A New Scene for Ms. Harleen
When a new creative team hops onto an ongoing title, they’ve really got two options: do they continue with the narrative momentum of the old guard, hoping to deliver a seamless reader transition, or do they wipe the slate clean and announce their presence?
It’s a new day for Gotham’s favorite psycho psychoanalyst, and the new writer/artist duo of Elliot Kalan and Mindy Lee have planted their flag onto the pages of Harley Quinn and opted for the latter.
Issue #44 starts off with Harls “soliloquizin’” to the reader about not just her recent troubles, but about a pattern of self-destructive behavior she’s starting to recognize. She’s constantly getting herself into trouble, she’s got a love life that we may charitably characterize as “volatile”, and she’s losing that famous, infectious joie de vivre that can usually keep her smiling through it all. She asks: “If laughter’s the best medicine, whaddaya do when your supply gets cut off?”
Answer: go back to your roots. Get back in touch with where you’ve come from.
Harley moves back into a blighted Gotham neighborhood ominously known as Throatcutter Hill, a neglected rough-and-tumble outer-borough enclave home to as much community spirit as there is crime. We learn that this is where young Harleen Quinzel lived when she first came to Gotham as a psychiatry student and where she learned the value of community relationships. What she finds upon her return, however, shocks her.
AH! Gentrification!
That’s right— HQ returns to her old stomping grounds only to find it overrun by kitschy, cashless nonsense stores, cookie-cutter modern high rises, and an abundance of hipsters. But after trying to intervene with a team of security guards harassing a harmless homeless man, Harley comes face to face with one Althea Klang, the visibly evil urban developer responsible for Throatcutter Hill’s facelift, who threatens to sweep Harley away with the rest of the undesirables.
This is comfortable territory for our new series script writer. As the former longtime head writer of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”, Elliot Kalan is no stranger to directing his comedic voice at just the sorts of injustices he’s beginning to explore here. It’s a good fit for the character: DC editorial has spent years building up Harley as someone who, without outright hero status, is eager to lend a helping hand. So when Harley sets up a “Destruction Agency”, a one-woman outfit looking to reverse the effects of gentrification by restoring the neighborhood’s good old fashioned chaos, a comic book version of grassroots community activism sounds like something that’s right up her alley.
The art here is something of a step backwards, however. Newcomer Mindy Lee is certainly adept at capturing Harley’s big expressive eyeballs, but the rest of the work on their facial expressions can feel generic and inconsistent. It’s obviously still early days for this run, but I don’t see any sort of recognizable artistic stamp on the character, even with a new character design they’ve given Harley to punctuate this new venture. It’s nothing egregious, and nothing that the continuing series can’t make a course correction on.
We’re then left with the obligatory first-issue-of-a-run cliffhanger, when a mysterious caped figure is seen in the office of Klang, vowing to help her in her quest to keep Harley from interfering with the gentrified neihborhood’s corporate interests.
So we’re back with another installment of Harley taking on social causes. I’ve liked this title’s exploration of that sort of territory, and I remain cautiously optimistic about HQ’s future.
Recommend if…
- You like a blend of comedy and social issues in your comics
- You’ve been waiting for Harley to take a break from her team-ups
- You’re looking for a jumping on point for the character
Overall:
This is a sure-handed, if unsubtle new direction for the title. This reviewer hopes that Kalan can lean a little less on the crutch of Harley’s monologuing going forward, and that the artistic effort can be beefed up a bit, but the changing of the guard for the HQ title is not off to a bad start at all.
Score: 6.5/10
English (US) · 