The truth of who took out the contract on Harley!
Creative Staff:
Story: Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner
Art: Chad Hardin
What They Say:
Welcome to Ladies’ Night, where Harley gets her butt kicked by Big Bertha Bensonhurts at the roller derby, starting a massive bar fight. Plus, Harley teams up with Poison Ivy to find out who hired all those pesky assassins.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After spending a few issues with the whole Borgman storyline, which had its moments but fell a bit flat for me a lot of the time, Harley Quinn gets back to one of its earliest subplots that has been lurking in the background for most of its run so far. The series has done a good job of keeping a regular thread like that running while also having fun with all sorts of other things all while getting Harley settled in her place and having some fun visits from others. But with the Borgman story completed, she now gets to move on to other things and there’s almost a sense of closure about things in a way that works rather well, allowing the book to go forward with a mostly clean slate and a lot more fun ahead.
What helps with all of this is that Ivy has come visiting again, which we saw at the end of the previous issue, and the two are just a ton of fun together as they run the gamut of how their relationship works and is viewed, particularly with Harley’s personality. The two of them have some fun on the beach at Coney Island, which is where Ivy picks up a man servant in a speedo for awhile that has some great lines and moments throughout the issue, but the main focus is all about figuring out who wants Harley taken out. Since Ivy apparently knew Borgman, they managed to piece together some of the information about how it’s all going down and the reveal that it’s someone doing it right out of Harley’s place, and from her computer, means that most everyone in the building or immediate area that knows her should be a suspect.
So the plan if just sitting tight until they show again certainly makes a certain sense, but it leads to Ivy trying to get Harley to go to sleep while she hides in the closet to watch, which is a just about right length series of gags and silliness that endears you to both of them. The reveal that it’s been Harley all this time plays well to her psychiatry side and how her mind works, but also adds the complication of her sleepwalking into setting an even higher bounty before Ivy can stop her. So there’s a lot of fallout and fighting from that, mixed in with some really good humor. But also the continued morbid humor, which doesn’t work so well for me. While the knife to the throat gag isn’t bad, the body splitting over the wire, which is done off-panel, was just disconcerting. It’s all part of Harley’s character in these kinds of extreme acts being brought out, but it’s still an off-putting area for me, even if it is central to the appeal for many readers.
In Summary:
Bringing this subplot to a close hits at pretty much the right time and it’s a completely Harley kind of thing that happened, which fits in a lot of ways. This installment moves well and feels a bit more dense than I expected, but with lots of solid dialogue and excellent artwork and panel layouts, it flows well and the book feels like it’s worth the money that you paid for it rather than a quick flipper. The pairing of Harley and Ivy continues to be one of the best things about it, though I’m wary of it being about the two of them on a constant basis, but there’s just so much appeal about the dynamic between them that issues with them together just resonate all the more. A solid end to the contract storyline here and lots of silliness and mayhem. Which is what we want.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: June 18th, 2014
MSRP: $2.99
