I have to give credit where credit is due.
I have not been quiet about my dissatisfaction with this title. It has been somewhat of a repetitive slog, somehow simultaneously relying on gimmicky narrative overconceptualization and its main character’s basic, most recognizable shticks. It’s somehow been both too same-y and unnecessarily innovative.
So when the creative team punches in for their monthly duties and ups the quality noticeably, like they did this month, I’ll be the first to acknowledge it.
Harley is missing! At least as far as her small but fiercely loyal Throatcutter Hill community is aware. While her friends spread the word, Althea Klang, the seductive-but-evil real estate developer bent on gentrifying all of Gotham in spite of Harley’s grassroots anti-capitalism campaigns, pines for her problematic crush.
Harley, of course, turns out to be fending for herself just fine despite the best efforts of the C-list (Harley’s words! Not mine!) villain duo Mayfly and Gunbunny, collectively known as the Gunbuddies, have kidnapped her and are driving her out west to Coast City in order to hand her over to a “buyer” in order to (presumably) kill HQ and up their “street cred” (Mayfly’s words! Not mine!). What ensues is a genuinely entertaining high-speed highway fight scene between the three screwy “psycho-babes” as Quinn tries to punch and quip her way out of another stitch.
This is a fun enough concept, one which calls to mind the one truly great Harley Quinn story we’ve seen from the past few years, Erica Henderson’s 2024 Annual. That cruise ship mystery, which I reviewed glowingly, took a tried-and-true fish-out-of-water approach to Harley and allowed an unfamiliar set piece to yield the hilarity and hijinks readers come to expect from a winning HQ story. While not hitting the same heights, kidnapped road trip Harley plays the same game to moderately satisfying effect.
A useful addition to such a plot device is the playful and cartoonish dynamic between the Gunbuddies, a genuine pleasure, even if one of its first instances does blatantly rip off an already cheesy Indigo Girls reference first made in 2023’s “Barbie”. They’re even driving while singing.
Artistically is where things fall apart for an issue like this. Newcomer Carlos Olivares’ command of facial expressions can’t mask the confused fight choreography and distractingly distended rubbery anatomy. We’re of course not looking for strict realness here, but the whole thing comes across as a jumbled mess of a product.
Eliot Kalan’s script isn’t all fun and games, however. There’s a brief middle eight which drastically interrupts the adventurous flow of the issue and which simply lands as just more setup. Of course setup moments are an unavoidable fact of reading ongoing comic series, but it can be done a lot more adeptly than this.
I consider any month in which I don’t actively regret reading an issue of an ongoing title to be a win for that title. September is a lukewarm win for the fantabulous Harley Quinn.
Recommend if…
- You’ve been dying to take a road trip this year
- You’ve been dying to go to the zoo this year
- You’ve died this year
Overall:
This issue is offering a fair amount of new narrative stuff to keep things interesting and to break the reading experience out of its repetitive rut, but confusing/detached asides and shoddy artwork hold things back from the realm of being truly pretty good. I’m still so perplexed as to who/what exactly that creepy Gorillaz-looking trench coat guy is supposed to be/mean. Let’s find out together, I suppose.
Score: 6/10
English (US) · 