What is wrong with you, DC? Really, what is wrong with you?

If you’ve been following our website for a while, you may have noticed that, since The New 52 came along, we’ve occasionally commented on the implicit and explicit sexism in titles like Red Hood, Catwoman and Voodoo.  We’ve not been alone in noticing the tendency of DC to do things that suggest that they don’t care for women, or indeed minorities of any kind, or their creators.  There’s now a website where you can see how long it is since DC did something stupid. This time, they’ve excelled themselves. They have launched a new talent search, inviting entrants to draw a page of Harley Quinn artwork from a script provided. Have a look at Panel 4. Read the script? Are you now in WTF land? For the record, the panel’s description says: “Harley sitting naked in a bathtub with toasters, blow dryers, blenders, appliances all dangling above the bathtub and she has a cord that will release them all. We are watching the moment before the inevitable death. Her expression is one of “oh well, guess that’s it for me” and she has resigned herself to the moment that is going to happen.” Sorry, what? I’m sure this is thought to be “just another crazy yet amusing situation that Harley gets herself into” – the other panel descriptions have her trying to get struck by lightning, stuck on an island full of alligators, and in a whale’s mouth. But (leaving aside that the other images aren’t that funny), this is nasty death-porn, the sort of unpleasant sexual fantasy that one might find in a dodgy comics-porn tumblr, but that has no place in a regular comic that won’t have an “adults only” label slapped on it. What is wrong with the people making decisions at the DC? The regular series will be written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, but I’m hesitant to lay this at their door. No, this must be blamed on the people who sign the post, co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio. And really, they’re out of control. How they ever thought this was a good idea is beyond me – even the fifteen year-old boys with no girlfriends that seem to be their target audience would find that this leaves an unpleasant taste in their mouths. These are not just sexist assholes – these are people who need serious help. I can only hope, for everyone’s sake, that Warners execs intervene. Nevertheless, I encourage people to enter this competition.   Send them artwork that questions, satirizes, undermines or otherwise challenges the assumptions that underlie this panel description.  Maybe DC will get the message. Edited on 09/09/13 to add: Apparently, according to Jimmy Palmiotti (whose fault this turns out to be after all), it’s all meta.  It’s Harley breaking the fourth wall, having a go at DC’s writers for the ridiculous positions they put her in.  So that makes it okay then.  And there’s no need to apologise for not having provided any context in the first place.  Or for the fact that the “joke” remains in shockingly poor taste.