Written by: Leah Williams
Art by: Mirka Andolfo
Colors by: Romulo Fajardo Jr.
Letters by: Steve Wands
Cover art by: Jorge Corona, Sarah Stern
Cover price: $4.99
Release date: December 17, 2025
First Impressions
The opening pages immediately undermine their own tension by filtering everything through Harley's juvenile wisecracks and deflection tactics, turning what should be a high-stakes knockout round into a therapy session punctuated by violence. Zatanna enters the arena knowing full well that Darkseid's coming to annihilate reality and that this tournament is the universe's last lifeline, yet she hesitates, pulls punches, and acts genuinely surprised that someone with actual stakes would fight to win. The premise collapses under the weight of characters behaving like they forgot the briefing.
Plot Analysis
The story opens as Zatanna enters a mystical arena to face Harley Quinn in Round Five of an Omega Tournament designed to forge a champion powerful enough to stop Darkseid from destroying the universe. Every participant supposedly understands the existential stakes: lose, and everything ends. The tournament mandates hand-to-hand combat only but (somehow) Zatanna can still cast magic, theoretically leveling the playing field against Harley's relentless physicality. The format requires winning two of three rounds.
Rounds One and Two devolve into Harley using psychological harassment rather than legitimate combat strategy, repeatedly taunting Zatanna about living in her dead father's shadow and generally being insufferable between punches. Zatanna, despite claiming she's here to save the universe, consistently holds back and refuses to exploit her magical healing factor, her durability advantages, or even basic combat aggression. Harley repeatedly calls her out for cowardice and halfheartedness, which somehow becomes the catalyst for Zatanna to access her darker instincts. The fight becomes less about skill or determination and more about Harley successfully goading someone into violence through emotional manipulation.
By Round Three, the arena transforms into a dimensional space that only Zatanna can perceive, gifting her an unnatural and unexplained advantage. Harley immediately recognizes the mismatch and consciously throws the match, deliberately taking herself out rather than adapting or fighting harder. Harley's final act involves guilting Zatanna into believing that embracing ruthlessness is actually noble and promising that if Zatanna wins the entire tournament as King Omega, she'll resurrect Harley from the dead. Zatanna, apparently needing a dead friend to feel motivated about saving reality, kills her best friend and advances with newfound confidence.
Writing
Leah Williams keeps the fight moving, which is the only structural element that lands. The pacing itself works mechanically across three rounds. However, the dialogue is where the writing becomes actively hostile to narrative credibility. Harley's constant quipping, self-aware commentary, and refusal to take any part of this seriously makes her feel less like a character with agency and more like a recurring annoying sound effect. The repeated interruptions for jokes undermine any sense that Harley actually cares about winning or understands what losing means. The psychological warfare angle could work if Harley were surgically precise about it, but instead she's just annoying, making her taunts land as obnoxious rather than strategically effective.
More critically, Williams writes Zatanna as someone actively self-sabotaging her own tournament performance, which contradicts basic character logic: if you entered a life-or-death tournament to save the universe, you fight to win, not to prove some point about fairness. The third-round introduction of the dimensional space feels like a narrative Band-Aid applied because neither character was providing compelling combat on their own merits.
Mirka Andolfo's linework remains technically solid, with clear spatial positioning during combat sequences and expressive character reactions. Romulo Fajardo Jr.'s color work darkens appropriately across the rounds to signal emotional escalation. However, the art can't compensate for the writing problem: you're watching two people who should be desperate for survival instead looking like they're at a friendly sparring session for the first two rounds. The compositions emphasize banter over brutality, which reinforces the comedy-club feel that undermines the stakes. The final panels showing Zatanna's transformation into something darker are rendered effectively, but they arrive as a punchline to a setup that failed to convince you anything real was at stake. Steve Wands' lettering clearly differentiates Harley's casual tone from Zatanna's dialogue, but that distinction just highlights how tonal misalignment the entire issue feels.
Harley's characterization is a consistent disaster in this context. She's written as someone cracking jokes while supposedly fighting to survive, throwing away a tournament round for reasons that amount to "I want to give my friend a motivational speech." This isn't character development; it's character incoherence. A character who genuinely cared about the stakes wouldn't volunteer to lose a tournament round, especially not to a friend she knows is holding back. Zatanna's arc is worse because it hinges on her being written as actively dumb about her own tournament participation. She entered a no-magic tournament, was told the stakes are universal annihilation, and then continuously refuses to fight like she actually needs to win. The supposed revelation that she needed her friend's death as motivation to care about saving the universe is presented as character growth, but it's actually character indictment. She knew what was at stake before the fight started; Harley's manipulation just gave her permission to care, which is a fundamentally broken character motivation. Neither character displays the logical consistency you'd expect from people who supposedly understand they're fighting for reality's survival.
The tournament concept itself is competent but uninspired, and the no-magic constraint is genuinely interesting on paper. The execution completely betrays the premise. A no-magic tournament is supposed to create tension through enforced limitations, but instead both characters operate well outside the supposed constraints because Harley uses psychological manipulation (which isn't restricted) and Zatanna apparently gets rewarded with unexplained perceptual advantages in the final round. The "stripped down to fundamentals" framework fails because the fundamental human elements on display are incompetence and emotional manipulation rather than skill or determination. The comic wanted to tell a story about two characters forced to find new ways to fight without their usual tools, but instead it tells a story about one character refusing to fight seriously and the other character needing external emotional pressure to care about universal annihilation.
