in the superhero community. Not with a name like Trivelino J. Napier. The "J" doesn't stand for anything. Yeah, it's a funny name. Trivelino is another word for harlequin. That's me. I'm a harlequin. My father, he's a harlequin, too.
You know, Napier? Like Jack Napier?
Otherwise known as the Joker.
***
So I went home and got one of my cars, the new one, the Roadrunner, and drove all the way the fuck upstate to Arkham, to see the old man.
The old man. I don't know who my mother was, and the old man never mentioned her. I never asked. I mean he might have killed her, or something. I got a vague memory of something like that, I think. Then again, maybe he promised to pay her to incubate his spawn, and then killed her. Or maybe he paid her and sent her on her way. How would I know? With Dad, you never wanted to ask too many questions.
But I never worried about who Mom was. Things with the Old Man were always pretty cool. I mean, for a psychotic evil supervillian interested in spreading chaos for chaos' sake, he wasn't a bad father.
We always had a lot of fun when I was growing up, Dad and I. I had the most interesting toys. Hell, I had everything. Crime pays. And he told me all about the world, they way it really is. One big shaggy-dog joke. Call me crazy, call me a cynic, call me a nihilist. But the old man, he's an honest man, and he never lied to me about what he was, or about the world.
Most of what I learned, the Old Man taught me himself. If he wasn't planning on doing anything to gruesome, he always let me watch him work. Which comes in handy now, I can tell you.
He spared no expense. Nothing was too good for me; I was Daddy's Little Girl. I had private tutors, and if I didn't like them, they disappeared. Disappeared into the East River, probably. Like I said, I never asked questions. Dad usually kept the nastier parts of his work away from me; he always said I should do as he said and not as he did.
You see, the Old Man, he gave it a lot of thought, and decided he didn't want me to grow up to be a supervillain.
He always said the hours were lousy and you could never get good help.
They usually don't let you go in the cells at Arkham, but since I'm the Harlequin, I get special privileges.
They had him in the goddamn straitjacket again. I mean all he has to do is breathe and they put him in the straitjacket again.
No wonder he's always so fucking hostile when he gets out, the way they treat him while he's inside.
"Shit, do they have you in the straitjacket, again, Dad? Lemme get you out of that."
"No, no, Liv. I'm learning how to get out of it myself. And I've nearly got it…there. Just like Houdini. I must say, you do have a lot of time locked up in here to improve your mind. Pull up some padding and have a seat. So, how's business? Catching any bad guys, lately? Getting rid of my competition?"
"Nobody interesting. Common criminal fucks. Muggers. Bank robbers. Dope pushers. Baby rapers. Just the usual scum. Anybody with any real vision is locked up in here. There's no good supervillains out there. Just morons in a cape and a leotard and their sister's tights. Pretenders. I can't wait till some of you get paroled. I mean, Moloch's always good for a laugh. Take this new one, the Green What's-His-Nuts. He has potential, but he's a candy-pants faggot and a mook. I dunno. It's the usual."
Dad seemed sympathetic; he made an effort to frown.
"That's the problem with these kids today. They lack vision. All they want to do is shoot up and cash in. They put on their mother's pantyhose and a ski mask and wear their underpants on the outside of their clothes and go mug an old lady and they think they've made the big time. What you need is an arch-nemesis. Take me and Bats. What a guy! When I'm feeling low down in this depressing dump, I start planning my next caper with him in mind. Maybe you can cultivate this Green Whoosie. If he has a name and a costume, he has potential. Cultivate it. Give him a reason to really hate you."
Dad always did give good advice.
"So what is your next caper, Dad?"
He looked real happy when I asked him that.
"You won't tell Bats?"
"Of course not."
"Tell you what. I'll tell you the part that I was going to tell Bats about, eventually. But don't tell him yet. I want it to be a surprise. I've been in here almost two years, so it has to be something…big. Something that shows I'm not some Fifties relic. Something new. I keep telling those old fuddy-duddies at the Society, that we have to get with the times. Bring in some new villains. Tune into your generation. Appeal to the average American. You know, diversify. Really get crime ready for the millennium. It has to do with shopping malls. And rock clubs. I know that doesn't sound like much, but I'm still working out the details."
"Dad, this isn't one of those kill everybody things, is it?"
"No. I've done that before. This is new. Different. Fresh. But enough about me. Speaking of killing everybody, how's Eddie? Still kidding around?" Dad asked.
"You bet. You know Eddie. He doesn't like it when things get slow. Too much government grunt work. Nothing big. So he's getting bored. So'm I."
Dad got sort of a worried look on his face.
"Now Liv, you know how you are when you get bored. If you're in here next week because you've killed six men with a rubber chicken and driven your car through a shopping mall to get an Orange Julius because there was nothing else to do, I'm going to be very upset with you." He said.
"I've never gone that far, Dad."
"Don't. Any good news on the horizon?"
"Moloch's being paroled next month. That ought to get things going."
"Good for him. I'll have to wait for another six months. But Oswald's getting out, they say. It's funny how we need each other. Heroes and villains." Dad mused.
"Like peanut butter and jelly." I said.
For some reason, that made Dad laugh.
I laughed too.
I have to say, I enjoy a good laugh.
But, with Dad and Eddie around, yunno, I get a lot of them.
***
Dad went off to Arkham the first time when I was about seven, and it was a little bit after that when Bruce discovered me.
The old man, he doesn't have any relatives, so when they asked him who he wanted to look after me, he said Bruce Wayne.
And the Old Man knows that Bruce Wayne is Batman.
I'm not sure how it worked out that way.
Bruce told me once that him and the Old Man thought I was dead, for awhile, and that Bruce always blamed himself for it. Maybe that was why he took me in.
Or maybe it was because he didn't want me to be like my father. I suppose the last thing the world needs is two Jokers.
I'm not exactly sure if I became a superhero instead of a supervillian because I became Batman's ward. I mean, the old man never wanted me to be a supervillian and he finds it extremely funny that I'm a superhero, and hilarious that Batman finished up the job of raising me.
Maybe the Old man just thought it was a great cosmic joke.
