According to ComicBook, the creators of Max’s Harley Quinn share how they almost created their own original DC supervillain for the animated series. During an interview with ComicBook, Justin Halpern (Kite Man: Hell Yeah!) and Patrick Schumacker (Abbott Elementary) explained how the main rooster of the series included a new character nicknamed “Brown Stain” before deciding to stick to the established DC canon.
Halpern explained in the interview, “We had also created our own superhero that we wanted to have, a supervillain that we wanted to have in our crew, who was named Brownstone. But everyone called him Brown Stain because during a high profile rescue as a hero, he sh-t his pants on live TV. And so everyone called him Brown Stain, and then that’s what turned him into a villain, because he was so upset at that. So then, he took refuge in Harley’s crew. And DC said ‘We have 20,000 supervillains and superheroes. Can you just find one of those?’ And we said, ‘Okay.’ They were totally right, by the way. 100% right. Brown Stain should not have been one of the characters in the show. DC has plenty of characters that they were letting us have carte blanche with. DC made absolutely the right call. This is not me saying ‘Justice For Brown Stain.’ This is me saying, it’s just an interesting part of the Harley lore that never happened.”
“I think early on, we definitely were gravitating towards some other characters that felt like sort of low hanging fruit or just like a bit,” Schumacker added. “They were just like a gag, a very one-dimensional gag. And fortunately, enough people encouraged us to go deeper. We had Dex-Starr, the Red Lantern cat that vomits blood, just because we were like, ‘Oh, blood-vomiting cat’s funny! He should be part of the crew.'”
The fifth season of Harley Quinn is scheduled to air on Max this November.