Harley Quinn #72 // Review
Anarchic clown girl, Harleen Quinzel's good friend, was murdered. She's sure of it. Everyone else may think it was suicide, but she knows better, and she'd going to find out why in Harley Quinn #72. Booster Gold guest-stars in an issue written by Sam Humphries with art by ABEL. The complexities of a really good murder mystery are more or less ignored in favor of a whole lot of plot details that don't add up to a whole heck of a lot. The script features some interesting bits of psycho-emotional development for Harley, but the story itself is largely uninspiring.
Harley's trying to engage Booster Gold in a plan to find out who really killed her friend. It's going to be dangerous. It's going to be irrational. Readers may lack a whole connection to the dearly departed in question, but Harley's bound and determined to find out what happened to her. She's determined to bind Booster to the cause as she discovers strange feelings for him and a deeper understanding of what it is that she's REALLY after in finding out who the real murderer was. Booster is reluctant to help her even as he finds that he may have feelings for her.
What Humphries is attempting here IS interesting. Harley was a mental health clinician before all the weirdness with Joker at Arkham. There's a lot of detective work involved in a job like that. There's real potential in a slowly reforming Harley getting re-connected with her inquisitive investigative nature. It could reveal a little more about her search for meaning after her mother's death, but it doesn't. Instead, there are a host of details that jump out at odd angles in a rambling narrative that's really heavy on the text without bothering to engage the art on a profound level.
The art DOES manage some intense psychological moments in the course of Harley's restless meandering from one cover of the issue to the other. There's a subtle variation in Harley's emotions as they play out on her face. ABEL manages real subtlety and nuance in the emotional end of the story. Still, the danger and action lack the forceful impact they need to ground the story in the kind of intrigue that Humphries is laying into the script. ABEL's best moments are between Harley and Booster. There's a real tension between them. ABEL vividly captures that tension.
Harley's adventure in California continues. Any real potential for Harley exploring life in the wake of everything that's happened seems as distant as ever when it really SHOULD be closer to the center of the story. The jerkiness of the pacing could be a bit more charming, but Humphries and company don't even necessarily manage that much in another issue that is just beyond the reach of being good. The story isn't finished yet, though. Judging from the state of things at issue's end, there's one more issue that could bring recent events into sharp focus if Humphries can manage it.