The art execution remains technically competent throughout, with no clarity issues during combat sequences and expressive character work that communicates emotion effectively. Andolfo and Fajardo Jr. do solid work making every panel readable and visually engaging, which is foundational work that the comic at least gets right. The page count gives you decent length relative to the cover price, so you're not being cheated on material volume. If you're already invested in the larger tournament arc, there's enough momentum carrying over from other rounds to make this installment feel part of a larger narrative.
The fundamental problem is that both characters operate as if the stakes don't exist. Harley treats a life-or-death tournament like a comedy bit, constantly wisecracking and apparently unconcerned with actually winning despite Darkseid supposedly coming to destroy everything. Zatanna enters a tournament she understands will determine reality's fate, then actively underperforms in a fight she should be fighting to win, making her hesitation feel like lazy characterization rather than earned reluctance. The psychological manipulation angle would work if either character displayed actual stakes-awareness, but instead they feel like they're performing in a side story that nobody actually cares about. The unexplained dimensional space in Round Three breaks the no-magic constraint that was supposed to create tension, and the off-panel death of a main character means the emotional climax gets told rather than shown. Harley's death happening through dialogue removes any visual or visceral impact, and her entire motivation (trusting that resurrection is possible based on a dead friend's word) remains unconvincing. The comic also never adequately explains why Zatanna would believe a resurrected Harley is actually achievable, making the moral compromise feel arbitrary rather than genuinely difficult.
Art
Mirka Andolfo's linework remains technically solid, with clear spatial positioning during combat sequences and expressive character reactions. Romulo Fajardo Jr.'s color work darkens appropriately across the rounds to signal emotional escalation. However, the art can't compensate for the writing problem: you're watching two people who should be desperate for survival instead looking like they're at a friendly sparring session for the first two rounds. The compositions emphasize banter over brutality, which reinforces the comedy-club feel that undermines the stakes. The final panels showing Zatanna's transformation into something darker are rendered effectively, but they arrive as a punchline to a setup that failed to convince you anything real was at stake. Steve Wands' lettering clearly differentiates Harley's casual tone from Zatanna's dialogue, but that distinction just highlights how tonal misalignment the entire issue feels.
Character Development
Harley's characterization is a consistent disaster in this context. She's written as someone cracking jokes while supposedly fighting to survive, throwing away a tournament round for reasons that amount to "I want to give my friend a motivational speech." This isn't character development; it's character incoherence. A character who genuinely cared about the stakes wouldn't volunteer to lose a tournament round, especially not to a friend she knows is holding back. Zatanna's arc is worse because it hinges on her being written as actively dumb about her own tournament participation. She entered a no-magic tournament, was told the stakes are universal annihilation, and then continuously refuses to fight like she actually needs to win. The supposed revelation that she needed her friend's death as motivation to care about saving the universe is presented as character growth, but it's actually character indictment. She knew what was at stake before the fight started; Harley's manipulation just gave her permission to care, which is a fundamentally broken character motivation. Neither character displays the logical consistency you'd expect from people who supposedly understand they're fighting for reality's survival.
Originality & Concept Execution
The tournament concept itself is competent but uninspired, and the no-magic constraint is genuinely interesting on paper. The execution completely betrays the premise. A no-magic tournament is supposed to create tension through enforced limitations, but instead both characters operate well outside the supposed constraints because Harley uses psychological manipulation (which isn't restricted) and Zatanna apparently gets rewarded with unexplained perceptual advantages in the final round. The "stripped down to fundamentals" framework fails because the fundamental human elements on display are incompetence and emotional manipulation rather than skill or determination. The comic wanted to tell a story about two characters forced to find new ways to fight without their usual tools, but instead it tells a story about one character refusing to fight seriously and the other character needing external emotional pressure to care about universal annihilation.
Positives
The art execution remains technically competent throughout, with no clarity issues during combat sequences and expressive character work that communicates emotion effectively. Andolfo and Fajardo Jr. do solid work making every panel readable and visually engaging, which is foundational work that the comic at least gets right. The page count gives you decent length relative to the cover price, so you're not being cheated on material volume. If you're already invested in the larger tournament arc, there's enough momentum carrying over from other rounds to make this installment feel part of a larger narrative.
Negatives
The fundamental problem is that both characters operate as if the stakes don't exist. Harley treats a life-or-death tournament like a comedy bit, constantly wisecracking and apparently unconcerned with actually winning despite Darkseid supposedly coming to destroy everything. Zatanna enters a tournament she understands will determine reality's fate, then actively underperforms in a fight she should be fighting to win, making her hesitation feel like lazy characterization rather than earned reluctance. The psychological manipulation angle would work if either character displayed actual stakes-awareness, but instead they feel like they're performing in a side story that nobody actually cares about. The unexplained dimensional space in Round Three breaks the no-magic constraint that was supposed to create tension, and the off-panel death of a main character means the emotional climax gets told rather than shown. Harley's death happening through dialogue removes any visual or visceral impact, and her entire motivation (trusting that resurrection is possible based on a dead friend's word) remains unconvincing. The comic also never adequately explains why Zatanna would believe a resurrected Harley is actually achievable, making the moral compromise feel arbitrary rather than genuinely difficult.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
Follow @ComicalOpinions on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TwitterThe Scorecard
Writing Quality (Clarity & Pacing): 1/4Art Quality (Execution & Synergy): 3/4
Value (Originality & Entertainment): 0.5/2
Final Verdict
DC K.O.: Harley Quinn vs. Zatanna #1 is a tournament side-round that wastes its premise and character potential on tone-deaf choices. Harley's refusal to take anything seriously combined with Zatanna's inexplicable reluctance to fight for universe-saving stakes creates a narrative that undercuts itself at every turn. You're spending money on a fight where neither combatant seems to understand why they're actually fighting, which is a fundamental failure for a tournament story.
4.5/10
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