Harley Quinn #45 – Elliott Kalan, Writer; Mindy Lee, Artist; Triona Farrell, Colorist
Ray – 8.5/10
Ray: After several runs that took Harley to all sorts of strange corners of the DCU, Elliott Kalan seems to be taking her back to basics – giving her plenty of chaos to cause in the process. Harley has returned to her old college town of Throatcutter Hill – named so because it was the place where a former Mayor of Gotham died by…you guessed it. It’s the kind of grody old neighborhood that attracts broke college kids and eccentric homeless people, but now it’s looking all sorts of gentrified – courtesy of Althea Klang, a sinister businesswoman who Harley has wasted no time getting into a rivalry filled with sexual tension with. It’s never clear if these two actually want each other dead or not, which sounds about right. But tormenting this woman seems to be Harley’s new modus operandi – which fits in perfectly with her starting a new agency for vandalism in town.
Her first case – when she’s not being mistaken for a detective – comes from a historian who wants to prevent the replacement of a statue of the dead Mayor with a piece of soulless corporate art. Harley shows up to disrupt the unveiling, but is met with Amenity, Klang’s corporate enforcer superhero who may be worse than she is. It’s all pretty silly, but the issue does get a nice touch of emotion from the inclusion of Chicken Fingers, the strange homeless vigilante who is still holding things down in Throatcutter Hill. The old man is trying his best to help Harley, but may not be up to the task anymore. The tone of this issue is a little all over the place, but Kalan is building a new supporting cast for Harley much in the same way that Palmiotti/Conner and Phillips did, and that goes a long way to turning it from a comedy book into something with real emotion behind it.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