I just hope they never kill each other, because Bruce is like another Dad to me.
Dad gave me things, and told me about things, but Bruce really taught me about the way things really were. You know, living with the Old Man, it was like being Alice in Wonderland, all the time. I guess Bruce had to work pretty hard to undo that.
When I showed interest in the hero game, he didn't give me any shit about it; he just started teaching me everything I needed to know. I trained with him, and with Sally Jupiter. Bruce is a good guy. He really is. He's a little fucked up, but anybody who puts on a mask and goes out with a toolbelt full of gadgets to fuck with people that the cops won't even think about touching, you have to be a little crazy.
Bruce isn't quite as crazy as Dad, and he doesn't kill as many people and he's got a highly developed sense of morality, but by the time I went to live with him I already though that the Old Man was a little extreme. I mean, don't get me wrong, I like a little disorder and chaos as much as the next hereditary psychopath, but Bruce has got a point about the world having to have some law. And when you're on the side of the villains, it's always a losing battle. There may not be a whole lot of differences between the sick, twisted fucks in the white hats and the sick, twisted fucks in the black hats, but the pay is better and so is the press and you stay out of jail with the white hat on.
That and you can at least tell yourself that you're Doing the Right Thing.
Whatever the fuck that is.
***
After I left the Asylum, I was feeling kind of blue, and I was hurting.
And I don't mean just hurting in the emotional sense, because my Dad was in the bughouse, again. I mean I was fucked up from the fight I was in earlier that day.
I didn't notice it at first, but while I was there with the Old Man, my side really started to hurt.
I went to use their john in the nuthouse, and I looked under my shirt because my ribs were hurting and I saw I was all black and blue. I know I should have just gone home and had Bruce take a look at me, or gone to the doctor, but I didn't want to admit that some amateur in a Halloween cape and a ski mask had fucked me up.
Anyway, even if I didn't go to a doctor, I should have gone home. Or over to Eddie's place. I even have this button on my watch where I can radio Dr. Manhattan to zap me to his lab. I work with him, when I have the mask off.
So I coulda ended up the night at home, or at Eddie's place, or watching TV with my friend Laurie, and seen some kinda doctor before I got too fucked up.
The last place I should have gone was some sleazy roadside roadhouse just off the Interstate, in the mood I was in.
Eddie told me to go home. I should have listened to him. I don't know how the fuck he knew what I was going to do before I knew I was going to do it, but he did.
I know he raises ten kinds of Hell when he's out, but it always depresses me, visiting the Old Man in that horrible place.
Now I hadn't had what Clark (Kent, that is) calls my Troubles for a long time, so I figured I could take it. You know, go in, have a drink or two, play a game of pool, piss, and leave.
The Old Man could tell I was gonna have my Troubles, and so could Eddie, but me, no, not me., I thought I was gonna be just fucking fine.
Yeah. And junkies can shoot up once in awhile and never do it again.
I'm telling you, I was feeling really fucking low. They were going to parole the Old Man early, and then they didn't, and that depressing shit with the Green Shitheel, and things getting kinda slow and, I dunno.
It was time, I guess.
Nobody's fucking perfect.
Or maybe I was just being a stupid, spoiled cunt.
But I didn't go in there with Trouble on my mind. I didn't. I just wanted to have a couple of drinks and go home.
You know how many times I've just gone into a bar in the last three years and had a couple of drinks and gone home?
Plenty.
I don't know what god me in the mood. Probably how sleazy the place was. Or maybe I had too much to drink when I was already in a shitty mood. Because I parked myself on the stool in the corner and started putting away the Scotch and Cokes. It was good Scotch, and I'm no alkie, but I can really put it away when I want to.
Tonight, I wanted to. I got in that mood I get into, the mood I used to be in all the time before I met Eddie and started working. Where I just feel like raising some Hell, just because Hell is there. Like I wanna tear a great big hole in the world and see what gets sucked out of it before it shuts again.
What can I say? I enjoy a little ultraviolence, a little chaos and disorder is good for me.
To tell the truth, I wasn't really that drunk by the time I told the prick who was changing the Zeppelin record I put on the jukebox to lay the fuck off or I'd kill him.
If he hadn't gotten smart with me, I might have made it out of there without anything happening, but, I know it's my fault in the end.
I didn't kill him. And I didn't kill the ten or so other drunken fucks that I got into a fight with, but I tore that place up.
I don't really wanna talk about it, too much. It's embarrassing. I mean if you want fucking details, you know, people were screaming and bones were broken and teeth flew like little red and white Chiclets and there was blood all over the floor.
And the barstools.
A little on the walls.
All that shit.
You should have seen the looks on these guys' faces.
For one thing, they couldn't believe that I was ripping up the joint on a whim because somebody changed my record, and for another they couldn't believe how badly I was kicking their asses. At the end of it, I walked out the door and they didn't. Some of 'em, they were out cold when I spilt and the rest were just scared shitless.
I stood in the doorway, and I had a good laugh, and the way I laugh, it scared them all even more.
"Thanks, fellas. I had a real good time. Maybe I'll come back again, next time I'm in these parts." I said.
Now, this was the second fight in one day, and I had quite a few drinks, and all I'd had to eat was a banana and some cereal first thing in the morning, so even though I felt pretty good strutting out to my car, when the adrenaline wore off I wasn't feeling too good.
Not too good at all.
My side was really hurting bad from the fight with the Green Fuckface, and after taking a few more hits in the same place, I was beginning to get some serious pain.
Meanwhile, I was so drunk, and so pissed off, and in so much fucking pain, already, I was off my game. I mean, normally, when I get into a fight, they guys I'm fighting don't get a lot of hits in. This time, though, I got pounded pretty good, and I didn't realise it right away.
I had been thinking that since I just tore up some dump in some upstate hole just off the interstate that I'd be able to play it off any nobody would know I had gone off the wagon, but then I looked in the mirror on the visor in the car, and what I could see of my face through the one eye because that hadn't swelled shut from being blacked and bloody looked pretty grisly.
No way. I was gonna have to go back home and face the music.
