Harley Quinn X Elvira #4 // Review
Harley doesn’t have much to do at the Hall of Justice. She’s just...eating. She’s already had 38 of Alfred’s Bat Tacos, so she’s approaching a new record. The thing is...she wants to do more than just eat. As luck would have it, she’s alone at the Hall for a reason: there’s something dangerous going on in Central Park and she’s just the one to go an see if she can’t do something about it in Harley Quinn X Elvira #4. The writing team of Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner continue a fun DC/Dynamite Comics crossover with artist Juan Samu and color by Walter Pereyra. (Conner does all of the art on the first couple of paged.)
As it turns out, there’s a giant robot terrorizing Central Park. Most of the Justice League are out on the D.C. K.O. mega-crossover, so the only ones left to save the park are Power Girl and Elvira. Naturally, Harley is going to want to help out. Naturally things are going to get a bit more than a little bit complicated as she enters the conflict. Inevitably, things are going to get more than a little bit goofy before the final panel.
And then Harley wakes-up and things get really weird. That first scene really DOES set the tone for the whole issue, though. The Super Friends-style action is a perfect match for this particular crossover mash-up. Palmiotti and Conner find a pretty solidly entertaining tone for this issue’s story, but the overall humor of the dialogue feels a bit stale as the series reaches its fourth issue without much in the way of sophisticated complexity. It’s like a Hanna-Barbera-style treatment of a concept that could have been a lot more fun. Elvira and Harley are all really interesting characters that could be much more fun together if they were allowed to be a bbit more textured and nuanced.
The art follows the weird cartoon-like rubberiness of the visuals feel suitably amplified and well-suited to the action that takes-up most of the issue. What’s more: Samu’s style matches Conner’s well-enough to be able to keep everything feeling more or less perfectly in line with solid visual continuity throughout the issue. It all feels so well-articulated on so many levels that ends up being a lot of fun, but it’s all more than a little bit weird.
The series DOES follow the overall style and poise of the indie Claypool Elvira comic book series that ran for nearly 15 years. The silliness of it feels like a really good match for the silliness of Harley...but Harley’s silliness always had a darkness riding around underneath it as Harley was suffering from a lot of internal psycho-emotional issues that gave her something more. It’s too bad that Palmiotti and Conner can’t find something a bit more grounded with respect to the potentially appealing complexities of a Harley-Elvira team-up.
