Another Season, Another Reason: the whoopee cushion proves it!

Please note this page contains an image which is not safe for work.

The topic of whether or Joker and Harley have sex is a pretty hot one, fiercely contested on all sides, even amongst Joker and Harley fans. (Ok so not that fiercely contested amongst us, we're pretty content to let each other think as we will because we're all made of so much awesome.)

Joker, having traditionally been a fairly asexual or ambiguously sexual character, did not leap to many people's minds as a sexual being once Harley was put on the scene. To add to this, there was the famous "fudged seduction" scene in the comic Mad Love.  For many people this cemented an absolute lack of a sex life between the two characters, that anti-JxH folks have strongly touted as definitive proof the relationship is entirely one-sided.

Ironically? That fudged seduction scene actually proves they have a sex life.

How so? Well, to the casual reader, it's simply inferred by the language Harley uses. "Oh sweetie, I got the whoopee cushion!"

The structure of this sentence establishes prior use of the whoopee cushion in such a way that understanding is assumed by both of them. Given the context - Harley attempting to seduce him - it also becomes clear they employ the whoopee cushion as a sex toy. In trying to entice the Joker this way, Harley is reminding him of something they've enjoyed together in the past. There is an assertiveness about the syntax and a certain presumptiveness that demonstrates Harley has every reason to expect Joker to want to play - because he has done so in the past.

But, to the more involved fan,  this scene proves the sexy times when placed in context with another, unofficial illustration.

This is an illustration done by Bruce Timm and you'll certainly never seen it published in any comic:




(For the record, the original Bruce Timm image is black and white. A fan cleaned the image up and coloured it. I'm using the coloured image because I like pretty colours. I'm afraid I don't have cool and trendy appreciation of B&W, uncultured swine that I am.)

Now that you've had a moment to push your eyeballs back into your head, in this image we see that Joker is utilising a whoopee cushion to stimulate Harley. Worth noting is that Harley is firmly the recipient of pleasure in this image - she is the focus - and the Joker's expression indicates that he's enjoying the role of giver in this scenario. Just a little something for those who argue sex between them would be wholly about the Joker's gratification.

Of course, wholly suitable to our clowns, the image is presented humourously and most likely was drawn to entertain those who worked on the series. Clearly in the very fact it was conceived, drawn and passed around indicates the creators themselves thought sex was an occurence between them. It is not unreasonable to speculate this image was drawn before Mad Love was written/finished and this image inspired this little scene in the comic:



When the two images are placed in the context of each other, they prove the Joker and Harley have a sex life. A mutually gratifying, seriously playful sex life from the looks of it too.  The nice thing about these characters is they'll always defy expectations. :)

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