I figured I could make it back to the city. I like to drive fast, but I really had the pedal down, trying to get home. I was going about a hundred and ten in the Roadrunner when I started to feel woozy, so I pulled the car over.
You see, back when I was having my Troubles all the time, I was forever smashing up my cars. I totalled two Mustangs and a Corvette Stingray between 1968 and 1971. And that's just the times I totalled the car.
It's a good thing I'm a gearhead, or I would have totalled more of 'em.
Anyway, though, I just bought the goddam Roadrunner not three months ago, and I didn't want to wreck it, already, or wreck myself, anymore, so I figured I'd better take it easy for awahile.
I put my head on the steering wheel, but that didn't stop it from swimming, and when I looked down at my canary-yellow leather seats, I noticed mine was red with blood, and I realised I was in a lot worse shape than I thought I was.
I started to get worried. There was blood running down my head over the eye that had swollen shut by now, and my shirt and my jacket were all red. That was a whole hell of a lot of blood; it meant somebody must have knifed me pretty good, and I had to get help, fast.
I though about getting on the two- way radio on the Superhero Distress Channel, but then I got to thinking about how I hadn't had my Troubles for a long time, and I was feeling like a real asshole.
It's not as if this was my first time I got hurt, bad, just the first time I got hurt bad when I had to drive across the whole goddamn state of New York at midnight.
I mean, the SDC is for when the Harlequin needs help with six guys robbing a bank, not for when Liv Napier gets drunk in some dive and ends up getting the shit beaten out of her for her own stupidity.
So I broke out the first aid kit, bandaged up my head and my side the best I could, and put the radio on as loud as I could so I wouldn't fall asleep, and floored it all the way home.
I was pretty close to delirious by the time I made it back to the city. I don't even know where I was going, but I ended up at Eddie's place by default, and I knew I didn't have enough jam to make it anywhere else.
He told me not to get into my Troubles and not to come crying to him if I did, and I hate to go and drop all my problems right into my partner's lap, but this time, I didn't have much of a choice.
II: Eddie
It was close to two in the morning, but the Comedian was not asleep.
He was still the living room of his swank penthouse apartment, in his ratty old bathrobe, with the TV on.
"Nothing fucking on. Shit. I pay out all this fucking money for this cable shit, and there's nothing fucking on."
The kid was not around.
The kid was always around on a Friday night. She was crazy, but she was the kind of crazy you could set your watch by, and the kid was always around on a Friday night.
Eddie had another drink, and, standing by the bar, he decided he wasn't sitting the fuck around all night.
It was fucking Friday night. The kid was probably shacked up with that grease monkey kid she knew over in Bensohurst.
Well, if they were gonna fix some brakes on an old beater and then she was gonna give the grease monkey a lube job, Eddie wasn't about to sit on his ass all night.
He was about to go and get dressed when his phone began to ring.
Who the fuck was calling him at one in the morning?
He answered, and they hung up.
The Comedian stared at the phone, scowling other than business contacts and the kid, he wasn't exactly slopping over with friends.
So he took a chance on who it might have been.
Sometimes he got screamed at and hung up on, but he figured, what the fuck, and dialled the number anyway.
"H'lo?"
She was drunk, but that was OK, so was he.
He sat down.
"Hiya, Sal. Didja just call me?"
"Me? Naah. Eddie! Jesus, Eddie, how are ya?"
"Okay. Yunno, the usual. So, you gonna call me a cocksucker and hang up on me?"
"Did I do that last time ya called? Oh yeah, I did. I'm sorry. I meant to tellya that you were a rotten lousy son-of-a-bitch. Jesus, Eddie, isn't it late in New York? It's Friday, ain't it? Shouldn't you e out painting the town red?"
"Yeah, it's late. Fuck it, what the fuck they got out there, anyway? Fuckin' hippies and folk music and bars fulla junkies and faggots. Fuck 'em. I pay enough rent in this fuckin' hold, I might as well enjoy it. So, how's life, Sal?"
"Rotten. My kid never calls me, and she's sleeping with a nuclear reactor. The only letters I ever get are fan mail from boys young enough to be my grandson, and none of these old men are worth a shit."
"What about the boys young enough to be your grandson? How're they?"
Sally laughed her drunken old lady laugh.
"A lot better, as long as I wear the old costume. So it's degrading? What am I supposed to do, curl up and die? Become a nun? How's Liv? Staying out of trouble?"
Eddie took a drink.
"She ain't here. That kid's like a fucking clock. Ya never know what the fck she's gonna do, but ya know when she's gonna do it, and she ain't here. She's better not be havin' her fuckin' Troubles. You can only scare a kid like that into listentin' to ya for so long."
"Ya scared her? Howzat, Eddie? I know you didn't threaten to beat her up."
Sally laughed again.
The Comedian knew he was never going to live it down, about that fight he got into with Liv.
"Real funny, Sal."
"I didn't let you get the best of me, either, did I, Eddie?"
At the beginning of the week in which the Silk Spectre II was conceived, the Comedian received a visit from the Silk Spectre I in which she just opened the door and ambushed him, and knocked him all over the room.
While he was lying on the floor, picking up his teeth, she told him they were even, now, and if he was still interested he could come over on Friday, at noon.
He went.
"Some fun, huh, Sal? Those were the days."
"They sure were. Wudja do, tell her if she didn't toe the line you'd cut her loose?"
"Yeah. But, like I said. that'll only work with the kid for so long. She's just about at the point where she figures, fuck him, I'll do what I want. Someday she's gonna stumble in here with a bullet in her guts and die on my fuckin' floor if she don't wise up."
"Well you can't wise 'em up, can ya? Kids do what they want. You tell 'em, an' you tell 'em, and they give you that 'fuck you' look, and they gotta figure it out for themselves. All you can do is keep repeatin' yourself, like a goddamn moron. All I hear from Laurie is 'Look at you, whadda you know? Look how you turned out.' OK, fine, look how I turned out. At least the guys I fuck are all a normal color. I mean, Jesus, Eddie, I got nothing against the Doc, but if there was some big blue broad with no hair who was a fuckin' nuclear reactor, would you be sleeping with her?"
