Harley Screws Up the DCU #3 // Review
Harley is dealing with some major issues throughout the DC Multiverse. There’s a bit of time travel involved...a bit of misadventure, and a whole lot of misplaced near-comedy as Harley Screws Up the DCU. Her third issue finds Harley accidentally bumping into Krypton right before it blows up and nudging into Barry Allen right before a lightning bolt strikes his lab. So things are messed up, but at least she’s got another version of herself to try to help set things straight as writer Frank Tieri slides through another issue with the aid of artist Logan Faerber.
It was kind of hard for Harley to tell quite what it was that was going on when she fell into the private residence of Jor-El and his wife, Lara. Things get a little mixed up on her way back to Earth as she winds up cramped in the tiniest rocket imaginable. At least there’s a nice, old farm couple there to pick her up when she arrives. Then she stumbles into a lab and ends up being the one variable that narrowly averts a very important accident from happening to Barry Allen...and so Harley has to set things straight there as well.
The DC Universe is a strange place of dramatic physics in which very, very important events can end up launching history in drastically different directions. There’s a lot to be said about this that never quite manages to make page and panel with DC. It’s just too bad that Tieri doesn’t explore the nature of that when he has a chance with Harley...who comes across as a whacky cartoon character without much depth in a superficial spoof of a couple of classic DC tales. So much could have been done with this spoof to turn it into more sophisticated satire. Tieri seems to be actively avoiding any potential depth.
Faerber’s strangely rubbery artwork serves Harley’s light comedy well. The goofiness of the artwork exhibits some degree of dramatic gravity. It’s not quite enough to lend any strength to the conflict that is meant to carry the series from issue to issue, but the more intense edge of Faerber’s art definitely serves to indicate SOME level of stress to the page. The subtler end of satire could have found its way out around the script if there had been more attention to mood and detail, but Faerber chooses to stick with the light comedy mood in Tieri’s script.
Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti’s cover to the issue is a clever spoof on the cover to Action Comics #1. They do an impressive job not only of spoofing the image itself, but also the overall layout of a comic book cover from nearly a century ago. The fact that it still manages to feel like something that looks perfectly in sync with the current era speaks to the talents of Conner, Palmiotti, and original artist Joe Shuster. It’s a classic, iconic image...almost timeless in its own way.
