I am comics about Jata! – review of the comic book “Harley Quinn”, vol. 1-5

Clownish absurdities

Harley Quinn is a crazy series under the DC Rebirthby Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti. There are also such famous names as John Timms, Chad Hardin, Alex Sinclair and Hi-Fi. Over the course of five volumes, we will read a lot of grotesque stories, from which it is not easy to extract the main plot. After Harley introduces herself and her bizarre friends: Poison Ivy, the Goat, the Egg, Big Tony, the stuffed beaver (the freak likes to talk to him sometimes), and her own Harley roller skating gang, we immediately jump to one of the craziest stories – the appearance of zombies in New York. Harley finds a lot of undisguised pleasure in making a bloody mess of them! In the same notebook, the protagonist starts a punk rock band. This is still nothing, because in the fifth volume she will run for mayor! On the way, he will face giant ants, cannibals eating the homeless or the mysterious Batfanka. These are just some of the crazy attractions of this colorful circus.

Save the city!

Rushing, imaginary threads are intertwined with a slightly sketched plot about the help Harley gives to the police chief, Spoonsdale, with whom she unofficially cooperates in difficult cases where her furious and brutal methods are useful.

Despite the fact that the main character is quite quick-tempered and can be ruthless, she is actually a good person under this cover, but if someone gets under her skin, unfortunately she has to reckon with the fact that he will face the bloody revenge of the famous psycho.

Sometimes it seems as if he is killing or torturing someone just for the sake of sick pleasure, but it is always soon discovered that that person deserves punishment. These are very far-fetched twists. However, here you can consider that they fit the whole crazy convention.

Apart from her psychopathic tendencies, she does a lot of good for the city: she feeds the homeless, cares for animals, fights hordes of zombies, and even puts on a superhero outfit to fight a powerful invader who wants to take over the world together with Power Girl and Atlee.

In short … a tragifarsa

As befits a tragicomedy, the battle with him is not a pompous battle. Harley tries to convince him that taking over the Earth by force is not a good idea, because people will go on strike, and as a result, he may never eat delicious hot dogs again.

Unreal and sometimes unpleasant stories are accompanied by black humor, which can also be quite crude. There are some dirty little jokes. For example, when Harley, when asked about a shared future with her boyfriend, answers with a belch, or when on her birthday she falls into the arms of Power Girl, commenting on the collision with her breasts with the words: “You brought gifts!”. This whole naughty comic series is a bit like an erotomaniac storyteller. On the one hand, we see Harley, who runs almost in her panties to meet Santa Claus in the winter, and on the other – quite a funny censorship of nudity, when random objects in the frame obscure private parts of the body on a nudist beach. This is only for humorous purposes, because the brutal stories presented here would of course not be suitable for younger readers.

Harley in Wonderland

I really like the multicolor of this series. There are both gloomy, dark colors reflecting the atmosphere of shady accounts, as well as lots of vivid shades emphasizing the warm relations of the main characters. There are also a few psychedelic cutscenes when Harley loses consciousness or tells her dreams, where we find a reference to famous fairy tales: The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland .

Although the colors are at a high level, I must admit that the line itself does not always match it. There are stumbles when the characters do not look like their faces at all, or when several people accidentally have exactly the same facial expressions and features. The image on the monitoring of the zoo watchman is also a big slip-up, where we see scribbles that look worse than the drawing of a four-year-old.

Graphically, the series also features two short bonus comics from other creators and alternative covers attached at the end of some notebooks – quite a nice addition!