Harley Quinn #30 // Review
Doctor Fate is answering calls for Zatanna. It might not surprise him to get a call from Harleen Quinzel. She’s trying to get something returned to a dimension that she’s never really been to. Doctor Fate suggests multiversal mail, but Quinzel really needs to deliver it herself. See: it’s this fish...and it’s going to be a colossal headache for her in Harley Quinn #30. Writer Tini Howard continues a fun journey with Harley in another issue that is charmingly conjured to the page by artist Sweeney Boo. The creative team manages to tie things together from a few different humorous angles in another fun series of pages with Harley.
It was a Vorpal Fish. It was destined to defeat the evil manatee Backseid in Earth-26. Captain Carrot was going to deliver the strike right between the eyes of the manatee until it disappeared due to a strange mishap involving Harley, and well...now she has to find some way to be a responsible citizen of the DCU and get the powerful magical...artifact...into the right hands before it’s too late. Unfortunately, there’s this whole problem with the instability of the universe. Harley will have to think on her toes if she’s going to set things right.
Howard has a pretty good handle on the right mixture of action and comedy for a decent Harley story. She leans more in the direction of a silly cartoon than a serious drama. However, she is working quite cleverly with the overall legacy of the character. And she's even advancing Harley’s character development in interesting ways. She hasn't been Joker’s sidekick for a long time. But she has been so far away from being a traditional antihero that she's now becoming more and more responsible. And it's not responsibility that sees her trying to write things in a way that will lead her to greater heroism as things progress. It's a fun development.
Boo’s a pretty versatile artist. Vaccines on Earth-26 have a distinctly animated Warner Bros. feel about them. Those sat in the mainstream DCU might be bending a little bit more in the cartoonish side of things, but there's a definite variation and difference between the two worlds. As dramatic as Harley seems in places, she is overall quite vulnerable. And that vulnerability lends some weight to the drama.
As strange as things have gotten, they've been a lot weirder for Harley in the years past. Howard is taking the character a little bit less seriously than she's been taken before. And that's perfectly fine. She's a very dynamic and rubbery sort of a hero who could easily fit into just about any corner you happen to shove her in. It's one of the reasons why she's been so successful for so long. She can do serious heart-crushing drama, and she can do totally bonkers slapstick. Sometimes in the same panel. Howard seems to understand this. And she seems to be moving the character in a direction that can fully embrace every angle.
