Anyone who thinks Suicide Squad’s treatment of Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn as a teenage boy’s wet dream is a first - one critic recently described the movie’s reading of the character as like “damaged dolly jerk-off material” - should try reading the 2007 graphic novel Preludes and Knock-Knock Jokes. Based on a vaunted solo run for the Joker’s main squeeze by Karl Kesel and Terry and Rachel Dodson, this is seen by many DC Comics acolytes as a definitive work.

It’s not the story itself, which follows Harley as she takes a break from her long-term paramour and partner in crime, that’s the problem. Rather, it’s the way the Dodsons draw Quinn as a relentlessly porny creation, all massive silicone-enhanced bosom and peach-shaped backside in ultra-tight spandex. And the way that every other female supervillain in the comic, from Catwoman to Poison Ivy, is shown with exactly the same preposterously-proportioned physique, as if Gotham has been overrun with a plague of psychotic Playboy bunnies on steroids.

Everyone knows that comic book artists have a tendency to draw female superheroes and villains in an overly sexualised manner – the standard excuse is that their male counterparts are also drawn as obscenely muscular mega-titans. But whether you agree with that particular argument or not – and I never did work out why big boobs are so vital for athletic success – Harley Quinn is a bizarre candidate for this kind of treatment.

Watch the show in which she was first introduced, the enduringly brilliant Batman: The Animated Series, and Quinn is slender rather than pneumatic. If there is a stereotypical “bombshell” in the show, it is the Rita Hayworth-inspired Poison Ivy – though the plant-wielding villain is a classy Billy Wilder-esque femme fatale rather than a smutty stereotype. Harley is rendered as she should be, as a slightly sad case who is unable to resist the poisonous lure of the evil, controlling Joker.

In a famous 1999 episode of Batman: The Animated Series’ sequel series, The New Batman Adventures (based on the Paul Dini-penned comic book), Quinn is re-introduced as the psychiatrist Harley Quinzel, who finds herself falling in love with her “puddin’” while she is meant to be studying him at Arkham Asylum. Warner borrows much of that interaction for Suicide Squad, but the film-makers – we cannot entirely blame director David Ayer here, as it is unclear whether he had final cut – fail to take the opportunity to give us a new version of the motley-clad killer cutie capable of transcending her unfortunate roots.

In fact, the film compounds the issues surrounding the character. At one point, Ben Affleck’s Batman punches Quinn out, then gives his victim the kiss of life to bring her around after a dunking in the river by the Joker. The caped crusader’s motives are entirely honourable – it’s Harley who tries to turn the moment into something more amorous – but the use of violence and subsequent sexualisation of the encounter only serve to remind us of her background as the textbook victim of abuse.

Unfortunately, Suicide Squad isn’t the only DC property with questionable attitudes towards women right now. While the current animated hit Batman: The Killing Joke isn’t part of the Warner Bros-backed DC Extended Universe (DCEU), a slate of nine or 10 planned live-action superhero movies between now and 2020, it is still based on the publisher’s seminal 1988 graphic novel by Alan Moore (who has disowned his work), was made by Warner Bros Animation in association with DC, and is distributed by the studio.

As regular readers of this site will be aware, Moore’s comic has become notorious for a storyline in which Batgirl, aka Barbara Gordon, is crippled and most likely raped by the Joker as part of his efforts to destroy the mind of her father, the regular Batman ally Commissioner James Gordon.

Not content with revisiting this controversial episode, the screen version has made matters even worse. It introduces a new prologue in which the young crimefighter is told by the Dark Knight, rather patronisingly, that she is no longer to be trusted with a dangerous case. She and Batman then have sex in the wake of their stormy argument, something that never happened in the comics and which completely undermines Batgirl as a potent force in her own right.

While this double dose of misogyny may just be the result of poor timing, these are the kind of errors we cannot imagine happening at DC’s rival Marvel, whose worst mistakes regarding its treatment of women seem to revolve around poor merchandise judgments.

There’s a strong possibility, if the DCEU can survive Suicide Squad’s critical bashing, that Harley and Batgirl might even find themselves appearing together in an upcoming spin-off featuring many of the key female stars of the Bat-verse, from Birds of Prey to Poison Ivy, Katana and Bumblebee. According to reports, the new film – Robbie herself has pitched the concept to Warner Bros – is being considered due to the popularity of the DC Super Hero Girls line of comics and related products, which have been successfully aimed at a burgeoning female readership.

But if DC and its studio partners really want to start making movies that empower women, they’re going a very funny way about it.