Los Angeles can be a seedy place if you know where to look. A clown girl in a pro wrestling outfit is going to know well where to find the shady element as she investigates an apparent suicide in Harley Quinn #71. Sam Humphries’ script attempts to fuse Harley’s milieu with a hard-boiled detective plot in the mold of Dashiell Hammett. Sami Basri delivers the story to the page with a respectable stylishness that fails to add any charm to a story that doesn’t quite manage to appeal on all those levels that Humphries’ best work has in the past.

Harley was good friends with a fellow pro wrestler who has died of a drug overdose. She tries her best to console her friend’s daughter, but they both know for a fact that the woman in question couldn’t have possibly killed herself, which had generally been the assumption around the ring. Clearly, foul play was involved, and Harley is going to look into it with the aid of Booster Gold. She’s driven to find answers, but in the shadow of losing her own mother, is Harley truly psychologically prepared to discover what she might find in the darkest corners of LA? 

Humphries’ whodunnit murder mystery is a smart attempt at fusion as Harley’s DC universe crashes into LA with a thud. The Dashiell Hammet-by-way of DC has some appeal, but Humphries is juggling way too much of Harley’s baggage to really execute it with the kind of style which could live-up to the mash-ups potential. What Humphries is writing has appeal to it, but the plot feels rushed as Harley careens through a mystery that really should have been explored slowly in a moody saunter through shadows of the DC universe’s LA. Humphries rolls through jokes when he could have done so much more.

Basri has a solid handle on the kind of comedy that Humphries is delivering. He also has a solid handle on the drama. There are some very serious moments here that Basri brings to the very sharp tension. The package as a whole lacks the style it could have had, though. There’s potential visual comedy in a clown girl contrasting against weird darkness in LA, but Basri only glides along the surface of the style. The rhythm of the story is maintained. The action of the story hits with the right amount of impact, but there’s so much atmospheric style that could have happened in this chapter of Harley’s life that simply doesn’t make it to the page. 

After the death of her mother, Harley’s series hasn’t had quite as much impact as it had before. Harley’s restless and so is her comic book...not quite finding the footing it needs to really define itself. The loose talent in the pairing of Basri and Humphries is still there, but it’s not quite connecting-up the way it had at the end of last year. There are a few elements in play in this issue, which could lead to something better. Time will tell if Humphries and Basri are able to capitalize on it.

Grade: C+