Harley Quinn: iconic covers and key issues for collectors

Harley Quinn — real name Dr Harleen Quinzel — was created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm for Batman: The Animated Series. Her very first appearance was in the episode "Joker's Favor," broadcast on September 11, 1992 on Fox Kids, with Arleen Sorkin providing her voice in what was initially a minor one-off role. Her migration into print comics a year later makes her one of the few animation-born characters to have been formally absorbed into DC's official canon. Today Harley Quinn is one of DC's most popular characters worldwide, brought to the screen by Margot Robbie in Suicide Squad (2016, $749 million worldwide box office) and Birds of Prey (2020, $205 million worldwide).

This guide sticks to the verifiable: ranges and records drawn from documented sources (SellMyComicBooks, GoCollect, Heritage Auctions, specialist press). One critical note: our eBay estimator tool does not index the Batman Adventures, Harley Quinn, or Suicide Squad series — the figures below come exclusively from third-party web sources and are not eBay medians generated by our tool.

Harley Quinn key issue ranking (documented values, 2024)

Every Harley Quinn key belongs to the Modern Age (post-1992). The values below come from SellMyComicBooks and GoCollect for CGC-graded copies; no eBay median from our estimator is available for these series.

Sources: SellMyComicBooks, GoCollect, Heritage Auctions, firstappearanceof.com. Our eBay estimator does not cover these series.

Batman Adventures #12 (1993): the founding cover

Published on September 10, 1993, written by Kelley Puckett with art and cover by Mike Parobeck and Rick Burchett, Batman Adventures #12 is Harley Quinn's birth certificate in print. The cover — depicting Harley alongside the Joker and Poison Ivy — looks nothing like a "key issue" at first glance: it is a tie-in comic to the animated universe, sold for $1.25. Yet with roughly 9,000 CGC-certified copies in existence today, this title is far rarer than comparable keys from the same era (Spawn #1 has 25,000 certified copies). That relative scarcity in ultra-high grade, combined with the character's explosive popularity, drives CGC 9.8 direct-market copies to the $3,000–$3,250 range, while the harder-to-find newsstand variant exceeds $5,000 in the same grade. At mid-grade (CGC 6.0–8.0) copies trade between roughly $500 and $700, keeping entry-level access realistic for the collector who simply wants to own the first appearance.

Batman Adventures: Mad Love (1993–1994): the Dini & Timm cover

The Batman Adventures: Mad Love is a prestige-format one-shot published on December 14, 1993 (cover-dated 1994), written and drawn by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm themselves — Harley's original creators. It is her definitive origin story: how psychiatry intern Harleen Quinzel, working at Arkham Asylum, falls for the Joker and slides into madness. The book won both the Eisner Award and the Harvey Award in 1994 for Best Single Issue, a remarkable distinction for an animated-series tie-in. Its cover — Harley draped across the Joker's playing-card motif in Timm's sleek Art Deco style — is one of the most reproduced images in the character's history. In CGC 9.8, the fair market value sits around $475 according to GoCollect, making it the most accessible genuine key in the 1992–1999 Harley window.

Batman: Harley Quinn #1 (1999): the Alex Ross painted cover

Published in October 1999, this prestige one-shot written by Paul Dini (interior art by Yvel Guichet and Aaron Sowd) marks Harley Quinn's official entry into the mainstream DC Universe, outside the animated continuity. But it is the painted cover by Alex Ross that elevates it into a collector object in its own right. Ross — whose photorealistic paintings became synonymous with prestige in the industry — depicts Harley posing defiantly before a looming Batman, in a composition that would become one of the character's defining images. A Dynamic Forces Signed Edition was limited to 2,500 copies, co-signed by Alex Ross, Paul Dini, and Aaron Sowd. Entry-level copies remain accessible; high-grade or signed examples command a significant premium on the secondary market, though no single publicly documented auction record has been established for this issue at the time of writing.

Amanda Conner and the Harley Quinn vol. 2 era (2013–2016)

When Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti took over Harley Quinn in 2013 for the vol. 2 solo series (Harley Quinn #1, January 2014), they brought a radically new visual identity: exuberant, color-saturated, deliberately pop. Conner's covers for that run — sometimes parodic, often self-referential — became collectibles in their own right, to the point that DC published a dedicated hardcover (Harley Quinn: A Rogue's Gallery — The Deluxe Cover Art Collection) gathering twenty-five years of covers. The high print run of these issues keeps raw copies at entry-level prices, but limited-variant and signed editions trade at considerably higher premiums among specialist collectors. The Conner-Palmiotti run also coincided with the wave of mainstream interest generated by the 2016 Suicide Squad film, significantly broadening the collector base for all Harley Quinn material.