Harleen #1 // Review
Harley Quinn's origin, as told by her creators Paul Dini and Bruce Timm in The Batman Adventures: Mad Love in 1994, is already perfect. It takes a special kind of madness to try to compete with that original story. Still, that's what writer/artist Stjepan Šejić attempts with his new DC Black Label book, Harleen. Judging from the first issue, he proves to be largely successful, with a few caveats.
Of course, Harley, as a character, has had a great deal of exploration since 1994, with appearances in thousands of comics, TV shows, and films, so Šejić has several sources to draw from as he expands that original short tale into three 60 page issues. This first issue follows Harleen Quinzel from the beginning of her mental health research, through her untold first encounter with the Joker and the beginning of her work at Arkham Asylum, and up to her first professional session with her future puddin'.
Šejić smartly contextualizes some of the things we already knew about Harley. For example, he reimagines the dalliance with her professor that Dini and Timm included in their origin, both humanizing her and showing the long-term consequences of that misstep. Another smart choice Šejić makes in writing is connecting Harleen not only with the Joker but with other Batman supporting characters. Including Lucius Fox and Harvey Dent, not to mention the Bat himself. As a Black Label book, Harleen is written for mature readers, though the first issue doesn't have any content that would seem out of place in a standard DC comic aside from a few curse words.
Perhaps not surprising to fans of Šejić's other art, these characters are drawn to be sexy. Šejić even makes the Joker attractive, a choice that may seem baffling to some. However, since the book is told entirely from Harley's perspective, it's arguably essential for us to get into her head and understand her devotion to him. An early sequence of Batman and the Joker brawling inside a cloud of smoke shows the advantage of Šejić's digitally painted style.
The one thing this telling of Harley's origin lacks, so far at least, is a sense of humor. Harleen is characteristically glib, but none of her jokes seem to land, and the Joker isn't that funny either. Everything else, like any good tragedy, is weighed down by the reader's knowledge of where these characters are headed. It'll be interesting to see if Šejić can (or even cares to) lighten things up in future issues.
