DC’s premiere chaotic queer couple of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy have had off-the-charts chemistry between them since they first appeared on TV together in 1993. And yet, it wouldn’t be until much later that the clear love between them would go from implied to explicit. In the process, we learned something else—they both love kissing!
Like, seriously. They can’t stop.
In 2016, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy started making their status as a couple official with some very physical, and very frequent, displays of affection in out-of-continuity books, in animation, and, yes, in comic book canon. How common are these snog sessions? You’re about to find out as we’ve gathered seven years’ worth of them right here for you to behold!
But first, let’s set some ground rules: No pecks on the cheek. No foreheads. No innuendos. No plausible deniability of “gals being pals.” This list is solely full-on, undeniable, queer mouth-to-mouth contact.
Here we present a full collection of every single bona fide #HarlIvy kiss to date. Enjoy…
5/6/2016: DC Comics: Bombshells #42
It took over twenty years from Harley and Ivy’s first meeting for them to kiss for the first time, and it only happened through the magic of the multiverse. The extremely queer DC Comics: Bombshells presents an alternate history where the women of DC fight World War II on the front lines…and where they all end up kissing. Vixen and Hawkgirl. Lois Lane and Supergirl. Big Barda and Kimiyo Hoshi. So, as long as Bombshells was queering up the DCU, why not bring Harley and Ivy together? Because the looser rules of Elseworlds meant that anything goes, the Harlivy relationship could be explored here in a way that mainstream continuity was not yet prepared to embrace.
6/3/2016: DC Comics: Bombshells #46
7/29/2016: DC Comics: Bombshells #54
2/21/2017: Injustice: Ground Zero #21
Harley and Ivy hook up in a second out-of-continuity digital series. Injustice: Ground Zero is a comic book retelling of the Injustice: Gods Among Us video game told from Harley Quinn’s perspective. Here we get to see everything Harley was up to during the game even when the focus wasn’t on her—including her developing relationship with Ivy after the Joker’s demise. The book’s follow-up, Injustice 2, would develop their romance further still…and its prequel, Injustice: Year Zero, would eventually break new ground entirely.
5/12/2017: DC Comics Bombshells #95
7/26/2017: Injustice 2 #22
8/9/2017: Harley Quinn #25
After years of teasing near-kisses and saucy entendres in their ongoing Harley Quinn comics since 2014, Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti and issue artist Chad Hardin finally had Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn kiss each other on panel for the first time, in continuity. Kind of.
We say that for two reasons. First, the canonicity of the Harley Quinn comics of the New 52 and Rebirth eras has always been ambiguous territory. While informed by the DC Universe, the Conner/Palmiotti Harley Quinn always sort of did her own thing.
Second, when you look at it, it’s kind of an edge-of-the-mouth kiss. Maybe even a cheek. It’s an instance which almost runs foul of our above-stated ground rules. We’re counting it because according to the artist, the kiss was originally more explicitly liplocked, but was changed in the final edit. Despite the explosive panel dedicated to this moment, we’d have to wait a few more years for Harley and Ivy’s first undeniable, 100% canon on-panel kiss.
10/14/2017: Harley Quinn #29
Four issues after Harley Quinn #25, Ivy kisses Harley again. Visually, this one is a little more explicit, but still carries some of that plausible romantic deniability in intent—Ivy’s kissing Harley here with medicated lipstick to bring her out of a trance. It’s progress, but still not exactly what we’re looking for.
5/15/2020: Harley Quinn Season Two, “There’s No Place to Go but Down”
Finally, in May 2020 (just three years ago!), the doors come off. It’s season two of the Harley Quinn animated series that truly breaks the Harlivy seal once and for all, when the two realize their passion for each other after a daring escape from Bane’s prison colony. The series has luxuriated in their relationship ever since, giving us many, many more kisses to come.
6/19/2020: Harley Quinn Season Two, “Lovers’ Quarrel”
6/26/2020: Harley Quinn Season Two, “Something Borrowed, Something Green”
10/13/2020: Injustice: Year Zero #8
Injustice: Year Zero gives us something still unique among Harley/Ivy kisses throughout the multiverse—their first, and to date only, kiss at the wedding altar. It’s here that we learn that throughout the Injustice timeline, Harley and Ivy have actually been married to each other this whole time. Surprise!
2/2/2021: Harley Quinn & The Birds of Prey #4
The last issue of Conner and Palmiotti’s four-issue coda to their Harley Quinn saga bids farewell with a genuine kiss, the likes of which we never quite got in the series proper. As a comic under the DC Black Label imprint, however, Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey exists even less attached to continuity than Harley’s previous Coney Island outings. The first true canon Harley and Ivy kiss was still a month away.
3/9/2021: Batman: Urban Legends #1
And here it is! Yes, Batman: Urban Legends #1 is the first time that Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy appear to smooch within continuity beyond any shadow of a doubt. Or, at least we know that now. At the time, Urban Legends was a brand new series, which made some readers unsure whether the events depicted really had a bearing on canon. But the Harley and Ivy story here by Stephanie Phillips and Laura Braga, showing us the beginning of their romance in flashback long before the present day, would go on to directly inform both the events of the subsequent “Fear State” event in Batman titles and Phillips’ own soon-to-premiere Harley Quinn comic series, now grounded entirely within continuity after Harley earns her freedom from the Suicide Squad and moves back to Gotham.
