As a Jewish-American performer, Arleen Sorkin herself descends from a rich cultural history of Jewish immigrant playwrights, songwriters, comic book writers, actors and comedians who settled into the “Borscht Belt” around the New York Catskill Mountains in the early 20th Century. And as Dini’s muse, Sorkin herself would go on to act as the character’s signature voice actress for twenty years, from her 1992 debut in “Joker’s Favor” through 2011's DC Universe Online.īut it wouldn’t be the full story to stop there. Through Dini’s transformation, Arleen’s witty, cabaret antics formed the meat and bones of what would become the media juggernaut we know today as Harley Quinn.
In the early 1990s, Batman: The Animated Series co-creator Paul Dini was developing the supporting crew for the Joker in one of the series’ first (and best) episodes, “Joker’s Favor.” For the Joker’s #1 gal, Paul Dini found inspiration by imagining a particular person for the role-comedian, screenwriter, daytime soap actress and Dini’s dear personal friend, Arleen Sorkin. It seems that way for a simple reason: because that’s exactly what happened. It all seems somehow…familiar, doesn’t it? As if she were based on a particular icon, or drawn from some other part of culture entirely separate from the world of comic book heroes and villains? Her sardonic wit, her jittering neurosis, her gluttony for punishment, her observational mockery, her occasional bouts of feminist theory. The DC Universe abounds with comedic characters, from Plastic Man to Booster Gold, but Harley Quinn’s particular flavor has always felt a little bit different. There’s something funny about Harley Quinn.
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