Eddie thought about it.
"No. Me, I like redheads." He said.
Sally laughed again.
"Awww, Jesus, Eddie, you were a rotten kid and you're a bad man, and half the time I hate your guts, but you're the only person who ever calls me, anymore."
"Funny, ain't it?"
"Hilarious. Hold the line, I'm gonna go get another drink."
That was when Eddie heard the key turning in the lock.
"Wait. The kid's here."
Sally Jupiter was changing the channel on her TV when she heard the phone falling on the ground on the other line and Eddie screaming "Jesus Christ!" in a way that sounded desperate and almost reverent.
The line went dead.
"Oh no." she said.
***
If he hadn't caught her, the kid would have hit the floor.
Her jacket was red with blood and so was her shirt; she was bleeding all over the rug and all over the Comedian, bleeding like she would bleed out if it wasn't stopped.
"Jesus Christ! I knew you were gonna pull this shit, kid! I fuckin' knew it! I shoulda picked your ass up and shoved you in my car and drove you upstate, myself! Now lookit you! Jesus Christ!"
"Hey, Eddie, I need a doctor." She said, faintly.
"Then why didn't you go to the fuckin' hospital, kid? Never mind. I guess I gotta do something about it."
The Comedian put the Harlequin on his kitchen table and tore off her bloody shirt.
A shoddy dressing that she must have slapped on herself came off with it and he found that there was a hole in her side, right between her ribs, with blood draining out of it.
"Holy Christ, there's somethin' in there! Shit, I gotta stop this bleedin', kid, or you ain't gonna make it to the fuckin' doctor for him to take it out."
He opened up the kitchen cabinet and got out a toolbox and opened it.
Inside were some basic first aid supplies, and some fishing line and a sailcloth needle.
"What are you gonna do, Eddie?"
"What we used to do in the Big One to keep a guy alive until we could get a medic. I'm gonna pour a shitload of alcohol on that bitch, and then I'm gonna sew you up so you don't bleed out in my fuckin' car. It's gonna hurt like a motherfucker."
The Comedian got his gun out of one pocket of his bloody bathrobe and a fifth out of the other.
"Have a drink. Now, put this in your mouth and bite down. Try not to scream, okay, Liv?"
"Okay, Eddie. I won't."
The kid bit down on the bullet and she didn't make a fucking sound.
***
By the time he was done sewing her up she started to get the sweats, and she was delirious, in and out of consciousness, talking out of her head.
The Comedian didn't even bother to get dressed, he just picked up his partner and carried her to the car and got on the road, trying to raise Bruce Wayne on the two way radio.
"This is Batman. I am receiving you, Comedian."
"We got Troubles. Harlequin's lost a lot of blood, there's a knife broken off inside her from this morning and she's been beaten up pretty bad, tonight. Can you handle this?"
He could hear Wayne cursing under his breath.
"Affirmative. Alfred was a medic in World War One. Bring her in. Over and out."
***
When the Comedian arrived at the Batcave with the Harlequin, they had everything all ready for her.
Even Superman was there, and for once was wasn't giving Eddie the usual dirty look.
"Clark's here for the x-ray. Put her on the table, Eddie."
The Comedian stood there, barefoot, naked under his bloody bathrobe, chain-smoking and watching the three men bustle around the table.
He picked up on what was going on, listening to them. The knife blade was pointing down, so it missed her internal organs. A cracked rib, or two, no broken bones. More stitches over her eye.
They had a sheet over her, and one of those hospital lights on, and when they turned her over he saw all the bruises on her back and all over her, and got an image in his mind of finding the place where the kid had gotten into the fight and finding the ten or twenty guys who had beat the shit out of her, and all the many ways he could kill them.
Then Kent was taking off a bloody white coat and so was Wayne and the butler and they washed their hands in the sink.
The light was still on and the sheet was still bloody and they hadn't washed the kid off, yet.
"Hey, are you gonna clean her up?" the Comedian demanded.
"Of course. You might want to clean yourself up. I can lend you a shirt and pants."
"I got clothes in the car. I guess I look pretty grisly, huh, Bruce?"
Bruce Wayne nodded, tersely.
"She'll be awake by the time you've got yourself together."
The Comedian looked over at the butler; he was moving the kid from the table to a bed with wheels.
Limp from the knockout gas, and all beaten up and bloody, she looked like a corpse.
In his mind, the Comedian was sealing off all the exits to the bar and lighting it on fire, standing there and having a good laugh while all those low-life motherfuckers smoked and toasted just like they would in Hell.
"Remind me why I decided to make the kid my problem in the first place?"
"I can't. I don't know why you did it."
"Yeah. Neither do I."
III: Liv
Well, as nights go, I've had much better ones.
I'm not too sure what happened after I got to Eddie's place. I remember him putting me on the kitchen table and giving me a bullet to bite and telling me not to scream while he sewed me up with fishing line. I got a real high tolerance for pain. In my business you gotta be tough, but it hurt so bad and I was so worn out already, I just blacked out.
I guess he drove me back to Wayne Manor, because when I woke up I was in the Batcave infirmary, in a hospital bed.
I was all cleaned up and bandaged and my bloody clothes were gone and somebody had put me in a clean tee shirt that was about three sizes too big for me.
Bruce was there, and so was Alfred, but he took it on his toes as I was coming to.
"Everything hurts." I said.
I didn't want to talk.
I was thirsty and I was in pain and I was sleepy, and I just wanted to have drink of water and pull up the blankets and sleep.
Bruce was hot to read me the riot act, though, and the way I had acted, I figured I'd better listen.
"I'm not surprised. You've got a concussion, and you won't be opening your left eye anytime soon. There's ten stitches over it. Your other lumps and bruises aren't too serious, but your face looks like it's been put through a meat grinder. The worst part is the wound in your side. It's very serious. Did you realise that the Green Jackal stabbed you earlier and you've been walking around with the blade of a cheap switchback broken off and floating around inside your chest, all day?" he asked.
"Why didn't I start bleeding, then?"
