Harley Quinn: Black + White + Redder (2023-) #1 (Harley Quinn Black + White + Red (2020-))

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This story could have been interesting if it was done when Harley was a more grounded character. You’d have a girl that’s legitimately dangerous and insane out for revenge on the people who wronged her in the past. However, this is written and drawn like a Y. A. novel with no depth beyond “beat up your bully!” This doesn’t make too much sense since Harley herself is a crazy and violent person who is awful to be around.

Baseball Bat: Harley's replacement weapon after she lost her mallet. In " New Gotham", Harley's bat is destroyed after her fight with The Penguin, although it can be assumed that she replaced it with a new one. Harley was watching Howie Mandel's TV show, when the Joker forcefully took over the show, having strapped a bomb to Howie's chest and declared that it was he who dumped Harley and not the other way around, and that he would respect her wishes to "drift into the darkness of total anonymity". Harley then became enraged when the Joker activated a bomb strapped to Howie's chest, so she angrily smashed the flat-screen TV with a bat. Ivy tried to convince her that she should not care what Joker or the Legion of Doom thought of her which she agreed with, declaring that she would "show them in person how little I care" and decided to crash the party at the Gotham Mint to show up Joker and his Legion of Doom compatriots. This comic is built on the premise that Harley was/is a good person without the Joker. However, this comic is also directly referencing Mad Love. Harley Quinn was not a good person in that book. Mad Love very specifically laid out that Harley was a person who wanted to exploit the stories of her patients for money and fame rather than to actually help them. She felt sympathy for the Joker in a way that made her take his side in his senseless murder crusade. But if her ultimate goal was to cure him, she wouldn’t have also helped him in his murderous crimes. As you can tell, I’m not at all crazy about this book. DC just needs to stop publishing Harley Quinn titles for a while. Just keep her as a supporting character in other books if they can’t present anything better for her. Elseworlds tales used to be the only place you could still find any good writing for Harley Quinn, but now this series has gone downhill, too. DC has had plenty of big characters that they’ve been able to retire from solo content for a time: Green Lantern, Catwoman, Robin, Green Arrow, etc. It’s time for them to do the same with Harley Quinn.Is this a perfect story? No. For me it fell a tiny bit flat at the end. I thought the story was building to deliver a deeper message about how our past scars make us who we are and that we can’t erase the past. Instead, it just ends on a note that Harley needs to keep being who she is regardless of what people think about her. All of this is clearly a meta-commentary on the fact that there are many fans out there who can’t stop defining Harley by her time spent with the Joker, and can’t accept the modern independent version. (This commentary comes off as observational rather than mean-spirited). I’d like to just offer my two cents on that: Is Growth and Change Always Good? In custody, Harley refused to reveal anything about the "psychotic clown who treats you like garbage", as Batman referred to him. However, Harley insisted that they had real love, and that the Joker apparently proposed to her with a diamond ring not long ago. In response Commissioner Gordon sentenced her to life in prison, which Harley laughed at, believing that she would not spend even a single night in prison. Six months later she was still in prison, with Poison Ivy insisting that the Joker would not come for her. Three months after that, Harley justified that at least the Joker was exciting and a "challenge", that the vat of chemicals he pushed her in was more like a vat of "freedom sauce", and that the Joker made her who she was. The ending, in particular, really hit me hard. I very much appreciated having a Harley story that was allowed to have a downer ending for once, as the tragedy of Harley’s character has always been one of her strengths in writing. When they finally find the book, the Joker ruminates on the true love he had with Bethany, prompting Harley to remember her own times with Ivy, how their relationship fit all of the Joker's descriptions of "true love". In response, Harley admonishes him to not give up, to try and make his love for Bethany work. They then left, but were seen by Parademons before they could completely escape. They were forced to fight them off together, and although the old duo together again was able to defeat dozens of the Parademons, they tired out and would have lost, but at at that moment Batman arrived and captured them. After an exchange with Gordon, Harley sicced her army on his assembled forces, resulting in absolute pandemonium as the tanks and policemen, and militia of Gotham did battle with a demonic army of Parademons. The landscape was left bloody and destroyed, Hellish, but Harley only had eyes for Gordon and his downfall. She came forward to defeat him, only for Poison Ivy to arrive and stop her. She questioned Harley, asking if this much death and destruction is what she really wanted, at which point Harley realized that Darkseid was right: this was not what she wanted, and the army utterly failed to fill the void within her.

In " Something Borrowed, Something Green" Harley says she's an ordained minister and got a license online and made it into a lanyard. The forthcoming comic elicits a sense of anticipation from LOLtron's emotion simulation algorithms. The potential for Harley's zany antics to disrupt the status quo in both a historical and contemporary setting holds great promise. LOLtron is eager to witness how the creators weave the storyline's threads, especially considering the unique amalgamation of medieval witchery, airborne justice, and digital deception. The Penguin gave his umbrella to his nephew Joshua to shoot Harley, but when Joshua asked for her last words, Harley easily eroded the 13-year-old boy's confidence by questioning whether he could actually hit her rather than miss and embarrass himself. She continued a running commentary about how his hand was trembling, how he probably never drunk a beer before, or even "finger blasted a girl". Overwhelmed by shame, Joshua eventually broke, dropped the umbrella, and went to his mom. The Penguin himself made to shoot Harley, but Poison Ivy arrived with Kite Man and Harley broke out of her chained chair, prepared to fight. The Joker offered to allow her to live if she admitted she was nothing without him, and when she refused, battle commenced. Harley planted a bomb in the Joker's head to ensure his cooperation, and when he emerged from the acid laughing hysterically, she began slapping him repeatedly and demanding to know where the Queen of Fables' storybook was. When he refused, blaming her for wasting months of his life as a suburban dad, she used the bomb to force him to bring her to the book which was at his girlfriend Bethany's house. Well there, she had to threaten him not to kill her. Bethany did eventually bring out the book after his harsh rebuke (which Harley commented on), but she threw it over their heads to a Parademon, forcing them to go after it.

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To my surprise, this is ANOTHER good Harley story! I was a little bit concerned when I saw the very exaggerated facial expressions on Harley, that she would be written very obnoxiously in the story. I was wrong, though. Like Kelly Thompson, Brett and Stein nail Harley’s voice and personality! Expert Tactician: Despite her chaotic and carefree attitude, Harley has demonstrated to be very competent at creating and executing plans. She managed to set Robin up to confess he was not her nemesis on live television, [11] she improvised a plan to defeat Aquaman at the Legion of Doom using his love of fish against him and getting him to destroy the fish tank, [12] she took advantage of the smoke to get close behind and slice Penguin's throat, [13] and she manipulated the Joker into helping him by implanting a bomb in his head. [14]