There’s something a little off-putting about the title of Kite Man: Hell Yeah!, Max’s new animated series spinning off Harley Quinn. That title is a singular, tragicomic running gag that’s been mutated through adaptation into broad comedy. And it’s a remarkably fast example of Hollywood’s process of distancing comic book creators from their own work.
The phrase “Kite Man. Hell yeah.” didn’t come from a slow agglutination of story, tone, or character, or from many comics creators forming a nugget of lore for easy adaptational pickings. “Kite Man. Hell yeah” was invented around eight years ago in one specific comic. We know exactly who came up with the line, and how they did it — and neither of them is credited on the damn show.
Harley Quinn used Kite Man as a worry-free punching bag — a comedic straight man so pathetic and lovably dim that it’s hard to feel bad about his hot, super-intelligent fiancée clearly intending to leave him at the altar for her best friend. That take on the character is pulling directly from Tom King’s use of Kite Man as a tragicomic running gag in his 2016-2020 run on Batman, starting with Batman #6, where he and artist Ivan Reis invented the “Kite Man. Hell yeah” catchphrase in the first place.
The story is one of those split-second moments of artistic kismet, the promise of the collaborative process creating a sublime result. King picked Kite Man as a throwaway character in a montage of crap villains. Reis, exercising his authority over the issue’s visual storytelling, determined that one of the Kite Man pages needed an extra panel, and suggested to King that it could use a one-liner, for punch.
Image: Tom King, Ivan Reis/DC Comics
“So I just put ‘Hell yeah.’ Just out of nothing?” King told Polygon in 2017. “I liked him just saying his own name, ‘Kite Man.’ He steals stuff. ‘Kite Man. Hell yeah.’”
That little bit of invention clearly endeared Kite Man to King — the character hadn’t had a meaningful addition to his personal details in 30 years. King discovered that canonically, Kite Man’s real name was Charles Brown, in homage to one of the greatest works of comics art ever made, and that he’d been created by no less than the tragic personage of Bill Finger, Batman’s co-creator — or primary creator, depending on who you ask.
King turned “Kite Man. Hell yeah” into the running gag of his 85-issue run, eventually making Kite Man’s origin story a crucial emotional pillar of The War of Jokes and Riddles (drawn by Clay Mann), arguably the best arc in King’s entire eventful tenure. His Kite Man is a deeply human character whose life offered football after football, only to yank it cruelly and hilariously away.
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Image: Tom King, Clay Mann/DC Comics
Everything Harley Quinn has done with Kite Man can be pinned to that one decision Reis made to add an extra panel, and King’s elevation of a one-off one-liner to both a running gag and a stirring sentiment.
And when Kite Man was just in the secondary cast of Harley Quinn, that felt pretty OK! Harley Quinn is more than the transgressive thrill of a cartoon character dropping F-bombs and referencing oral sex. (Or not.) Though it’s all filtered through the lens of supervillain absurdity, the show has characters facing genuinely adult choices with real nuance. They navigate moving past your shitty ex when you have to be in the same social circles, discovering you’ve traded your romantic happiness for stability, and working through the realization that you and your partner have seemingly opposing life goals. Not just in simple 20-minutes-and-done sitcom conflicts, but in seasonlong arcs.
But what quickly struck me as I watched Kite Man: Hell Yeah! is that the show is founded on joke characters. They’re idiots with simple motivations, who face idiot problems and solve them in idiot ways, punctuated by dick jokes and decapitations. To be clear, that’s not a bad way to make a television show! But viewers expecting to find the counterbalancing emotional core that made Harley Quinn a hit may want to adjust their expectations.
The flaw in Kite Man: Hell Yeah! is, ironically, that it lacks that very layer of pathos that undergirds the joke of Kite Man in King’s comics — the joke that positioned Kite Man to become Harley Quinn’s best punching bag, positioned him to get his own cartoon show, and is even quoted in Kite Man: Hell Yeah!’s very title.
Look, Tom King is probably gonna be fine. He’s literally working with Warner Bros. on a direct adaptation of his DC work. Hopefully, Ivan Reis and Clay Mann will be OK, too. But the off-putting thing about Kite Man: Hell Yeah! is the way it so casually illustrates the distance between creation at the corporate comics houses and credit in Hollywood success. And that’s a recurring gag that’s really gotten old.