"The knife was so sharp that when the blade broke, it sealed off the wound. That was bad enough, but then you had to go out and get in a fight, and have somebody jam it deeper into your side, and break the seal the puncture made. Do you know how lucky you are? If that blade had been facing straight in instead of at a downward angle, it could have punctured your lung. Do you realise that when you came in here you were sewn up with fishing line? What if you didn't just happen to have a partner who picked up that old GI trick in the Pacific? What if you never made it home and passed out and bled out in your car, somewhere along the interstate? The minute you realised you were hurt, you should gotten to a doctor. Immediately."
"Well, I thought I just had some broken ribs. They can't do anything for broken ribs. I wanted to see Dad."
Bruce's face darkened.
"Even that maniac would have wanted you to see a doctor. I thought that you were past all of this. There has to be an end to it, Liv. Now."
"Okay, Bruce. Okay." I told him.
I couldn't stay awake, anymore, and then I woke up a little later when I smelled cigar smoke. To tell you the truth I wanted to pretend I was out of it, because I felt like I really let Eddie down. I mean, here I was, acting like some dumb kid, again.
I gotta tell you, I was ashamed.
"Go home, Eddie. I'll be fine."
"Sure kid. Fine. You look fuckin' fine. You looked great when you came in. You been fine for a coupla days, now."
I sat up, and I wasn't in the Infirmary, anymore, I was in my bedroom, and I had a different shirt on.
"A coupla days? What coupla days?" I asked.
"The coupla days you been out of it an' me an' Wayne have been takin' shifts lookin' after you. Just what I wanted to do with my fuckin' weekend, spend it nursemaiding my partner, who goes out to get drunk and fight instead of to the hospital when somebody sticks a knife in her."
"I'm sorry, Eddie." I said.
"Yeah, I'll bet you are. Sorry for yourself. Well, kid I ain't fuckin' sorry for you. Youse did this shit to yourself. You know who I'm sorry for? Me. I got sympathy for me that this kid, my fuckin' partner comes bustin' into my living room in the middle of the fuckin' night, bleedin' to death. You think I need this shit? I hadda sew you up so you wouldn't bleed out in my car. Which I'm gonna have to get cleaned. And lookit me! I been wearin the same clothes for three fuckin' days. I hadda get my cleaning lady to come over special and clean up my apartment. It's a good thing she does bloodstains. There's still some that won't come out. This is what I get, right? The fuckin' joke's on me, right? Well, guess what, kid? Check my face, I ain't laughin'. This is it, kid. It's grow-up time. I'm takin' off the fuckin' trainin' wheels. You pull this shit on me again, and I'm done with you. Get me?"He said.
"I get you."
"Yeah, you get me. You got me. I'm watchin' you like a fuckin' hawk, kid. There's no smokin', no drinkin', no fightin' and no fuckin' until you get better, and these guys don't know your tricks like I do. As soon as you can move you ass outa this bed, you're coming home with me, and I'll make sure you toe the fuckin' line, kid. But the first thing you're gonna do, you're gonna get a mop and a fuckin bucket and a scrub brush, and you're gonna clean up the fuckin' mess you made. It's about fuckin' time somebody made you clean up after yourself, kid. It's your goddamn blood. You deal with it." He told me.
"I don't feel good enough to do any of that shit." I said.
"Yeah. Today you don't. Tomorrow I'll have to hit Kent up for Wonder Woman's lasso so I can tie you to the fuckin' bed."
***
As it turned out, I couldn't go to Eddie's the next day or the day after that, so I guess he got his cleaning lady to come back in.
Anyway, I was up and around in another day, and over at Eddie's apartment, looking to go back to work. I felt shitty about what I did and I wanted to show him I still had it. He told me that I was nuts, and I told him I'd do what I wanted and he couldn't stop me and he told me that I could hang around the apartment and take it easy, or he could put those old people diapers on me and tie me to the bed.
He would have done it, too.
I can't say I minded being at Eddie's for awhile. I like living at Wayne Manor, I got my own suite of rooms and I like living there, but sometimes I want to get out of there, in the worst way.
It's not Bruce that bugs me, it's Dick. Sometimes, I can't stand that guy. He means well, and when he harangues me after I've had my troubles, he thinks he's doing me good, but he isn't. It drives me crazy. I mean, he's so holier than thou, and he's getting way too old to be the Boy Wonder. I mean both of us are in our twenties, here. I might as well be living down the hall from Superman. I can't stand listening to all that shit about what it really means to be a superhero and clean living and blah, blah, blah. It's not that I don't like Dick. We grew up together. He's like my brother. The problem is, sometimes, he's like my Goody-Two Shoes big brother.
Especially when he starts lecturing me about fucking. The cursing bothers him, and the smoking, and the drinking, but it's the fucking that really freaks him out.
I think Dick's a virgin. I'm serious, I really think he is, I think he's a fucking 25 year-old-virgin in 1974. I mean, he's so uptight about anything that has to do with sex.
Me, I haven't been a virgin since I was 13. I'll admit it, I like to fuck. And before I met that sick bastard I had to send straight to Hell, I wasn't too picky about who I did it with. As long as I like 'em, I mean.
Fucking is fucking.
You come, and then you go.
I mean there's me and Joe Mac, we go back to when I was 13 and all, but all that shit Dick wants to hand me, all that hearts and flowers shit, I never went for that. Joe's my friend, we grew up together, and we get it on. That's it, yunno?
I mean it always bothered Dick that I ran around with a lot of guys. The whole sexual revolution passed him right by. And it bothered him more that Joe Mac didn't really give a shit.
But the thing that bothers him the most is that me and Eddie, we're not just partners on the street, if you know what I'm saying.
I mean now, him and Joe Mac are pretty much the only guys I've been balling, you know, except for the occasional groupie. You can trust them, they worship you. But, I mean, I learned the hard way that this ain't the Summer of Love, you gotta be choosy about who you're gonna lie down with.
Not to mention, you lie down with Eddie Blake, you wake up in the morning, smiling.
But, anyway, I don't get Dick's objection. I mean, if he thinks that I shouldn't do a thing without that ring, logically speaking, why is it worse if I screw one guy than another?
