Harley Quinn #24 // Review
There’s a crazy-looking guy who’s about to slash up some man in a suit when she shows up and gives him a quick psychological diagnosis. It’s a clown girl, but it’s not exactly the one he’s expecting. A group of clown girls drags him in to see her, though. She really wants to talk with him. He thinks she’s dead. She lets him know how wrong he is in Harley Quinn #24. Writer Stephanie Phillips manages a tight investigation with artist Matteo Lolli. Atmosphere resonates off the page courtesy of colorist Rain Beredo. The “Who Killed Harley?” storyline gets its best chapter yet in a deeply enjoyable third issue.
So: a clown girl, a psychopath, an alien parasite, and a couple of hyenas are in a warehouse. Sounds like the set-up to a joke. It’s not. But it IS funny. Really funny. Not for Harley, though. She’s serious. She’s been dead. Now she’s not. And she’s upset. She wants answers. So she asks this guy she knew from the asylum (y’know...Arkham?) if he knows anything about her murderer. She knows it wasn’t him. (He’s the one guy in Gotham she KNOWS didn’t kill her, so she figures he’s a good place to start.) She could be right. He might have information.
It’s an interrogation. An issue-length interrogation. (Almost.) THAT doesn’t come along very often. It might seem like kind of a weird way to fill an entire chapter, but Phillips makes it work beautifully with some insanely witty dialogue and a plot almost entirely dominated by the crazy-like-a-fox insanity of Harley. Issue #24 is one of the more clever issues to come along in the current series. Phillips has a brilliant grasp of what makes Harley unique. Harley’s third round launching into an investigation into her own murder is great fun from beginning to end.
The entire thing takes place in an empty warehouse. It might be really, really difficult to make that much look visually appealing, but Lolli has a fun grasp of the drama. Lolli’s intricately subtle wit about the art focuses Phillips’s comedy in a way that makes it feel much bigger than it is. There are so many smartly-framed close-ups that amp up the intensity of the insanity. At her best, Harley feels like the cleverest Bugs Bunny mixed with the darkest Joker with a bit of heroism thrown in. Lolli and Beredo lower more than enough atmosphere in and around the edges of the script to make the fusion work brilliantly.
The bomb that Phillips and company mix in at the end promises to launch the storyline in another really, really weird direction that should be a lot of fun as the series reaches its 25th issue before the end of 2022. Harley has had some difficulty finding the right equilibrium after writer Sam Humphries stopped hanging out with her some time ago. Phillips has clearly managed to find the right pulse.
