Harley Quinn: Black + White + Redder #1 // Review
Harleen certainly IS the most beloved clown girl in contemporary pop culture. She kinda already did the old color scheme a long time ago. Why go back to the limited chromatic thing again...especially with a character who is so delightfully colorful? Artist Kevin Maguire does a very sharp job of justifying the limited use of only three major colors in Harley Quinn: Black + White + Redder #1. Writer Chip Zdarsky gives the visuals a place to be in a story that has Harley entering the Fortress of Solitude. It’s an anthology title, so there are other stories as well. Writer Leah Williams also explores Harley’s past as a flying gymnast with artist Natacha Bustos. There’s also a third feature co-written by Nick Giovannetti and semi-comic Paul Scheer with Harley and fellow former Joker sidekick Gaggy Gagsworthy.
Harley and Ivy are trekking through the snow. It’s cold. It’s snowy. It’s the North Pole. One of the harshest environments on Earth is bound to get anyone upset. People say things they don’t really mean when they’re under that kind of stress. Ivy mentions killing Harley for warmth. They’re there to break into the Fortress of Solitude--a task that turns out to be deceptively easy. What they find when they get in to the Fortress of Solitude is going to be MUCH more difficult than simply getting in.
Zdarsky has a clever sense of comedy. The basic premise of “The Man of Steal” is remarkably clever to begin with. There’s a lot of very, very sharp humor that lands in various places in and around the script for the story as well. Ivy and Harley are a lot of fun together. Given the right comedic energy, they’ve got quite an appeal. Williams’s story is similarly fun in a completely different way. And then there’s that last story...Giovannetti and Scheer manage something delightfully tolerable with a bit of cheap action comedy between Harley and Gaggy.
Maguire’s kinetic sense of humor matches Zdarsky’s style of wit almost perfectly. Visual gags land with precision thanks to a deep respect for the basic danger inherent in the situation. The unforgiving brutality of the North Pole serves as its own kind of comedy in the opening of the story. The dangers lurking inside the Fortress of Solitude are actually a lot of fun when they’re not specifically tied to Clark and his weird adventures. There’s a kind of tenderness to Bustos’s artwork that feels well-suited to a tale of a young Harley.
Harley Quinn is hit-or-miss. She can be a lot of fun if she’s caught at the right angles. It’s really, really difficult to do so, though. She’s such an erratic personality. What works well with one writer might not necessarily work really well with another. The cool thing about an anthology is that if one creative team doesn’t necessarily have a fun relationship with the clown girl, there’s a good chance that she’s going to get along with at least one of the other two. In this issue, that connection is made quite well with Maguire and Zdarsky.
