Written By: Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner
Art By: Amanda Conner with
John Timms, Dave Johnson, Paul Mounts with Hi-Fi, and Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: December 2, 2015
Blabbey Road
*Non-Spoilers and Score At
The Bottom*
DC heard the clarion call
of the masses who demanded, “We want more Harley!” and they created
convention-specific special issues and Annuals. Again, the cry came: “We want
more Harley!!” and DC green-lit a six-issue mini series where Harley Quinn
teams up with Power Girl. Still, the yelling continued: “WE WANT MORE HARLEY!!”
and at this point, Dan Didio should have checked the source of this outcry
because I’m pretty sure it’s Jimmy Palmiotti talking through a voice synthesizer
to make him sound like a crowd of people. Here we have another spin-off
from the regular Harley Quinn title,
a new bi-monthly series titled Harley’s
Little Black Book. Back in the hey day of Three’s Company, a “little black book” was something in which you
keep the phone numbers of your sexual conquests, but in this case it seems to
be a journal of some sort. Are the personal thoughts of Harley Quinn something
we really want to read, considering she otherwise confides in a mangled,
stuffed beaver? Probably not, but read on to be sure!
Explain It!
I haven’t been reading the
regular Harley Quinn book, but I know
what’s going on from reading the reviews on this very handy-dandy website. So I
was aware that Harley had accrued a team of misfit crime fighters she dubbed
the Gang of Harleys. What I didn’t realize is that one of the members is an
anthropomorphic egg with robotic tentacles, which is pretty fantastic. Harley
and Co. have just taken down some drug distributors, and in a scene that just takes
too fucking long figures out that some of these chemicals are being shipped to
London in order to harm Wonder Woman, or something. Harley then directs Eggy
the Egg Guy to take one of the dope dealers to her Coney Island lair and tells
the rest of the gang to hang out and wait for the cops to take the bad guys
away, which suits me just fine because all I want to do is hang out with the
egg dude.
Back at Coney, Egg-Fu’s
cousin does some internet research and discovers that these Wonder
Woman-killing chemicals are being shipped to a bad guy named Barmy Bugger, main
enemy of the London Legion of Superheroes. The London Legion of Superheroes?
Who are they? Well I can tell you that it really doesn’t matter because they
figure into this story in virtually no meaningful way. Harley reveals to MC Egg
that she’s secretly a closet Wonder Woman fan, revealing an actual shrine to
the princess of Themyscira which includes a piece of toast under glass that
presumably has Wondy’s face burnt into it. Then Harley reminisces to her youth
when she was being bullied by three kids, so she put on a deluxe Ben Cooper
Wonder Woman costume and tried to hang one of them from a tree in front of the
school. Just like the real Wonder Woman! To get to London, Eggbro tells Harley
she will have to live in a shipping container on an overseas freighter for two
weeks, which is sort of a weird detail but I’ll go with it.
I feel like we’re
forgetting someone here, someone that has been referenced a lot but we still
haven’t seen…oh yeah! We cut to London where Wonder Woman is chasing down some
of Barmy Bugger’s crew that are absconding in a Mini Cooper with the British
flag on the hood. Is this something they do in England like they do in America,
ride around in cars with their nation’s flag on them? Is there an equivalent to
the Confederate flag in England, maybe the skull and crossbones from a pirate’s
ship? It matters not because Wonder Woman slices the compact car lengthwise
with her super sword and saves the day while Barmy Bugger looks on through
binoculars with sinister intent. Then we interrupt this bit of intrique for two
pages of the London Legion of Superheroes talking a lot of trash to each other
that—truly—has nothing to do with the story. They show up to intercept Harley
Quinn when her boat lands, but are immediately subdued by Barmy Bugger and are
meaningless to the story from here on out. Harley secures herself in one of
Barmy’s crates of chemicals and is carted to his warehouse.
Then we read. A lot. This
is one of a few pages in the issue that are just packed with word balloons and
white-on-red caption boxes that denote pages from Harley’s journal. There are
so many words on this page, you’d think we were in the third act of a Scott
Snyder comic, and this is an oversized issue! Harley figures out that Barmy
Bugger doesn’t want to kill Wonder Woman, he wants to kidnap her and demand
ransom, which is probably the stupidest kidnapping scheme ever devised. Seems
like the more interesting thing to do would be to let this idiot try it and
watch the fun when Diana punches him into next week. Harley takes up the task
of rescuing Wonder Woman, which she decides to do by posing as a delivery
person and gassing Diana so she’ll sleep for two days, then switches clothing
with her (and dons a black wig) to pose as Wonder Woman. The princess’ costume
doesn’t really fit Harley, and there’s a pretty funny scene where she uses body
tape to secure the bodice like some kind of clunky halter top. Of course, she
looks nothing like Wonder Woman.
Just then, Barmy Bugger’s
crew come rappelling into Wonder Woman’s apartment like some well-timed SWAT
team, further exemplifying the stupidity of this plan. Harley does a pretty
good job fighting them off, but she is becoming overwhelmed when suddenly Diana
wakes up due to all of the commotion and takes on Bugger’s crew while wearing
Harley Quinn’s rather tight-fitting gear. The cover of this comic shows the two
of them having switched clothing, but I didn’t realize it was actually going to
be a plot point. Good show for truth in advertising. The two of them together
beat the snot out of the bad guys handily and even rescue the London Legion of
Superheroes, who were being kept chained to a wall in a dungeon like something
out of the Wizard of Id. They all go out to the bar together and laugh it up
when Harley ties herself up in Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth and allows
everyone to ask whatever embarrassing questions they like of her. The end.
Er…actually no, there’s
one more page for some reason. Wonder Woman carries drunk Harley out of the bar
and says she’ll put her on a plane back to New York, and the London Legion of
Superheroes warns that they will be back again, perhaps even having an impact
on the story this time. I’m not sure why this book required two endings, the
second worse than the first, but there you have it. Indeed, much of this book
seems padded out with inconsequential dialogue and drawn-out scenes that go
nowhere in particular. The scene where Wonder Woman is being subdued by gas is
a full page—one full page of Wonder Woman slowly closing her eyelids! It seems
like this could have handily fit into a regular-sized issue and probably saved
us all a buck in the process. All of the art in this book is top notch, and
doesn’t seem at all disjointed despite having three artists. The credits look
screwed up on the title page, but I’m guessing Conner did the pages where
Wonder Woman is wearing Harley’s skimpy get-up and it is “tit”illating. What I
mean is that it’s one of the “breast” images in the book. It really shows what
someone “cans” do when they draw from “mammary.” I’m saying that her boobs are
out, which was a highlight of this otherwise drawn-out head-scratcher of a
book.
Bits and Pieces:
Harley Quinn goes to
London and fails to save Wonder Woman from a middling threat. That’s about the
half of it. The art is great, but for five bucks it’s really got a lot of
fluff. There’s pages of exposition so dense that you’ll wonder if the scripters
were paid by the word. If you like Harley Quinn’s antics, well you’ll see some
of them here, but you can also see them every month in her regular solo title.
So far, what this title has to offer is a fairly thin team-up and some
cheesecake shots of Wonder Woman. Which, incidentally, are no extra charge.
7/10
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