I mean, his argument makes no sense. It's pretty much just, "He's your partner, you shouldn't sleep with him. Do I sleep with my partner?"
And this is the argument he puts before a scientist and an historian. It makes absolutely no fucking sense. I mean, for one thing, Dick and Bruce are both guys, and neither one of them is gay. Despite what you may have heard. For another, I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, every day, I put my life in my partner's hands, and he puts his life in mine. That's some heavy shit. I don't think a little fucking is going to affect that, either way.
I don't think a lot of fucking is going to affect that, either way.
Let me tell you, I must have fucked a hundred guys, two hundred guys, who knows, in my life, if I fucked one, and none of them were Eddie Blake. I don't know what you want to call it, but I don't care what Dick thinks about what Eddie and I do in our free time; I don't think we could stop if we tried.
I don't know what it is about Eddie. Lust, that's something I can understand. Something I can handle. Still, although most of my overpowering feelings towards my partner have to do with him being a big, mean, burly, hairy son of a bitch who looks good in guns and black leather, there's always been something else.
And I don't know what that is. I still can't figure out what made me jump out of the Owlship not three weeks after I met Eddie into a crowd of rabid, rioting gang members after him.
I know damn well what I normally would have done. I would have sat there and laughed at the Comedian for making such a stupid move, and then I would have laughed at the Nite Owl for rushing to his rescue.
But when I saw that crowd closing over Eddie, I didn't even think, I just jumped.
Then again, what the fuck made him, after being on his own since 1940, decide to take on an apprentice who was young enough to be his kid, and a woman?
Sometimes I gotta ask myself, fuck, Liv, who do you think this guy is? Gandhi? You opposed Vietnam, and he won it. You were a junior volunteer with the Kennedy campaign, and Eddie shot him. You killed a man in the most violent way possible for attempting to rape you, and he tried to give it to your best friend's mother, the hard way.
But then, they had an affair and along came Laurie.
This shit is complicated.
But not for Dick, because he acts like he doesn't have one.
He gets up on his high horse, yunno, where nothing is complicated and he calls Eddie things like a subhuman sink of depravity and iniquity.
Shit, Eddie ain't that bad.
The worst part of it is, though, when he's not making value judgements about something he's never done which considers feelings he's never experienced, Dick is usually absolutely right, and I don't want to hear what he's got to say.
Especially when I know he's absolutely right.
Anyway, I was anxious to put my latest bout of Troubles behind me, so as soon as the doctor said I could move, even though I still felt and looked like shit, I decided to get back to work.
Not my Harlequin work, I wasn't well enough for that, I mean my Liv Napier work.
I was still pretty fucked up when I went back to my job at NYU, and I just told everybody that I got mugged. I tried to tell that to the Doc in Washington, but he didn't believe me.
Naturally, Laurie tried to blame it all on Eddie. She hates the guy. I think I would too, if I was her. I mean, even if her mother would have let her know that he was her real father, I'm not sure Eddie would have been the Father of the Year.
I was at work when he came to the lab to tell me that he was gonna be staying in Washington for awahile, he had this government job to do, one of his hush-hush kind of jobs he never lets me in on, but this time, he said, if it turned out to be anything good, after he got situated he was going to bring me in on it. Then he asked me to look after his place while he was gone, and he gave me an extra key to his hotel room and made this joke to the Doc that I didn't always have to teleport right back to New York, did I?
Laurie kept looking at him like she wanted to kill him.
I don't think the Doc is overly fond of Eddie, either. Then again, the Doc being the way he is, he's not overly fond of anybody. He probably thinks I should quit working with Eddie. He's always telling me that I should never put being a superhero ahead of being a scientist, because there are plenty of superheroes in the world, but not a lot of scientists with a brain like mine.
Maybe that's why he's always telling me about what Eddie did in Nam, to discourage me from the mask game, but I honestly don't give a fuck.
I know what Eddie did in Nam. I know what Eddie did in WWII. Fuck, I even know what he did in Dallas in 1963.
People think goddamn Kennedy was so fucking innocent. And I'm not saying he wasn't a good President, but he wasn't the Second Coming. People don't just get whacked for no reason. He started the whole war in progress, and he got into all that shit in Cuba, too. He wasn't any better or worse than anybody else who had ever been president, people just got all wet over him because he was young and good-looking and girls wanted to fuck him. Then he started believing his own legend and trying to push things in a way that the rest of the political types didn't like and so they had him taken out.
Not that I agree with that. I think it was a shitty fuckin' thing to do, an' I don't think Presdient Kennedy deserved it, and I think he would have been better than Johnson and Tricky Dick, so the joke's on the government, that they whacked the wrong guy.
The funny thing is, at this point, I think Eddie half-agrees with me. But, the one time I said anything to him about it, he shrugged and told me it was politics, and that every president he ever knew other than FDR was an asshole one way or the other.
Yeah, it was politics. Like those cocksuckers in the Mob say, it was business.
So Eddie did it. He did what he had to do. I don't care who you are, like my Old Man says, everybody's expendable. It's a fucking joke, it really is, the way people go on about what's right and what's wrong and all their bullshit morality. Nobody gives a fuck about morality, really, they just want it to appear to other people that they're Joe Square, and then they go and do all kinds of horrible shit.
I know. I'm the one who has to stop them doing it.
You think if Eddie hadn't been the one to pull the trigger, they wouldn't have got somebody else to do it? You think if he pulled out the soapbox and gave them a big lecture, or went and told the press or somebody else who wasn't in on the plot that they would have had a parade for him?
Yeah, maybe in the fuckin' movies. In real life, all those politicians are in it together, and they keep the fuckin' press on a real short leash.
Lots of shit never gets into the papers.
I'll tell you want would have happened. There would have been no more Comedian, that's what. They would have made up some story about him dying nobly in some way and printed that in the papers. If you think they would have let him live after he said no, you're a real dumb prick.
Once they get you, those Federal cocksuckers, they got you, and they got Eddie when he was younger than me and they aren't gonna let him go.
Not unless it's feet first, in a box.
