Batman writer excited to bring back Harper & Cullen Row

Harper Row — (Image credit: Dustin Nguyen (DC))

Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo introduced several new characters in their 2011-2015 run on Batman, but most memorable to many are the brother-sister duo of Harper and Cullen Row. Harper moonlighted for a time as a superhero under the name Bluebird, but has been conspicuously absent in Batman books for the past few years - but that'll change in next week's Punchline one-shot.

"It wasn't until we started talking about doing a solo Punchline story that I realized that Punchline is, in a lot of ways, the perfect reflection of Harper Row," Batman series writer Tynion said recently in his newsletter, The Empire of the Tiny Onion.

"She's another ordinary kid of Gotham, but rather than her being drawn to the idea of Batman, she was drawn to the idea of Joker… And now she's out there, trying to spread the Joker's ideology, and we're going to see Harper watch that happen up close, helpless to push back against it."

Harper Row was last seen retired from her superhero persona of Bluebird, instead returning to college and moonlighting at Leslie Thompkins' clinic.

Tynion, who wrote the Rows into his 2016-2017 Detective Comics run, sees this as a chance to re-introduce them and make them a factor in his big plans for the Bat-family in 2021.

"The story that starts in the one-shot will start a story thread that will run through next year, setting the stage for big conflicts to come that will drag in all of Gotham's heroes," says Tynion.

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Chris Arrant covered comic book news for Newsarama from 2003 to 2022 (and as editor/senior editor from 2015 to 2022) and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comic Shop News, and CBR. He is the author of the book Modern: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)