Originally Posted by
Adekis
I'm reminded of a story, possibly untrue, where Denny O'Neill or someone was working on a story with Steve Ditko. In the script, but not in a caption or dialogue, O'Neill (or whoever) called a character an "ex-criminal," and Ditko responded by writing like a two page letter about how there's no such thing as an ex-criminal, once you're a criminal, it's for life.
I think later, Ditko walked back this stance a little bit, as he wrote a "Mr. A" story about a man released from jail who stayed on the straight-and-narrow, even when his crooked former buddies tried to threaten and pressure him to come back to a life of crime. Mr. A was totally cool with the guy, because he had served his time.
Still, at the time, O'Neill and Ditko really clashed over this, and didn't work together much longer after this philosophical clash.
Personally, I think my reading of Harley is that the animated series' line that she's both a dangerous crook and a good person is bunk. She's clearly a type of deranged, and she doesn't care about hurting anyone as long as her interests or the interests of her in-group are furthered. She's absolutely a kind of evil. But, she's definitely still making progress on being her own person, she's far, far less of a psychopath than Joker is, and I'm willing to cheer her on at being her own kind of master criminal, rather than Joker's far crueler kind.
That said, I think there are lines Harley shouldn't be written to cross, because they're inconsistent with her character as broadly portrayed, and any kind of mass murder, or child murder, is definitely part of that line.