In Kite Man: Hell Yeah! the best running gag in comics has been co-opted by the worst
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.
“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
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