Harley & Ivy’s Lessons in Life, Love, and Unburdening c/o the “Eat. BANG! Kill. Tour”

I adore HBO Max’s Harley Quinn: The Animated Series.  It fundamentally shifted my relationship with the character.  Before I watched the show, I enjoyed Harley Quinn.  After watching it, I began tracking down every Harley comic I could find!  In the process, she became a very important character to me.  Naturally, I was excited when I heard of Tee Franklin (writer) and Max Sarin (artist)’s Harley Quinn: The Animated Series: The Eat. BANG! Kill. Tour, billed as Season 2.5.  The comic captures everything I love about the show and features serious character development for both Harley and Poison Ivy, something all too rare in stories set between films in a series or seasons of a TV show.  This development, woven through a story with all the profanity, insanity, and hilarity you’d expect from Harley Quinn: The Animated Series, enriches the characters and serves as a beautiful model for readers.  Any comic which can do all that while also including the line “Piss cakes of a dick” is a true gift :D.

When Love, Actually Misses You, You Wait for Death Among the Walking Dead

As the old year turns to the new, we become reflective.  We think of our blessings, trials, challenges, and our hopes and dreams for the year to come.  When we consider all this, it’s only natural we think of love.  What, after all, is more important than love?  Perhaps no modern cinematic tale more accurately (or more hauntingly) presents love’s all-important nature than 2003’s Love, Actually.  I’ve always loved (hmm…that seems redundant) this film because it celebrates love in so many shapes and forms.  It shows us romantic love, platonic love, familial love, sacrificial love, unrequited love, new love, old love, love won…and love lost.  Of it all, Mark’s story teaches us the most important lesson.  We should pay attention, careful to heed its warning.

Will the MCU and Marvel Television Just Break-Up Already?

“There are two dates at the end of every relationship, the day you should have broken up and the day you actually do.”  This brilliant wisdom was offered by a lifelong friend of mine back when we were in college and Lauren was absolutely right.  Everyone has known couples that should have broken up but, for whatever reason, are still ambling along…making life rough for each other and super awkward for everyone who knows them.  There is no couple I can think of more in need of accepting reality, admitting their relationship is broken beyond repair and just moving on than the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Marvel Television.