Suicide-prevention groups speak out on DC Comics contest

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Harley Quinn is irking more than just Batman lately.

A DC Comics artist talent search has come under fire from suicide-prevention groups for asking illustrators to depict a scene seemingly showing the popular villainess about to kill herself.

In the contest announced last week, participants were asked to give "an original artistic interpretation" of a script page from the upcoming comic Harley Quinn No. 0 (out Nov. 6), written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner and featuring illustrators such as Darwyn Cooke, Sam Kieth, Walt Simonson and Paul Pope.

The tryout page from the issue features a series of scenes with the madcap character in an alligator pond wearing a chicken suit, tickling the side of a whale's mouth with a feather, and sitting in a bathtub naked 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."

In a statement released Thursday jointly by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American Psychiatric Association and National Alliance on Mental Illness, the groups expressed disappointment and called the DC Comics contest "potentially dangerous" as well as insensitive: "We believe that instead of making light of suicide, DC Comics could have used this opportunity to host a contest looking for artists to depict a hopeful message that there is help for those in crisis. This would have been a positive message to send, especially to young readers."

In a series of tweets last weekend, DC co-publisher and artist Jim Lee admitted that, while having an aspiring artist draw a female character nude in a tub inherently carries "a lot of baggage," the tryout was not done "to 'sexualize suicide' or even create a story about suicide.

"I can assure you that Harley Quinn #0 is not about suicide. Not even close."

On Tuesday, Palmiotti himself took the blame for the Harley kerfuffle and posted on his Facebook page that he should have been clearer that the scene in question was to have a Mad magazine/Looney Tunes approach.

"We thought it was obvious with the whale and chicken suit, and so on, but learned it was not," Palmiotti wrote. "I am sorry for those who took offense, our intentions were always to make this a fun and silly book that broke the fourth wall."

DC sent out a statement Thursday apologizing "to anyone who may have found the page synopsis offensive and for not clearly providing the entire context of the scene within the full scope of the story."

The publisher also drew ire last week from fans when co-writer and artist J.H. Williams III announced that he and co-writer W. Haden Blackman were leaving the Batwoman series they launched two years ago due to the publisher's refusal to show the title lesbian superheroine marry her fiancée, Gotham City cop Maggie Sawyer.