Written by Kami Garcia
Art by Mico Suayan
and Mike Mayhew
Published by DC Black Label
Black Label introduces a new, nine issue series exploring an Elseworlds relationship between a criminologist and a psychopathic killer in Joker/Harley #1.
If you are a binge watcher of Netflix and have graduated from Mindhunter to Cold Case Files and from Jessica Jones to The First 48, this story might be for you.
I’m myself a fan of all these great shows but Joker/Harley might not be what I am looking for in a Harley Quinn reimagining.
We may get closer to at least the Margot Robbie character by the end of this nine issue series but who knows?
This characterization is one we haven’t seen before and is so derivative and genre based it makes you wonder what it has to do with the original concept whatsoever. Elseworlds (I know this is a legacy label that technically does not apply to DC or Black Label books anymore) used to be closer to Marvel’s What If–?
But now we are subjected to culture jamming of placing DC heroes into the zeitgeist with edgy material, Batman’s penis was exposed, and we got a bizarre Superman origin story from Frank Miller where he joins the Navy. Black Label is a confusing imprint, in a world where Vertigo is no longer, DC wants to maintain its street cred by putting out public facing controversial books that are lack a certain authenticity. To quote Heath Ledger’s Joker, “What happened? Did your balls drop off?”
I think I can sum up my review in one damming statement: Joker/Harley is DC’s a repackaged Jessica Jones for the DC crowd.
One major exception, it isn’t that clever or good. Giving Harley a new job (though I’m not quite sure what it is) as a consort to GCPD to help them solve the Joker murders by name-dropping famous serial killers falls as flat as a day old soda from Big Belly Burger.
If you are looking for something akin to Joker by Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Lee Bermejo, you won’t get it. You’ll get something else entirely and I don’t know who asked for this.
New York Times bestselling author Kami Garcia penned this book drawn by veterans Mike Mayhew and Mico Suayan. I’ll extend a criticism I had of the recent Batman/TMNT III book, black and white artwork interspersed with color artwork really throws me off, even with logical decisions like making flashbacks in black and white as the rules set up for the book. I say stick to one color decision for the whole thing. I liked the look of the art in general, the drawings exude a gritty realism but no one on the writing or the art team here is breaking much new ground.
I’m also guessing that Harley Quinn fans of the legacy character will just be confused as I was as to what is going on here. Maybe this Plain Jane will fall madly in love with the murderous psychopath that she is investigating, but it doesn’t look so much like that from the outside.
I’m about 50/50 on picking up the next issue, I may just to see if Harley starts to look and act like any previous versions on the screen or in the page. This version has had a reimagining that I don’t think was needed.
