Like a bad habit…
Creative Staff:
Story: Brian Buccellato, Christopher Sebela
Art: Pop Mhan
Colors: J. Nanjan
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Old lovers are reunited–sort of–when Harley meets the Joker from the other Earth. And then he wants to meet her gang.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a few issues set in the series now we’ve gotten a good feel for the flow of it and the way Harley is talking about it in hindsight, though from how far from progress within the “game” itself remains to be seen. Buccellato and Sebela have made the last few issues fun in seeing Harley come into her own as a boss who cares and this issue brings back Pop Mhan for the artwork, which is fantastic as I loved his opening issue. With this one, he gets to really work the Joker designs well and put him through his paces with Harley, something that really hits a sweet note throughout with the physicality and flow of the panels and pages overall on the digital device side.
Harley’s discovery of the Joker in the world is something that she reacts to as one would expect by wanting to eliminate this faker that’s crimping on “her” Joker. The first half of the book has her essentially giving him a beat down only to discover that he’s surprisingly gifted and talented, making her believe slowly but surely that he is the real Joker, albeit one from another world that I’m not quite sure that she gets as it’s presented. This Joker is familiar enough to be sure and the dialogue is spot on as the two go at it, including her narration with how she’s feeling as it all goes along, but it’s Mhan’s show here throughout the opening half and he delivers beautifully. It also takes a great step with what Nanjan does in giving us a perfect kind of purple for him that when combined with his face coloring and hair simply elevates the character to iconic status.
The problem with this book, and it’s not really a problem in the proper sense, is that Harley ends up going right back to who she was. She even chides herself in both narration and at the moment about it but she’s simply Mr. J’s girl in her mind. She knows the progress she’s made and she knows that he’s pretty crazy, having seen what he did on this world, but she still gifts him not only herself but her army she’s put together. That doesn’t sit well with them and we see how they’re putting together a plan to execute the Joker, but I love seeing how conflicted Harley is throughout this in the two forms because she knows it but still finds herself trapped by her feelings. That may be hard for some to understand, but the real world regularly shows people going back to those in their lives that are bad for them that’s essentially inexplicable. I’m curious to see how the writers work this so as to not get crushed by reaction to it because there are so many ways it can be viewed. That said, this is an alternate timeline and I want writers to take chances and mess with our expectations by upending things.
In Summary:
Injustice: Ground Zero is hinting at some bigger things coming into play as the tidbits are here with Batman captured and Superman playing with Doomsday, but how that will shake out remains to be seen, especially for this non-game-player. Buccellato and Sebela work a solid job here on reuniting a couple that most Harley fans don’t want to see so I’m definitely curious to see how it all unfolds. There’s a lot to like in the conflict that’s place here so I’m not against it and am curious to see if they’ll do something neat with it. The big win here is having Pop Mhan back on board as he really brings this to life in the action sequences but also the expressiveness of just about everyone, but particularly for Harley and Joker.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: November 1st, 2016
MSRP: $0.99
