Ethan Van Sciver Roasts Writer Tee Franklin and DC For Three-Way Involving Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, And Vixen In Recent Issue Of ‘Legion of Bats!’
The question “Who is this for?” is asked a lot around here, but it’s also asked frequently in the Twitter posts of the artist and former DC employee Ethan Van Sciver. He knows his old workplace has seen better days, especially when he was there, and that nowadays there is no shortage of cringe-inducing incidents in the pages of recent releases.
And in the last two months, Van Sciver found one more scene so appalling, he had to share it with his followers. In the second case of weirdness to hit a Batman-adjacent book since The Joker got pregnant and vomited a Mini-Me clone of himself, Poison Ivy has a torrid fling with girlfriend Harley Quinn that ropes in Vixen.
This occurs in a daydream at the beginning of Harley Quinn: The Animated Series – Legion of Bats #5, a satirical spinoff of the adult HBO Max cartoon, but the humor is lost with most readers, as well as the Comic Artist Pro. “DC Comics must be TERRIFIED of Tee Franklin,” he wrote before describing her as “an obese-black-disabled-lesbian-sexworker.”
DC Comics must be TERRIFIED of Tee Franklin, an obese-black-disabled-lesbian-sexworker.
A Quinfecta of Victimhood!
Imagine their submissive urination as she asks to be paid for a script featuring Ivy, Harley and Vixen in a lesbian 3-way singing about "p*ssy."
Gross & sad. pic.twitter.com/VltQ2n0fff
— ETHAN VAN SCIVER (@EthanVanSciver) February 15, 2023
“A Quinfecta of Victimhood!” Van Sciver added as he described the scene. “Imagine their submissive urination as she asks to be paid for a script featuring Ivy, Harley, and Vixen in a lesbian 3-way singing about ‘p*ssy.’” Posing that scenario in our heads, he calls the whole ordeal “Gross & sad” and includes a screenshot of the relevant pages.
Many will wonder who can save DC after stuff like this makes it to print which, as we’ve noted again and again, happens all the time. Van Sciver, however, doesn’t see that happening as he maintains no one cares about the comics or DC, not even Warner Discovery. “He [David Zaslav] doesn’t care about the comics,” EVS tweeted. “Nobody does, least of all DC itself.”
Some, as they often do, view this latest depiction of Harley and Ivy with a plus-one as no big deal and tried to call Van Sciver on being too easily triggered by a comic – as these defenders of DC’s modern content also do quite a bit.
With a GIF, he reminded them of Cyberfrog’s success despite his work’s detractors.
Yeah, imagine. pic.twitter.com/zSVu62bSDO
— ETHAN VAN SCIVER (@EthanVanSciver) February 15, 2023
Outside the art, which is panned by many, Van Sciver was grilled about what makes the comic so inappropriate. He responded that comics don’t need foul language or explicit sexuality to be good, and elaborated the medium should “remain mostly wholesome juvenile literature that non-perverted adults can enjoy as well,” rather than “primitive and vulgar” material.
Maybe that means comic books won’t “evolve,” but we know what their evolutionary backslide has done to the sales of mainstream publishers. You probably did not pick up the Harley Quinn issue in question and probably are of like mind with Ethan Van Sciver.
Tell us your reaction to the pages he shared and his thread down below.
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