“’Twas The Night Before Quinn-mas”
Creative Staff:
Story: Frank Tieri
Art: Tom Fowler
Colors: Brian Reber
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
Harley thought she was doing a good deed by busting up the ring of crooks that stole all of Coney Island’s Christmas presents – but when her Gang gets a little overzealous and the gifts all wind up roasting in an open fire, the task of replacing every single one lands in her distinctly un-Santa-like lap!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Superheroes and the holidays are always a little dicey and I’ll easily admit that after some forty years of reading comics, well, I’ve seen a lot of these stories come and go and there’s not much original out there. But you can have a lot of good simple fun with the premise if done right. Frank Tieri steps into the writer’s seat here as he sets Harley up for an amusing gangwar that’s pretty appropriate for this. And it sets Tom Fowler to illustrate which means there’s a huge gaggle of great background characters to pay attention to here, some of which get some great dialogue out of Tieri at times. Brian Rebar does a solid job with the color design specific to this run and it feels like it’s well-balanced when it comes to the red aspect.
The story for it has a Christmas-themed gang that has stolen lots of good and set up shop in Coney Island to make their big haul for the holidays. They’re not exactly thrilled with the costumes that they’re wearing but it’s amusing watching an old but really toned and muscled Santa hold court over this group of hooligans. Harley’s arrival on the scene turns everything into chaos, however, which means there are a lot of good fight sequences to be had here that unfold in a kind of sprawling way that definitely amuses me with all of its details and cast used. But we also just get the whole thing blown-up when Red Tool shows up and uses his new holiday bazooka to eliminate all the bad guys.
And all of the presents as well.
The Red Tool definitely amuses if you can still find it an amusing gimmick but he does have some good lines through the back half of this. It’s here that Harley tries to figure out how to help the people of Coney Island now that the presents are destroyed and her initial concepts aren’t the best. Parts of criminals that have been killed don’t delight most of the population and when the rest of the gang opts to start giving away her stuff, she’s definitely not thrilled at the idea of her stuffed beaver being given away. But as we watch them go through a couple of the houses and interact with family members there, it’s all over the map and builds to a really good silly piece before just going hog wild with a Quinn-mas.
In Summary:
Harley and her gang rumbling with a badass Santa and his gang is exactly the kind of holiday foolishness that needs to exist. It’s unfortunate that you can’t drop a bunch of these at the digital price into shops and elsewhere and just get them pushed on people because it’s a whole lot of fun. Tieri’s got a lot of good dialogue that plays to both young and older audiences while Fowler’s artwork is great as it captures a lot of people in a lot of weird situations. Definitely worth a second and third read-through to find all these little details that delight.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology and Amazon Kindle
Release Date: December 25th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99