Well let's lighten the mood a little now, Harley Quinn's New 52 series was something of a breath of fresh air amongst the doom, gore and gloom of the majority of the rest of the line. I've already covered her team up miniseries with Power Girl that happened later in this solo series of Harley's but this is her ongoing that debuted in December 2013 and has been going ever since. If you don't know much about Harley here's a potted history. She first appeared in Batman: The Animated Series as Harleen Quinzel the former psychiatrist of The Joker's who became his partner in crime and girlfriend although the relationship was something of an abusive one. After joining the New 52 Suicide Squad (and you'll be seeing her as part of the team in the Suicide Squad film in August), she was given her own series where she functions much as Deadpool does in the Marvel Universe. She has no respect for the fourth wall, is a pansexual and somewhat homicidal anti-hero and just generally larks about having a laugh. She's no longer the Joker's girlfriend after he blew up her home and set fire to her beaver (No not like that perverts! I mean the stuffed beaver called Bernie who she likes to chat with. Tsk) and in this series is striking out on her own though she has a casual relationship with Poison Ivy going on now. The issue #0 I'm not going to cover in any detail because it is basically Harley auditioning artists to draw her new series, with single pages from the likes of Batman: TAS's Bruce Timm and the late Darwyn Cooke amongst those responding.
Issue Zero: Serious talent involved. |
She waits at some lights and a hipster is dragging a sad looking daschund along behind him. The dog implores her and so she takes him. They drive on, then a masked man pulls up along side with a shotgun and fires at Harley. He misses but causes a crash and pile up. Annoyed she wallops his head off with her giant mallet.
Stop. Hammer Time. |
Harley: "I think I've died and gone to heaven"
It's almost too perfect she thinks and the estate agent hits her with the bad news. She is to be responsible for the back taxes, real estate taxes, insurance and upkeep. The tenant's rents don't cover all this so she will have to earn about six thousand extra a month to keep the place.
Harley's new digs. |
So she uses make-up to give her a normal skin tone and applies for a job at a mental health clinic as a counselor using faked references. They say they'll call her back. Then she tries out for Roller Derby and the team are impressed with her violence and hire there and then.
Later that night Harley is lying out on the roof of the building saying how much she in enjoying the secutity having a place of her own gives her.
Harley: There's no place like home.
Then Tony appears and shoots the assassin who was about to attack Harley from behind. Harley rummages around in the assassin's clothes and finds a flyer, it has a bounty listed on her head for two million dollars!
Still has feelings for the Joker. |
So Harley calls Poison Ivy to come and help with her plan. While she waits, she hangs out with Bernie at her place. Then the corpse of the hitman comes to life causing Harley to jump in fright. But it's just Ivy standing on the fire escape using her vines to make him move. Harley is relieved, "I don't know if I wanna kill you or kiss you". Ivy replies, "kisses please." Harley then says:
Harley: "You wanna meet my beaver?"
Ivy: "Um.. Okay... why not?
Harley: [shows her Bernie] Bernie, meet Poison Ivy, Bernie.
Ivy: "Oh.. it's an actual beaver. And he's burnt".
A well stuffed beaver is such a rich source of double entendre. So after that at night they go to the shelter and let all the animals out. Who promptly all run away. Harley and Ivy split up to round them up and take them back to Harley's place.
"Rescuing" the animals. |
Ivy has already got the cats and birds there, so Harley decides to put the dogs on the third floor. She then tosses the sausage wrapped hitman to the dogs and they make short work of him. Next day Ivy wakes first and goes downstairs and makes floor three an indoor forest area with trees and grass.
Ivy and Harley make a cute couple. |
We next find Harley on valentines day attending the Creepshow. She is ambushed by a hitman in there but kills him with his own shotgun and as she leaves, tells the proprietor she left something scary in there for him.
Brooding about her lack of a date she finds Tony looking similarly despondant holding some flowers. He was going to ask Queenie out but she's gone out with someone else instead. He gives Harley the flowers and leaves sadly. In the bath later Harley complains about all the romance on TV, Bernie says "admit it fruitcakes. You're lonely".
Bernie: "You need to put your ass out there, meet new people and sell your wares. Giving all your attention to just your pet beaver will make you appear antisocial".
Pondering Valentines Day. |
Harley: "Look out world, here I come! I'll never understand why Superman wears the same outfit every damn day."
She strolls on out, but the berry gives off some sort of scent that affects the driver of a bus full of criminals and he crashes it and they all escape.
Each one of them smells a different delicious smell coming from Harley and advance on her. She runs into a hardware store and battles them inside using the likes of strimmers and drills until there is only one left and she blows him up.
Harley deals with the besotted criminals. |
Then Tony appears, the berry has worn off and he asks Harley for the flowers back so he can fight for Queenie. Harley gives him the flowers and the last berry saying it'll "give you an edge". Then she goes and plays with the cats and dogs for a while. She ruminates on how Valentine's Day is the meanest holiday there is. But as she leaves to go for a walk she sees Tony being hugged by Queenie and a man and thinks:
Harley: "Although it is awfully nice to play Cupid every once in a while."
Next day Harley disguises herself and gets ready to attend her first day at the clinic. She meets with Tony who has the plans for the mysterious contraption she wants building which he negociates four months rent free to do so.
A tale of woe and neglect. |
At the Rubenstein's house, the grandson is playing videogames, his mum is demonstrating massage devices to some friends to sell and the dad is playing with his model trains upstairs. Harley crashes through the side of their house on a bulldozer and takes all three of them hostage and dumps them in the boot of her car.
She goes for some food at a diner and while she does so, takes out another hitman with a fork. Then she attends her first roller derby match, which she is late for. Her team loses, but she runs over the opposing team as they leave the stadium, "wow, that was kinda hot" says her team captain.
