Oh Harleen!: Book One Review

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood." - Marie Curie

A covers are Harley and heartbreak, B covers are Harley havin' fun.

DC Comics "Black Label" imprint has gotten off to somewhat of a rocky start. Titles solicited have been returned (Other History anyone?) While the flagship launch title Batman: Damned was marred with a controversy that was probably planned and completely overblown.

If you look closely...you'll see a....PENIS...Doctor Manhattan did it first.

And all this before we get to the massive tease that Three Jokers has been...such a tease that they are now going to "Jason Todd" the whole thing to see a few more issues sold....BUT to look at the glass as half full, we're also getting to some of the really good stuff. Damned wrapped well, Superman: Year One has been....good enough.

But next month brings the really fun sounding "What If" style universe "Tales from the Dark Multiverse." and this week..we gets a cut of steak as Stepjan Sejic fires up the wayback machine for us and sets out to give the definitive origin on a character that came from the classic animated years and has become a tentpole for the comics, Harley Quinn, AKA, Doctor Harleen Quinzel.

That classic voice from the animated series will always ring in my head as I read her, she's one of my faves, and the reason she is goes back to that animated series and the way we met her. A doctor, trying her best to fix a broken man, but instead she gave in and was broken too. That origin has gotten problematic over the years as people have bought into some kinda warped Romeo and Juliet romance for the two characters. This three issue series PRESTIGE FORMAT PRINTING!!! is aiming to reframe that in the way character creator Paul Dini intended.

it's a hard fall and a long road back like the artist intended.

Book one is a clearly jaded Harley reflecting on the years before. They aren't great for her, there isn't a lot of friendship, there isn't a lot of fun, there's some slut shaming and there's a lot of thankless work.The first thing to tell you about this issue is that it's strangely brutal and that's the point.We're here to learn what made a smart and capable woman give in to the worst of her and the worst of someone else, already we're seeing where the cracks were made in her armor and by the end of the issue we're already wondering where the rest of the system was to keep all this from ever going as far as it did.

There's that A Cover showing the breaks...

It's always easy to try and frame a good villain as a sympathetic character. Is Harley even a villain anymore? In the comics, not really, on the screen and tv, not really either. When she came to us as a bubbly bit of comic relief in the Animated Series it was all fun and games, as they've developed her over the years in the comics the importance of her character has grown. She's led the way for a lot of complicated concepts to be presented in the books already so this isn't your typical "make you feel sorry for the girl" story, this is watching a Skywalker foolishly think they can play with the devil. The choices in panel art show us the path she's falling down in a relentless, methodical manner. Her future is easter egged plenty...then other times they take the more traditional path of a mallet.

She's just trying to take care of the patient...she swears

 We already know what all this leaves her, and so does she because the narrator is a clearly jaded Harleen, remembering the hows and whys of how this all took such a drastic left turn. Book one gives us all the "Really Good Reasons" we'd ever want, the art is solid and stark, giving us a real woman in a real place really screwing up. There's nothing overtly "mature" as the Black Label title gave us with Batdong, but there is the very mature idea that we're watching one of the jokers all time greatest jokes, perhaps greater than putting a bullet in Barbara Gordon.

Jokers ruining a good woman for a good long time. A hero comes out at the end, but this is the damage she must endure to get there. If you're a fan, you want to pick this series up, it will be the origin as we reference it moving forward. If you like a solid story, I think this one is going somewhere great, we know the end but the ride is already solid and the gas is getting hit in those last few pages in a way that is heartbreaking and darkly foreboding.

Rev this Harley up, it's not character porn, it's great reading, I can't wait for book two.