Love the Quinn You’re In
Written By: Jimmy Palmiotti & Frank Tieri
Art By: Mauricet, Alex Tefenkgi, Hi-Fi
Letters By: Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $3.99
On Sale Date: June 8, 2016
**NON-SPOILERS AND
SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**
As cable television continues to
lose ground to the more catered world of Internet media, we’re starting to see
some weird shows. Lots of ghost and monster hunting going on. Brilliant
programs that are literally extended shots of puppies and kittens. And at the
higher numbers, what looks like local television from elsewhere around the
country, channels that subsist almost totally on re-runs of classic shows and
infomercials. Sort of brings me back to the network television of my youth.
Anyway, I had the great fortune to catch an episode of Hogan’s Heroes on one of these channels a week or so ago, a show
I’d not seen since the early 1990s. I loved it, but for a different reason than
when I was a teenager—just the very idea of this multicultural crew being held
at a Nazi prison camp seemed to be the logical extension of films like Bridge on the River Kwai and From Here to Eternity, a sort of
reaffirmation to staid American culture that the rest of the world still gave a
shit about them. I think I originally hoped to reach a point where I could
compare Hogan’s Heroes to Gang of Harleys, but I find that I can’t,
so enjoy my review of issue #3!
This issue picks up exactly where
the last one left off, with the remaining members of the Sinn-dicate on a
rooftop across the street from Bolly Quinn’s parents’ restaurant, now
demolished by an RPG. The Gang of Harleys (save for Coach who is back at Harley
Quinn’s in Coney Island with Tony and the crew, and Hannukah Quinn for no
particular reason) was in that restaurant, and though they don’t see any bodies
the big one who likes his stupid Harley Sinn costume phones in their success. And
so this six-issue miniseries ends prematurely with issue number thr…wait,
there’s more? It turns out Bolly and Harlem saw the rocket launch from the
rooftop, ran inside and ushered everyone into the kitchen’s industrial
refrigerator, which are well known to be bomb-proof. I’m not sure that all of that
could have been accomplished in the time it takes for a fired rocket to cross
the street, but I’ll go with it. Unfortunately, the blown-up restaurant’s
rubble is blocking the door to the cooler and the Gang is freezing, owing in no
small part to the fact that most of them wear leather bikinis. Wait…people
trapped in a commercial freezer? This could be one of my favorite episodes of Three’s Company!
After much bickering and eating of
the restaurant’s ice cream, the Gang discovers a trap door in the floor of the
freezer, and downstairs looks to be the remnants of an old Speakeasy.
Eventually, they emerge in beautiful Bum Crap Alley, and Bolly is able to get a
cell phone signal again. Coach, who has been frantically trying to reach them,
remarks on their advantage of being presumed dead, and tells them to convene at
her house…a well-appointed mansion in Woodstock, NY. We learn the same accident
that robbed Coach’s sight and ability to walk also took the lives of her
parents, but also made her super rich and able to set up a high-tech war room.
Am I crazy, or could the Gang of Harleys support their own book about now? It’s
sort of like a Juggalo Birds of Prey
with a twisted Oracle at the HQ. Using her gadgetry, they’re able to determine
that Harley Sinn was originally an applicant to the Gang of Harleys, and they
trace her to a Brooklyn warehouse bought under her real name. Oh, and uh,
Hannukah Quinn is hiding out in a motel with her great-uncle Sy Borgman. In
case you were curious.
So while the Gang is taking the long
drive back from Woodstock to Brooklyn, Harley Quinn plays fake-nice with Harley
Sinn as she breaks loose of her bonds and then plays real-tries to choke her to
death. Before Sinn can expire, however, the Sinn-dicate returns and belts
Harley over the head with a chair. They’re about to mud stomp her, but Sinn
protects Quinn and says that she’s going to co-run the new Gang of Harleys,
which is the poor dopes working for Sinn if you didn’t get it. They think
that’s all well and good, except that their paychecks bounced, prompting Sinn
to make a phone call to what we can assume is a wealthy parent. She threatens
to humiliate them at the next charity ball if her accounts aren’t unfrozen,
which seems to work, but the Sinn-dicate doesn’t want to fire another small
missile at an Indian restaurant until they get paid. They threaten Sinn, which
will turn out to be a huge mistake. The Gang of Harleys eventually makes it to
the warehouse, and bust right in like the lovable hotheads they are. When they
get to the lair proper, they discover a bloodbath—Harley Sinn has massacred
everyone in her admittedly small posse. The one guy that likes his costume is
alive enough to warn them that the place is rigged with time bombs to explode shortly
after they enter, so they all jump out the windows for a terrific shot of an
explosion worthy of Rambo: First Blood
Part 2. Next up: where is Harley Quinn? Where is Harley Sinn? And will
Hannukah Quinn get involved?
This was a pretty crazy issue that
had some unlikely geography, but was pretty entertaining and enjoyable
nonetheless. It broke from the formula of previous issues, which had been a
show of each member in their respective ethnic environments, instead focusing
primarily on their growing familiarity and care for one another. Again, this
all takes place in Harley Quinn’s richly-colored and weird world, so if you can
just read a comic book without wondering why there’s a goat-human walking
around in a tank top, then you can pass on this. But this mini is better than
some other Harley Quinn miniseries,
in that it has an interesting and fairly detailed cast of characters.
Bits and Pieces:
7.5/10
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