And I'm not getting up on my soapbox and saying how wrong it is, because that's the way it is. That's the way all governments are. At least in America we got the Constitution and we got some rights and they can't just drag you out of your house and shoot you, like they do in a lot of countries.
People are bullshitters. They act like it's some kind of wonderful fucking world, and that's because they don't have to clean up the mess that all the people who aren't so fucking wonderful make. And they all say that the government is full of fucking creeps and assholes and power-hungry cocksuckers who will do anything to keep their power and grab for more, and then they get all fucking shocked when it turns out to be true.
I'll tell you one thing. I wish some of his underlings would get it together and decide that somebody had to take Nixon out. I'd be all over that shit.
And, knowing Eddie, he'd probably be glad to be the backup man.
I mean, I used to go to demonstrations when I was in college. I know it's a radical thing to believe but I think women are just as good as men are, and why shouldn't we do what they do? And I never wanted anything to do with their fucking war, and at least when they sent in Eddie and the Doc because they got the job done and the war ended.
But me, when I saw the cops coming, I didn't stick around, I got the fuck out because I didn't want to get the shit beaten out of me or go to jail. I was smart enough to understand that kind of bullshit nobility doesn't get you anywhere. You can't do shit about anything if you're in jail, or if the fucking cops cripple your dumb ass for life.
I did what I had to do. I always have. But that's the way it is. That's the goddamn American way. You do what you have to do, and when somebody tries to step on you and your rights, you bitch as loud as you can and you do something about it. And everybody who's too fucking scared or screwed or stupid to do anything about it, whether you know it or not, you're doing it for them, too, because they stand to benefit from it.
Whether they like the way you did it, or not.
Me, I did something about it. Something better than letting the cops kick my ass and go to jail, or shoot me in the face while I stood there with a sign in my hand, like some of my friends went. I became a superhero. Sure, it's not always nice and it's not always pretty, but neither is the world, and the joke's going to be on you if you think it is.
Anyway, I just had enough one day, and I know it's crazy to backtalk your boss who's a nuclear reactor, but I did it anyway.
"Doc, I don't mean you any disrespect, after all you cut me a lot of breaks and never fired me when I was doing so much fucking up, and you're the only scientist in the world who can even begin to understand the project I'm workin' on, but I'm goddamn sick and fucking tired of people badmouthing Eddie. He just saved my life, I don't want to hear anybody badmouthing him."
Not like the Doc can look surprised, but I think he was.
"I wasn't badmouthing him. I was just telling you what happened. I honestly don't have any feelings on the subject." He said.
"Well I do. You know what I think? I think they ought to make Eddie Blake goddamn Captain America, because he's more the personification of what this country is about and always has been about than every Boy Scout who goes around mouthing meaningless pieties and talking about truth, justice and the American Way when he doesn't know shit about any of those things. Eddie is my goddamn partner and he gave me a chance to be a superhero where nobody else did, because he's never concerned himself with all that shit; he knows what a joke it is. I know what Eddie did, and I know what he does and what he will continue to do. He gets up every fucking day and he does what he has to do because that's what needs to be done and most people are too deluded and chickenshit to do it. He does what he has to do and he takes the consequences, and he never tries to weasel his way out of it. And I'm the same way, and that's why he doesn't care that my father's the Joker, or that I'm a chick, or that I'm not some perfect fucking angel. I mean, Christ, Doc, that's what it means to be a man, let alone a superhero. You gotta stand up. When nobody else will, and even if everybody hates you for it. When you know what has to be done, you gotta stand up and do it."
That was the first time I ever saw the Doc smile.
Really smile, like a regular person.
"I'm not sure how you learned that at the Comedian's knee, Liv, but you're learning. That's very good." He said.
It made me realise that it's time for me to stand up.
I let everybody down. They all trusted me, and they thought I was past all my Troubles and well and truly on the wagon and then I fucked it all up, acting like a stupid, spoiled cunt and I got no excuse for it.
You can't be a superhero and a spoiled cunt, the two just don't go together. So I gotta quit having my Troubles, altogether, or just quit and decide to be a fucking mook like everybody else and say "Oh, isn't it a shame, help, somebody save me, oh not that way, how terrible."
What a fuckin' joke.
That made me start to think about what the Old Man said about getting myself an arch-nemesis, and how, if I really gave him a reason to hate my guts, this Green Jackal asshole could be just the one.
Or maybe I had given him something to aspire to.
I mean, leopards don't change their spots. The guy was gonna go out there and make some fuckin' trouble, one way or the other, and if I started him, thinking with my pussy and trying to get him to fuck me, then I was gonna have to be the one to stop him.
I started counting down the days until he would be out on bail.
Whatever he was planning up there in Arkham, he wasn't going to get away with it.
The joke's on him.
JUSTICE LEAGUE FILE #ZX5002- Napier, Trivelino J.- "The Harlequin"
Trivelino J. "Liv" Napier was born on April 1, 1949. The identity and whereabouts of her mother are unknown both to us and to Miss Napier, but her father is Jack Napier, the Joker.
His reasons for wanting to sire a child are also unknown, but the psychopathic and arguably occasionally psychotic Joker proved to be, for reasons also unknown, a serviceable father. He raised the child himself, employing the occasional private tutor, but otherwise taking full responsibility for his daughter's care and education. She was raised in the atmosphere of the full benefits of Napier's ill-gotten gains, and, was, by all accounts "Daddy's Little Girl"
Although possibly even a loving father, the moral education and worldview that Napier impressed upon his child were skewed and maladaptive to say the least. However advantageous it may have been to her in the long run, in the short run Miss Napier suffered a dual trauma in 1956, when the Joker was sent for a long stretch in Arkham Asylum.
He had made provisions for his daughter to be taken to an associate of his, Kevin McClatchey, who had been given a large sum of money to send the child to an exclusive boarding school in London. The associate, however, absconded with the money.
Napier believed that McClatchey had either abandoned his child and left her to her fate or outright murdered her, and he suffered a long, slow, painful death at the hands of the Riddler and the Penguin. Miss Napier, however, had been found in the apartment of her father's associate by John "Mac" McClatchey, the brother of the deceased.
