Review: Harley Quinn Vol. 1: Girl in a Crisis trade paperback (DC Comics)

I’ve speculated before that with every new team on the Harley Quinn title, DC is trying to find the perfect formula. Harley is likely up there among DC’s most profitable characters, and the trick is to parlay that into more; it’s the reason of course why Batman is so ubiquitous. Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti’s Harley Quinn was a classic, but did nothing to draw the Harley-curious into the larger DCU; Sam Humphries' run tried to rectify that, involving Harley in crossovers like “Year of the Villain,” while Stephanie Phillips' run positioned Harley squarely in the day-to-day of James Tynion’s Batman.

Somewhere toward the end of Phillips' run, someone in the pipeline apparently decided Harley’s next great frontier is the multiverse, between Phillips' Harley Quinn Vol. 5: Who Killed Harley Quinn? and Frank Tieri’s Multiversity: Harley Screws Up the DCU, and now new series writer Tini Howard’s Harley Quinn Vol. 1: Girl in a Crisis. This first volume is mostly setup, and we know writers and runs have a shelf life in the Dawn of DC era, but I’ll be curious what Howard does with the multiverse landscape before she’s done. The extent to which Harley’s multiversal escapades coincide with her Knight Terrors tie-in certainly suggests DC’s eagerness to grab some eyeballs.

[Review contains spoilers]

I have found Howard’s Catwoman uneven, with leaps in logic and specious characterization side-by-side with an engaging plot. Harley, in all the series' iterations, is given to being looser and wackier, with persistent narration as a feature instead of a bug; all of this perhaps makes the excesses in Howard’s work less noticeable. Crisis starts a little rough, with a confusing sequence with Two-Face among other things, but rights itself as events get underway.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

I enjoyed how Howard’s Crisis spans from the wildly cosmic to the quietly personal; before a grand punch-out with Captain Carrot (a Harley event long overdue), we have Harley contemplating ruining her attempt at heroism by killing Two-Face to launch a multiverse-saving spell. Howard does well in demonstrating there are relatable stakes here for Harley; yes, she has to return an artifact to Captain Carrot lest Lady Quark potentially destroy our world, but a lot of this has to do with things going right for Harley in life and love, Harley wanting to preserve that, but also Harley not quite knowing how to behave when things are going well.

Howard’s Harley is not so steeped in the Bat-verse proper as Phillips' was; Harley is still a junior Bat-sidekick, but there’s a conversation with a judge, for instance, that I don’t think quite reflects current Gotham politics. But this volume does seem quite in line with G. Willow Wilson’s Poison Ivy, seemingly positing Harley and Ivy in the same general place in both books. Howard also provides a surprising amount of detail about Captain Carrot’s latest exploits (at least through Final Crisis, if perhaps missing Justice League Incarnate), making Carrot’s presence truly part of DC’s multiversal fabric and not just an incidental guest spot.

As mentioned, that multiversal content extends through the Knight Terrors tie-in issues collected here. Other titles — Green Lantern, for one — integrated Knight Terrors into their own ongoing plotlines, but I’ve yet to see one where Knight Terrors is almost besides the point and the title just keeps ongoing with its own story; assuredly, I did not expect such from the Harley Quinn title. Here, Lady Quark is on the scene and she literally hands over to Harley the meta-comics from Grant Morrison’s Multiversity, quite an occurrence in what is a crossover tie-in miniseries and not the Harley series itself. The Harley Knight Terrors tie-in is not particularly frightening, but it’s certainly significant.

There’s a wealth of interesting art in Crisis, starting with new series artist Sweeney Boo. If I had any concern that Boo’s art might be too cartoony even for Harley, that’s assuaged by a number of “realistic” character designs — Boo draws a fine Batman in DC’s house style, for one, and Harley’s friend Kevin gets a notable glow-up — but Boo is equally successful drawing Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew pages. Then Hayden Sherman gets weird with a wealth of pop art-inspired images in the Knight Terrors tie-in; I’m pleased to see Sherman has a couple of other DC titles coming up.

Closing out the book are Harley’s “dream” backup stories, though they’re only denoted as such halfway through, which might confuse some readers. In the vein of fun and interesting art, most of what’s here is variously manga inspired — Adam Warren’s zany hyena nightmare, and Erica Henderson and Heather Ann Campbell/Filya Bratukhin each with Gotham City Sirens mecha. Nicole Maines has a fantasy-set tale of Harley-as-knight that’s impressively funny, such to make me wonder what Maines herself would do as writer of the Harley title.

Again, we’re in an era where we can already see the end of Tini Howard’s run coming in March, collections-wise. There’s no speculation how long Howard will stay on this title or if she’ll define Harley for a new era; we’re already one down and two to go. But Harley Quinn Vol. 1: Girl in a Crisis is interesting, breaking no new ground but doing no harm, and maybe most notable is lining up with G. Willow Wilson’s Poison Ivy. I’m looking forward to the next volume of Harley Quinn, multiversal hero.

[Includes original and variant covers]

Rating 2.25