Harley Quinn #38 begins by giving us a day in the life of Professor Harleen Quinzel, living in romantic bliss with Poison Ivy and gleefully holding down a steady teaching job at Gotham Community College. It’s the type of quotidian, slice-of-life montage that passes by almost too rosily, leaving us to wonder when the other narrative shoe is going to drop. There’s even a ticking clock accentuating each panel, both representing Harley’s passing workday hours and leaving the reader feeling like we’re eerily counting down to something. And we are, in fact, leading up to a surprise: Ivy has decided to throw Harley a birthday party.
As sweet of a gesture as it is on Ivy’s part, and as much as Harley basks in the warmth of friendship and the reverie of the atmosphere, the whole thing feels like a bit of an unwelcome disruption to the calming routine that Harley has clearly worked so hard to build for herself. It breeds temptation, both in the form of some friends of Harley asking her the last time any of them got up to anything sinister, giving us a brief glimpse of that old twinkle of psychopathy flaring up in Harley’s eye, as well as in the form of Ivy wanting to further unwind Harley by taking her out on the town to do what, admittedly, any former Arkham inmate deserves to do on their birthday: infiltrate a chocolate factory. It’s the perfect date night for Ivy and Harley: Ivy gets to interfere with the corporation’s disastrous environmental practices, while Harley gets to frolic around a chocolate factory.
We inevitably see Harley given to the other form of temptation by agreeing to meet with the Body Doubles in order to propose a score: Harley has somehow discovered that a business executive has come to inspect the damages to the chocolate factory after what Halrey and Ivy have done to it, and proposes that, with the help of the Body Doubles, they intercept and rob his approaching yacht. This slipping back into old habits is nicely, if a bit obviously, accentuated by Harley donning her original headpiece both during the planning stage and on the night of the heist.
It all feels a bit low-stakes here. This reviewer does admire Harley’s targeting of the environmentally irresponsible uber-rich, but her aimless swinging back and forth between personality expressions, while not at all out of character, feels arbitrary. We open with Harley being happy and fulfilled as a teacher, and we don’t even get half-way through the issue before she tells us that the teaching life isn’t for her and that she’s itching to get up to no good. It can feel as if Tini Howard isn’t sure what kind of Harley Quinn story she wants to tell month-to-month.
Any artist taking on Harley Quinn is going to be in the shadow of Bruce Timm’s original design and execution. Natacha Bustos does an admirable job of paying homage to Timm’s classic bold-line cartoonish style while cementing enough of her own signature to the ongoing adventures of Quinn and Ivy. She’s structurally adventurous and can adeptly both accentuate a rocking party and elevate a narratively lackluster heist. This title is not falling flat based on its artwork.
I think this is an issue caught between two impulses: do we keep Harley healthy and happy at home, or do we put her back onto Gotham’s midnight rooftops? I won’t go so far as to say that Tini Howard tries to have it both ways, as a final-page encounter does pretty squarely answer the question of which way old Harley is headed, but two half-baked stories don’t add up to a great issue. I’m by no means giving up on this Harley Quinn title, but this month was a miss.
Recommended if…
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- Want to see a day in the life of your favorite psycho Psych teacher
- Wish Charley and the Chocolate Factory had more explosions
- Love seeing multiple HQ character designs
Overall
After seeing Harley’s blissful home life, a tonal shift back into familiar habits of characterization feels like having a rug pulled out from under me. And not in an exciting way.
Score: 6/10
DISCLAIMER: DC Comics provided Batman News with a copy of this comic for the purposes of this review.