Harley then remembers she has the Rubensteins in her car boot and gets them out and sits them on the end of a pier. She kicks the grandson and his mum off it and takes out the son/dad's gag. When he realises why she is doing this he furiously tells her he sees his mother three times a week, his wife has lunch with her once a week and his son sees her every saturday. Harley is non-plussed.
Mr Rubenstein: "She has alzeimers you twisted clown! She can't even remember what she had for dinner!"
Then he jumps off the pier to save his family but lands on sand, luckily the tide was out. Totally unconcerned with her actions towards them Harley cheerily drives off telling the father to call his mother.
The Rubensteins get some unorthodox therapy. |
Sy gives her the files on the seven targets they are after and tells her to study it ready for tommorrow. In return for her help he can find out who put a hit out on her, though Harley says she has someone looking into that. She returns to her building and is invited to a Burlesque show taking place there. She gets a bit to involved though and storms the stage thinking the fight taking place is real.
Sy Borgman. |
Sy rips all the wires out of the wall. Nothing changes. He cuts all the tubes. Still nothing changes. He electro-punches the man. Nothing. So Harley gathers up the tubs and blows hard down them making the mans arteries explode. This kills him and they make their escape from the hospital.
One way to make an entrance. |
Sy uses his cybernetic enhancements to fire up some cables that grab onto a passing news helicopter. The three off them are dragged free of the building and Harley takes the woman's rings before letting go of her. She and Sy clamber into the chopper and take control. Harley manages to fy it to the zoo and crash lands it outside, their next target "The Bear" works inside.
Dealing with the Russians. |
Inside the zoo Sy tells Harley their work has been done for them, he recognises the tattoo on the arm one of the tigers is chowing down on. With The Bear taken care of, Sy says they can do a couple more tonight, while Harley wants to stay and play with the animals for a while.
Then the rest of the Russian targets pull up at the zoo entrance. After trading insults they fight Harley and Sy. Two of them blow themselves up with faulty bagel grenades, Sy blows one up with a rocket launcher, Harley brains one with a pipe and the older female in charge kisses Sy but aims a dagger at his back. Before she can strike, he drives forwards and knocks her into the rhino pit and she is impaled on a horn.
The Bear falls victim to the zoo animals. |
Sy and Harley watch the sunrise on the boardwalk. She kisses him and says, "you sure know how to show a girl a good time". Then the eagle drops The Bear's head in Sy's lap. Harley kicks it into the sea. She returns home to find Poison Ivy there who has taken care of another couple of hitmen and says she has a lead on "who put out that bounty on your cute, crazy little head."
Another wacky escapade over. |
Harley: "I'm keepin' this one".
Ivy: "Do what you want just put him away when I'm around".
They return to Harley's place and check her laptop activity. The site advertising the hit gets updated once every five days and so that means tonight will be another update time. They find a file called "Nunya" as in "nunya business" but it is user and password protected.
Ivy's plan is to hide in the closet while Harley sleeps and they can catch the miscreant in the act. Harley finally gets off to sleep, then starts sleep walking. She goes to the laptop and increases the bounty to three million, her plan is to attract all the local competition and kill them off. She opens the Nunya file, but then two assassins crash in through the window. Ivy starts fighting them and Bernie exhorts Harley to wake up:
Bernie: "Hey! Turnip head! They're going to kill your favourite houseplant if you don't wake up!."
Harley wakes up and between them, she and Ivy kill the attackers. But in the fight Harley's laptop is destroyed. Ivy fills Harley in on what she found out.
Ivy: "With the computer gone and you unable to remember the site or password, you're a bit screwed".
Harley unconciously hiring her assassins. |
As Harley, Ivy and Tony walk back to Harley's place, she thanks them for her help and she'll just have to keep dealing with the ramifications of the bounty on her head for now. As a reward to Tony she buys him some new boots with the cash they took from all the contract killer's wallets.
The Assassin club. |
After a meatball lunch with Tony, she attends her next Roller Derby match. She is doing too well and the opposing team send out their secret weapon, Bertha, to take down Harley. She knocks Harley out and when she is revived in the changing rooms she is angry when she discovers she's had a tooth knocked out. Her manager forbids her going back out but Harley ignores her, grabs her mallet and smashes Bertha's head in. Unfortunately this gets her banned from Roller Derby, but her manager gives her a card with details of something called "Skate Club" on it.
Once home, all the occupants of the building have gathered to see something Harley is going to unveil. It turns out to be a giant catapult which she nicknames the "scatapult" as this is the way she is going to deal with all the animal poo building up in the place. They start firing bags of the stuff off the roof.
The scatapualt revealed to the rest of the building's tenants. |
He is grabbed from behind by Mario, one of the building's tenants and Harley whacks him with her mallet. They put him on the scatapult and fire him into the air. He bounces off a advertising zeppelin and gets minced up in the propellers of an advertising aeroplane.
As these shenanigans are going on, a creepy looking man watches Harley through binoculars from the top of a train. A cop stands behind him and calls him Edwin, exhorting him to give up. Edwin disarms and kills the cop then dressed in his uniform says he's coming for Harley and wishes to marry her.
Yes, fire that poo at Dan Didio, noone deserves it more than him! |
haha, love it! Harley is the best, can't wait for her solo film. Hope it is as good as the deadpool one. This series is excellent, glad you're recommneding it :)
ReplyDeleteIf the solo Harley movie manages to keep to the spirit of her series and be as awesome as Deadpool was I shall be a happy bunny indeed.
ReplyDeleteHmmm... the reviews for Suicide Squad weren't that good...
ReplyDeleteHarley doesn't need to be part of the Suicide Squad. She needs to run freeeee! Free to kiss Poison Ivy and fling poo at Dan Didio and just generally be silly.
ReplyDelete