6/8/2021: DC Pride 2021
The DC Pride Era begins here, with what has become an annual tradition of HarlIvy kisses in each anthology. It’s here, in a story by Mariko Tamaki and Amy Reeder, that Ivy metatextually takes Harley to task for keeping their relationship in unserious innuendo territory for years without ever putting her heart on the line. Based on how many times we’ll see them publicly display their affection for each other from here on out, it seems like the talk went pretty well.
8/3/2021: Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. BANG! Kill. Tour #1
To date, no artist has officially drawn Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy kissing more than Max Sarin in the Harley Quinn animated series tie-in comics. Their first miniseries, The Eat. BANG! Kill. Tour, is six straight issues of Harley and Ivy on a delirious tear through the country evading the cops as they make out with each other. It also features their first ever kiss right on a comic book cover.
10/5/2021: Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. BANG! Kill. Tour #3
10/26/2021: Harley Quinn #8
We’ll respect Harley’s wishes and not dwell too long on this one. But we will say that from this point on, 100% canon Harley/Ivy makeouts are a fairly regular thing in her ongoing series.
11/2/2021: Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. BANG! Kill Tour #4
1/4/2022: Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. BANG! Kill Tour #6
11/16/2021: Batman Secret Files: The Gardener #1
Poison Ivy’s romantic history is explored further in Batman Secret Files: The Gardener, a tie-in with DC’s “Fear State” Batman event that fully embraces Ivy’s sexuality as we learn more about her former partner in science and crime. So, as long as we’re allowing Ivy to be queer on panel, why not embrace all of it?
11/16/2021: Batman #117
Reunited after the events of “Fear State” kept them apart, Harley celebrates Ivy’s freedom with an eye-popping, unavoidable kiss right in the main Batman title. This was one that readers would see even if they weren’t specifically following Harley or Ivy, in what has historically and consistently been DC’s best-selling comic title. They had kissed before in canon before this point—mainly in flashbacks—but the truth of their relationship was truly out of the bag now.
11/23/2021: Catwoman #37
12/28/2021: Harley Quinn #10
2/8/2022: Strange Love Adventures #1
This one’s worth pointing out as the start of Harley and Ivy kissing not just in Pride anthologies, but also in DC’s seasonal romance anthologies. The fact that they’re both women doesn’t define their relationship anymore as much as their specific love for each other.
6/7/2022: DC Pride 2022 #1
6/7/2022: Poison Ivy #1
A new Poison Ivy series, launched at first as a six-issue limited series but extended by popular demand to an ongoing, will likely give us an arms race with the main Harley Quinn title going forward to see who can show us the couple kissing the most. On your mark, get set, go!
7/28/2022: Harley Quinn Season Three, “Harlivy”
With the season two tension between them resolved, this season is all kisses, all the time, so buckle up.
7/28/2022: Harley Quinn Season Three, “There’s No Ivy in Team”
7/28/2022: Harley Quinn Season Three, “The 83rd Annual Villy Awards”
8/4/2022: Harley Quinn Season Three, “A Thief, A Mole, An Orgy”
8/11/2022: Harley Quinn Season Three, “It’s a Swamp Thing”
8/25/2022: Harley Quinn Season Three, “Another Sharkley Adventure”
9/8/2022: Harley Quinn Season Three, “Climax at Jazzapajizza”
9/15/2022: Harley Quinn Season Three, “The Horse and the Sparrow”
10/4/2022: Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - Legion of Bats! #1
We feel it’s only fair to point out that some of the kisses from this point on, specifically in the Legion of Bats! tie-in comic to the Harley Quinn animated series, get pretty saucy, in both sexual imagery and language. But by god, we said EVERY Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy kiss, and we meant it.
11/1/2022: Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - Legion of Bats! #2
11/1/2022: Dark Knights of Steel #8
Dark Knights of Steel specifically gives us Tom Taylor’s third out-of-continuity HarlIvy romance after getting them together in Injustice and DCeased, but we haven’t seen them kiss in DCeased. (In their defense, everyone’s kind of busy there with the end of the world.)
1/3/2023: Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - Legion of Bats! #4
1/31/2023: DC’s Harley Quinn Romances #1
2/7/2023: Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - Legion of Bats! #5
Hm? Who’s that Harley and Ivy are both kissing together there, you ask? That’s just Elle, Vixen’s girlfriend exclusive to the Harley Quinn animated series tie-in comics. Everybody’s into it. Don’t worry about it.
2/7/2023: Poison Ivy #9
2/9/2023: Harley Quinn: A Very Problematic Valentine’s Day Special
Okay, the last five of those images are all technically one continuous makeout session which takes us throughout Selina Kyle’s apartment from the couch to the bedroom. Watch the episode for the rest. It gets pretty steamy.
2/28/2023: Harley Quinn #27
3/7/2023: Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - Legion of Bats! #6
5/2/2023: Poison Ivy #12
5/30/2023: DC Pride 2023 #1
And that brings us right up to date, at least as of when I’m writing this! We are glad to provide this banquet to you, our Harlivy-hungry readers. And if you’ve made it this far, allow us to share a little secret with you—we plan on updating this article next year. We’re sure there are plenty more smooches where these came from to come!
Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Find him in the DC Community as HubCityQuestion.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC Entertainment or Warner Bros., nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.
