The animated Harley Quinn series has a long list of put-upon supervillains, but none may be as hapless as Bane. Ostensibly an A-lister among Gotham’s celebrated rogue’s gallery, he’s constantly hustled by his fellow crooks, ridiculed by the forces of law and set upon by countless indignities both coincidental and deliberate. The joke is that most of his misery is of his own making and that for all of his strength and power, he just isn’t good at standing up for himself. However, the common chair remains a particular nemesis of his, both conceptually and literally.
Physically large and intimidating characters are born for pratfalls, and Bane’s often involve chairs tangled between his legs. They’re also a symbol of his diminished status among his fellow criminals and how readily he jumps through hoops for the perceived status a chair represents. In its own weird Harley Quinn manner, Bane’s relationship with chairs is as dysfunctional as Harley’s with the Joker.
It’s certainly as painful. Bane’s status as a “muscle” villain easily leads to joking about his slow wits. While comic books often portray him as tremendously intelligent, the Harley Quinn model is decidedly less so. Add to that his physically top-heavy appearance, augmented by the Venom drug that constitutes his sole superpower, and the poor man is just asking to trip over a banana peel -- or in this case, an office chair.
Bane periodically tangles with chairs at inopportune times, inevitably ending with him sprawling. The most notable served as the kicker for Season 1, Episode 10, “Bensonhurst.” After dressing down the Penguin’s 13-year-old-nephew for abusing the Legion of Doom’s company credit card, he delivers what he believes is a tender teaching moment to the boy. He turns to leave, only to trip headlong over a fallen office chair and punt it directly out the window.
However, far more potent than the physical pratfalls is Bane's strange obsession with the chairs the Legion gives him. It started in earnest during Harley Quinn Season 1, Episode 9, “A Seat at the Table,” where he witnesses the Joker receiving copious Legion funds for half-baked criminal schemes when he can’t requisition a chair. It’s part of a larger running gag in which Bane closely adheres to Legion protocols only to find the other members walking all over him.
That’s where the chair really takes hold of the villain’s psyche. He views a nice office chair as a sign of respect among his fellow criminals, respect they never intend to give him. That hits home in Season 2, Episode 5, “Batman’s Back Man,” when Two-Face denies him a seat at the Injustice League’s table, despite the fact that they are the only two major villains still standing at that moment. He placates Bane first by offering an impossibly small folding chair and then a chance to sit in one of the chairs he likes. At no time does he gain permission to "own" any of the copious office chairs in the Injustice League’s conference room, however.
Bane's need for validation is funny enough in a figure who quite literally snapped Batman’s spine in half -- in Harley Quinn as well as the comic books -- as is his naïve belief that the crime lords and sociopaths constituting the Injustice League will somehow give it to him. But turning that fixation onto an office chair, then having the chair abuse him for it, turns the entire joke up a notch. Conceptually, it belongs to Bane’s fellow Warner Bros’ IP, Wile E. Coyote, and just like him, Harley Quinn’s most put-upon baddie can’t seem to realize the cause of the problem. When it comes to chairs, Bane is his own worst enemy.
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