Harley Quinn #24 Review and **SPOILERS**

Your Mommy’s Alright, Your Daddy’s Alright, They Just Seem a Little Bit Weird

Writers: Jimmy Palmiotti & Amanda Conner 

Artist: John Timms, Joseph Michael Linsner 

Colors: Jeremiah Skipper 

Letters: Dave Sharpe 

Back-Up Writers: Jimmy Palmiotti & Paul Dini 

Back-Up Pencils: Bret Blevins 

Back-Up Inks: J. Bone 

Back-Up Colors: Alex Sinclair 

Cover: Amanda Conner & Alex Sinclair 

Cover Price: $2.99 

On Sale Date: July 20, 2017

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

Okay, so what’s going on right now? Harley’s parents are hanging around, the Mayor is going to kill the Chief of Police, Harley Sinn wants to kill the mayor…is that everything? Oh yeah, Red Tool is joining up with Poison Ivy to throw a surprise party for Harley and there’s that girl from the future that’s supposed to be fighting crime or something? I think that covers everything currently happening in the Harley Quinn title right now. Plus a Paul Dini/Bret Blevins back-up that’s largely inoffensive. So what will we get this issue? Let’s find out, right now!

Explain It!

I’m just gonna be up front about this: it’s another clunky issue like the last one, advancing several stories in turn but providing no satisfying conclusion for any of them. Our opening chapter picks up from the end of the last issue, Harley about to attack Clock King and Sportsmaster, who are attempting to rob the yacht on which Harley is having dinner with her parents and Goat Boy. Sportsmaster is able to bind Harley in a net immediately, so after directing Goat Boy to head butt himself and a baddie off the boat entirely, pulls out a pistol he picked up on the streets and uses it to force Sportsmaster into releasing his daughter. When he does, Harley fishes Goat Boy out of the water, and her mom directs everyone to chuck life preservers in for the other bobbing bad dudes. The NYPD shows up to haul everyone away, but Clock King is able to use one of his doohickeys to teleport himself and Sportsmaster away…he just can’t decide where that will be while his hands are tied. Since anywhere is better than there, they zap away right before the eyes of a police officer and wind up in the bathroom of Power Girl. While she takes a shower. Because of course they do.

Next story bit involves Red Tool and Devani (that woman from the future that won a contest prize to come back in time to kill Harley Quinn, but was convinced by Red Tool to let Harley live and hang out for a year fighting crime until she is automatically zapped back to her time per contest regulations); Red Tool is putting together a gun that shoot knives, while Devani attempts to convince him that they should be out fighting crime together. Devani implies that she knows Red Tool pulled a fast one on her (when he convinced her that this was a different timeline from theirs, where Harley Quinn doesn’t kill Batman, by murdering one of Devani’s ancestors and pointing out that it didn’t erase her from existence) by hiring someone to play as her relative (he did). After some hemming and hawing, Red Tool agrees to defend the night with Devani, after she gets a new costume—but first, they must go to the airport to pick up some cyborgs.

Harley says so long to her parents, and her mom says they’re very proud of her—she’s the product of a criminal and a near-PhD candidate, but she’s made it work and become an upstanding citizen, which is probably just the sort of thing the wife of someone who smuggled a gun onto a yacht might say. After a tearful goodbye, Big Tony tells Harley that it’s Sy Borgman’s birthday tomorrow, and it’s going to be at Harley’s apartment! I guess that’s the cyborg Red Tool might be picking up? To close this issue’s story, the Mayor’s assistant Madison Berkowitz is shown spying on Harley’s pad in Coney Island, and she calls a number she got from the Penguin to hire the Unconquerable 25 for a job—a hit! Which is like an order to kill a person or persons!

The back-up is less of a story than usual. Harley fights the Carpenter for charging so much for their hide-out, but then resolves to get the money by robbing fast food drive-thru windows. I’ve said it about this back-up before: it will likely read better in the trade collection. But I can say the same for the main Harley Quinn story right now, it’s become a series of winks and nods and promises of more details to come. I do have faith that these stories will all be continued and resolved, but I wish so much valuable page space wasn’t lent to these constant teases and nudges. Let’s get one complete story in a comic book, for once!

Bits and Pieces:

Things move along predictably and ploddingly, as we're given more about what's to come in this series than anything happening in the moment. The main story now reflects the back-up in that it's a look at something that might become interesting later. My advice is to wait for the trade collection.

6.5/10