Harley Quinn Confirms the Worst Spouse in the DC Universe

Harley Quinn loves to hoist DC staples on their own petards. This week, it brings back an old straight man and reveals anew what a lousy spouse he is.

Harley Quinn Season 4 has more or less declared open war on the patriarchy, with every privileged white man from Lex Luthor to Alfred Pennyworth lining up to take their lumps. It's proved a winning combination not only in terms of pure laughs but also by giving the show's topsy-turvy version of Gotham City a strong path forward. Jim Gordon has been left out of it until now, and as one of Harley Quinn's biggest punching bags, his presence has been missed. Season 4, Episode 5, "Getting Ice Dick, Don't Wait Up," brings him roaring back, and as usual with Harley Quinn, it finds a deeply embedded canon characteristic to plaster him with.

Jim Gordon has never been anyone's idea of a great husband: perennially absent and in many versions actively cheating on his wife Barbara. Whatever his accomplishments as a cop, his family life pays a grievous price, and when he's as utterly off the chain as he is in Harley Quinn, that's going to bite him hard. "Ice Dick's" opening joke -- indeed its very title -- is a wicked jab at Gordon's abject failure as a spouse.

Jim Gordon's Marital Problems Make Him Human

Gordon spent his first few decades as a stalwart husband, in keeping with comics' family-friendly image. That version was ditched somewhere around The Crisis on Infinite Earths, replaced with a far more troubled image of Jim Gordon. The famous Batman: Year One storyline that began in 1987's Batman #405 (Frank Miller, Dave Mazzucchelli, Richmond Lewis, and Todd Klein) introduced Sarah Essen, with whom Gordon began an affair that ultimately doomed his marriage.

It's a natural dramatic development, given Gordon's long hours as head cop in a place like Gotham City. It also provides him with some very human shortcomings to counterbalance his superhuman efficiency on the job. Film and TV adaptations tend to follow the same pattern. In Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, for instance, Gordon lets Barbara believe he has been killed rather than risk losing The Joker. Similarly, the Gotham TV series goes deep into new territory, with Barbara Kean becoming one of the city's most dangerous criminals hell-bent on destroying her former fiancé.

Harley Quinn Reminds Viewers What a Terrible Husband Jim Gordon Is

Harley Quinn simply takes that equation and adds a further dose of reality: namely that anyone subjected to the kinds of pressures offered by Batman's rogues gallery is going to suffer a wholesale emotional collapse. Unhinged from the get-go, the show's Gordon often fixates on his wife and openly draws the wrong conclusions from her anger at him. "What is it with women in this family and ultimatums?" he moans in Season 3, Episode 6, "Joker: The Killing Vote." In that same episode, he quits the mayor's race and turns Gotham over to Mr. J: apparently, so he and Barbara can re-connect.

Nothing doing. The man is too far gone for any kind of last-minute reprieve, especially from Harley Quinn. "Ice Dick" finds him in a mountain cabin beside a roaring fire, ready to make redemptive love to his wife for the first time in two decades. Naturally, he answers his cell phone at the first ring -- it's Nora Freeze asking if he wants a low-pay rent-a-cop job at the Legion of Doom headquarters -- and immediately rushes off to his new position. Barbara is left steaming behind him.

"Ice Dick" isn't content without giving the knife a few further twists (the title refers to Barbara's subsequent activities with a group of frolicking freeze-based villains), but it never strays too far from canon. Even at his best, Jim Gordon is a cop first, which has had a disastrous effect on his marriage no matter what universe he's in. Harley Quinn makes him own it -- yet again -- in the most humiliating way possible.