Harley Quinn #41 – Tini Howard, Gretchen Felker-Martin, Writers; Sweeney Boo, Dani, Artists; Trish Mulvihill, Colorist
Ray – 8.5/10
Ray: Harley’s done with the multiverse, but now she’s facing a much bigger challenge—the police. After being double-crossed by Freeze, she wound up in police custody—in the hands of the sadistic Detective Pulaski, the Javert of the GCPD. This woman once sent her own daughter to Blackgate for theft and views it as “keeping her out of trouble”—and blames Harley for sending the girl down the wrong path. But she has other plans for Quinn rather than prison. She wants her to help take down her real target—the Bat-fam. Pulaski’s single-minded focus on eliminating vigilantes from Gotham makes me wonder if this is the writer’s way of tying in with Absolute Power on a much more down-to-earth scale.
This is an intense hook for the issue, with the most hatable villain of the run so far—but it also leads itself to a surprising amount of hilarity, as Harley is released from jail with strict orders and a wire tracking her. So to get around her, she uses old-timey Looney Tunes-esque signs that she scribbles on, to get her true thoughts across. She does this with Ivy as they talk things out, and then does it again while in the middle of a chaotic battle with Tim Drake. It’s a great plot device that’s perfectly in line with Harley’s style, but this run is still doing a great job of showing how Harley struggles to balance the various roles she plays—and how it’s all started to come crashing down as soon as she runs into a spanner in the works.
The backup, by Felker-Martin and Dani, finds Harley waking up in the Bat-cave—but a twisted version of it, populated by monstrous bats preying on her and Ivy. Any… controversies about the writer aside, this one is carried by the surreal, nightmarish visuals of the story by Dani, and they’re amazing. The story is short at only about eight pages, which means it ends a bit abruptly, but some of the panels are distinctly haunting.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
