A dark past brought to light.
Creative Staff:
Story: Marguerite Bennett
Art: Mirka Andolfo
Colors: Wendy Broome
What They Say:
Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy make it to Berlin, where Harley ill-fully finds the Joker’s Cabaret in the hands of the Joker’s Daughter! It’s a Harley versus the Joker’s Daughter brawl that you don’t want to miss!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the third installment of the Love Stories arc, which brings this interlude piece to a close, we return to that of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. I’ve struggled with Harley in this incarnation and part of that comes from her being used irregularly compared to some of the others – which is a surprise considering her popularity in the mainline works. Something about the interpretation hasn’t clicked for me yet and part of that is because she hasn’t gotten the same time and focus most of the others have. So while I get interested in seeing what Marguerite Bennett has planned when the character returns I also find myself somewhat ambivalent because it’s not clicked for me yet. But at least there’s Poison Ivy!
Admittedly, Ivy’s a lighter part of this book as it’s very much focused on Harley and some of her origin story preceding from when we met her before. The time with Ivy is spectacular, however, as we get more bonding between the two in that playful way where neither is quite sure that there’s a there to be had yet. It serves more as bookends but damn if they aren’t the most delightful bookends, with the teasing at the start and the follow through at the end that just warms the heart. We’ve seen this pair close in the mainline continuity over the years by different writers and artists but I suspect a run of this by the team here would go over like gangbusters. And that would be even if the two just lounged around issue after issue talking about things on a Sunday morning in comfy clothes with smiles and stretches.
Okay, okay, sorry about that drift.
The main focus here upon their arrival in Berlin is the Joker’s Daughter’s cabaret and the way Harley has been drawn there. This provides for the bulk of the issue being flashback as we see her and her Mistah J as they were basically a kind of moonshine running Bonnie & Clyde from the depression era period. It’s fantastically fun in seeing how it played out and how things went south for them as Mistah J essentially grew darker and darker. The Joker/Harley dynamic has gone through a strong fix in the past decade in the mainline side and compressing that here as Bennett does is excellent because of how it allows Harley to realize how off the rails he’s gone and how she has to extract herself from it. And it lets Mirka Andolfo go all in on the period clothes even more as well as just totally having fun with her Mistah J interpretation alongside Killer Croc and Batgirl in a surprisingly creative twist that leaves me wanting a whole lot more of what’s going on with her.
In Summary:
Just wow. Bennett and Andolfo have delivered consistently throughout this series with some great work and they still manage to find ways to just delight me that I didn’t expect. Harley feels more realized now than she has in the past and that has me hopeful for a bit greater presence in installments going forward as she’s been underused. The background here is solid, creative, and just engaging across the board to see brought to life in a new way. That it’s all done up in some great artwork from Mirka Andolfo just elevates it all. The 1941 pieces stand out all the more for me because of Poison Ivy, but I loved the style and design that went into the earlier pieces. Yet those first two pages and that end sequence. Why aren’t there waves of posters and prints being made constantly for this series by these fantastic art teams doing some of the best work DC Comics is producing?
Grade: A-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: May 6th, 2016
MSRP: $0.99