After she informed him that his brother had been given money and instructions to look after her while her father was in prison, McClatchey took the child into his own home, in East New York, Brooklyn.
Liv Napier attended school and was immediately jumped forward two grades. She was a bright, happy, well-adjusted child, albeit a mischievous tomboy. She was a bit of a misfit with the other children but that, by all reports, did not seen to disturb her, and she associated mainly with the other McClatchey children and some of their friends.
This unremarkable phase in Harlequin's life ended abruptly at the corner of Fulton and Rockaway in East New York in May of 1960.
She was sitting in a parked car with her foster-father when he was approached by a gun-toting Mafia associate, who had long been pressing the elder McClatchey to pay off one of his dead brother's debts.
The Mafioso fired one shot into the vehicle before his fire was retuned by 11 year old Liv Napier. The Joker had taught her about firearms and shooting at an early age, and gave her a snub-nosed .45 calibre revolver for her sixth birthday, telling her to carry it at all times and never let anyone see the gun, unless she was going to use it on him.
The Harlequin had taken her father's words to heart. She shot the Mafioso four times. All four slugs penetrated the door of the vehicle and entered the assassin's body, striking him twice in the chest, once in the stomach, and once right between the eyes. Even as the mafioso lay dying, Miss Napier had crawled onto wounded John McClatchey's lap, and pulled the car away from the curb.
She rushed her foster-father to Brooklyn General, where doctors were able to save his life.
The story was published in several New York newspapers, and it came to the Joker's attention that his child still lived. Oddly enough, he wrote a personal letter to Bruce Wayne, of all people, asking him to adopt the child and provider her with a proper upbringing, with the caveat that if the courts allowed, that he could still see his daughter.
Mr. Wayne, who admits he had always felt a degree of guilt that the joker's child was murdered after he, in his guise as the Batman, had Napier taken into custody, agreed. Not wishing to completely uproot the child, he made arrangements for her to continue to go to the same school, from which system she matriculated at the age of fifteen.
Ms. Napier has an IQ of 190, and graduated New York University with a double major in Quantum Physics and History at the age of nineteen, in 1968. She took a position as a student assistant and became a part-time graduate student, and also worked as a graduate assistant to Dr, Manhattan in his Washington DC laboratory, commuting from New York by teleportation.
It was towards the end of her years at King's College and the intervening years between 1968 and 1971, in which the Harlequin began to appear, sporadically as a masked hero, but also when, unfortunately, the trauma of her birth and upbringing began to show itself in a range of decidedly un-heroic behaviours. These included rampant and voracious promiscuity, developing a serious drinking problem, associating with motorcycle gangs, becoming involved in innumerable bar brawls, street fights and other violent encounters, as well as racking up an impressive list of serious traffic violations, vehicle accidents, and totalled cars.
This reckless behaviour spilled over into her professional activities; her methods, although brave, were often brutal, sloppy, and suicidal in scope.
In three years, the Harlequin was shot four times, two in the line of duty, stabbed seven times, and in two separate serious vehicle accidents, broke five bones, amid numerous other injuries.
This cycle culminated in another act of violent heroism, when, after being unsuccessfully attacked by him, the Harlequin killed a rapist and sex murderer who had chosen her to be his fourth victim. Even for a despicable murderer, his death was extremely brutal, violent, and bloody. The Harlequin apparently beat him to death and emasculated him with her bare hands , in the words of her future partner "she smeared the S.O.B. all over the room."
It was at this time that the Batman and we at the League realised that the Harlequin was at a crisis point. She was becoming unable to function as either Liv Napier or the Harlequin, and Batman made the difficult suggestion, which we accepted, to apprentice the Harlequin to a hero outside the League for completion of her training.
Although he is popular with the public, and has consistently proved himself a competent "hero", we at the League have always felt that the Comedian, AKA Edward Blake, is not what our standards would consider as such, considering some of his methods, and his extremely unsavoury personal life.
The strategy worked, though. After being apprenticed to the Comedian in 1971, the Harlequin was able to resolve her personal and professional problems. Her methods remain far less draconian than those of Blake, and although she is technically a member of the League in good standing, her loyalties lie more with the Comedian than with us.
Late in 1972, Blake began referring to the Harlequin as his "partner" and it is as such that she is viewed in the public eye.
Some respected members believe that the League should take action to dissolve this partnership. We cannot do so on the grounds of Blake's reputation, as he is not a member of the League.
Most vocal on their objections to the Comedian/Harlequin partnership are Clark Kent, AKA Superman and Dick Grayson, AKA, Robin, the Boy Wonder. They cite as grounds that the sexual relationship between Blake and Napier, which commenced when he was 47 and she was 22 is inappropriate. Considering, however, that the relationship is consensual and both were adults at the time it was commenced, the League as a whole have declined to attempt to end the partnership on these grounds.
This is not only because we lack the authority, but because we believe that the dissolution of that partnership would be disadvantageous to both parties.
As of 1974, the Harlequin holds a Master's degree in History and one in Quantum Physics. She is teaching a class at NYU in History and still works in Dr. Manhattan's lab. She is rumoured to be working on a secret project with the doctor's assistance, so secret that even the league doesn't know about it, that may have an impact on the superhero community as great as the impact splitting the atom has had on the world.
Again, these are unconfirmed rumours.
As of the present day, the Harlequin has had no chief antagonists until the emergence of the Green Jackal, a new super villain.
It remains to be seen what his true threat is, and how the Harlequin will rise to meet it, however, the League has full faith in her ability to stand against this new foe of justice, as well as in her ability to maintain her own integrity despite her partner's methods and background.
Well, well, well, is this a match made in Hell? Just how on Earth would this be allowed to happen, and what would make Bruce Wayne deliver his ward into the hands of the Comedian? And just what made him accept the delivery? Mutual love of the old ultraviolence? A whim? Wild, unnatural lust? And just how red do the streets run with blood when this pair of jokers play out their hand? Tune into the next exciting episode to find out!
Reviews would be greatly appreciated.