Old Lady Harley #2 – Frank Tieri, Writer; Inaki Miranda, Artist; Eva De La Cruz, Colorist
Ratings:
Ray – 4/10
Ray: Old Lady Harley picked a bad week to come out, facing off against another alternate reality future Gotham where Joker returns to cause more chaos. I didn’t like Batman Beyond much this week, but it’s high art compared to this comic. It feels more like a random series of bad gags about how gross the elderly are. Harley seems to be just a spry woman with a few wrinkles, but almost everyone else in her cast seems ready to keel over.
As the issue begins, she and Red Tool have been apprehended by Batman, who turned Gotham into a fascist police state. The high-tech sinister Batman they encounter turns out to be a hologram, and the real Bruce Wayne is a shriveled, half-dead old man who has hooked himself into the Bat-computer. Obsessed with ending all crime after Nightwing’s death, he’s turned himself into a living surveillance device and given up on all his heroic ethics.
After a series of arguments about the fact that Batman has lost his mind, he gets tired with Harley and Red Tool and deposits them at their next search location – Arkham Retirement Home. Now a refuge for elderly ex-criminals, everyone from Riddler to Mr. Zsasz wander around free in a place run by Eggy, Harley’s egg-based old friend.
While there’s a lot of sight gags mixed in, Harley is mainly there to see Selina, who tools around in a scooter and seems to play up her hearing loss when she doesn’t want to talk to people. Harley’s trying to figure out where Joker is, but along the way, we get a bunch of random gags about how many people she was married to. The next stop is the Mad Max-inspired city of Bludhaven, which has somehow gotten even worse.
This isn’t a very good comic on its own, but it looks so much worse when compared to the excellent Sam Humphries run that’s going on right now. Old Man Logan, this is not. We’re not likely to be seeing any spinoffs here.
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Disclaimer: GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
