HERE'S HARLEQUIN - BIKER TRICKSTER, GOTHIC GARGOYLE MASTER & NIGHT-FLYING SUPERHERO GUARDIAN OF BIKEROPOLIS!

 

An AI-generated image of Harlequin riding Punk, his trusty shape-shifting steampunk gargoyle, who serves him loyally at all times as his sidekick & steed, battling crime together across the sleeping, night-time skyline of Bikeropolis; image created by RebelBikerDude using ChatGPT

I've always been fascinated by the Commeddia dell'arte, a classic but complex combination of Italian comedy theatre, masquerade & pantomime that was very popular across Europe during the 16th-18th Centuries, and featured a number of standardised stock characters, some of whom went on to become very famous in their own, varied, stand-alone roles. These include: Pulcinella aka Punchinello (a grouchy old man who became Mr Punch in familiar British Punch & Judy shows at seasides), Scaramouche (a villainous braggart best-known today from his name-check in a line from the rock anthem 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by mega-band Queen), and Pierrot (a servant dressed as a sad clown in white, very popular today as depicted in whimsical paintings & figurines).

But most famous of all by far is Arlecchino, or Harlequin as he is known in English, another servant but this time an exceedingly nimble, quick-witted, mercurial trickster too, instantly recognisable via his characteristic tight-fitting spangled tunic & trousers, decorated all over with large bright multicoloured appliqued diamond-shaped patches, and for his black mask that he nveer removes (sometimes he is  depicted wearing a jester's hat too). This gaudy garb, or variations of it, was commonly worn by medieval court jesters & professional fools of those times, but its bedazzling otherworldliness also lends him an air of the mysterious, even the supernatural, especially when combined with the incredible feats of magic & the miraculous that he readily, regularly performs with reality-defying dexterity.

Updated versions of Harlequin, or characters inspired by him, have turned up in a number of modern-day scenarios, such as Agatha Christie's supernatural sleuth Mr Harley Quin, and no fewer than six separate DC villains (the most famous is a supervillain who styles herself as Harley Quinn, the others as Harlequin; intruguingly, five of them are female rather than male, whereas the original Commeddia dell'arte Harlequin is unequivoccally male & fanously has a long-term girlfriend, Columbine). So why shouldn't there be a Harlequin biker too, a superhero valiantly protecting some great biker-inhabited city, on Biker Earth, perhaps, or somewhere else in the Bikerverse?

At the time when this idea first entered my mind, I was creating some images for a gallery devoted to a planet-wide steampunk-themed biker mega-megatropolis named Bikeropolis (please click here to view it), so this seemed the perfect setting for Harlequin the biker superhero's exploits. All that he needed now was a trusty companion & side-kick to assist him in his deering-do endeavours - and what's the easiest way to acquire such a companion? Simple - if you just so happen to be both an alchemical magus & a techological genius like Harlequin, you create one! So that's what he did, the result being an incredibly sophisticated shape-changing steampunk gargoyle dubbed Punk, hewn from solid stone, upon whom he rides into nightly battle with supervillains, soaring through & down from the skies over Bikeropolis seeking out malevolent miscreants of every kind. And then, once on terra firma, Punk obligingly morphs into any number of different ultra-futuristic motorbikes ready to bear Harlequin through any terrain in his undaunted pursuit of this great city's under-belly of uber-crimelords.

Needless to say, however, even for someone as multi-talented, multi-versed as Harlequin, who seems impossibly capable of uniting science & the supernatural during his extraordinary exploits, Bikeropolis is one incredibly big city for a single crime-fighter, notwithstanding Punk's ever-present, incomparable contributions. So quite some time ago Harlequin launched a veritable flotilla of gargoyle-riding biker battalions, recruiting only the best bikers & battlers to their ranks, and enginieering gargoyles of truly life-like, all-but-indestructible form as their co-fighters. These proved so successful that they hve spread far beyond Bikeropolis, with battalions nowadays protecting many of the great cities throughout the Bikerverse, including several on Biker Earth - but these must wait for another time, and another gallery.

Meanwhuile, I hope that you enjoy discovering Harlequin the superhero biker trickster & his self-designed, self-constructed mechanical gargoyle Punk. Some of the dark, gothic nature & settings from the modern-day DC Batman movies certainly served as sources of inspiration when creaating & developing Harlequin's charismatic, enigmatic character (with more of his arcane background story to be revealed in future galleries), as he is decidedly darker in ethos than his much more light-hearted Commeddia dell'arte ancestor, Arlecchino. Happily, however, even when Harlequin is seemingly encompassed by gloom & shadows of both the physical & the emotional variety, Arlechino's mischievous humour invariably flashes down through the intervening centuries like beams of bright, brilliant light to dispel all such darkness surrounding Harlequin & show him the way ahead again. But make no mistake: he may be vested in the gay, merry motley of a jester, but when he is confronting an evil entity, Harlequin is the most relentless, redoubtable, rampaging opponent that any such antagonist will ever encounter - and that's before you add Punk to the combat equation! So, cross Harlequin - and Punk - at your peril!

More of my AI biker images next time!

Plus: please click here to access a chronological listing of fully clickable links to all galleries uploaded by me on this blog. NB - all of the images included in this page's gallery were created by me, RebelBikerDude, using the AI image-generation programs Grok, ChatGPT, NightCafe, Cici/Dola & FreeGen, for non-commercial, entertainment purposes only, and do not feature any real-life persons or copyrighted characters.