author exclusive bad romance

Pat Cadigan chronicles Harley Quinn’s early days in new novel Mad Love

having first watched her debut in Batman: The Animated Series in 1993 with her then-young son, adapting Harley Quinn’s origin story Mad Love into prose has been “purely personal” for Pat Cadigan, who, like DC’s Maid of Mischief, also hails from New York.

“Like Harley, my mother’s family were from Brooklyn and all the women were tough cookies,” says Cadigan, who based Mad Love on a detailed synopsis from Harley Quinn co-creator Paul Dini.

“I was acutely aware that Harley is Paul’s creation and I wanted very much to stay true to the way he imagined her,” she says of Dini, who conceived Harley with Batman: The Animated Series overseer Bruce Timm during the second series of the show. “We get to see Harley as a child, and how certain things that happened to her put her on the path she takes as an adult, and we see her go through a whole lot as an adult as well.”

But Cadigan won’t reveal too much about the role played by Harley’s notorious partner, the clown prince of crime. “I’ll just say that the Joker being the Joker does what the Joker does,” she teases, insisting that the book will still have lots of laughs. “How could there not be as Harley is named after the classic commedia dell’arte character, the harlequin? The humour’s going to be pretty dark but, hey, that’s the story of my life!” SJ

Mad Love is published on 13 November.