Harley Quinn #70 // Review
She’s been so many things over the years. The little anarchic clown girl has decided that it might be nice to be a pro wrestler. It seems like a natural fit as Harley Quinn enters issue #70. Writer Sam Humphries tells a tale drawn by Sami Basri. Harley’s in the ring in Los Angeles in an underground pro wrestling outfit. All seems well with Harley and her newfound friends until a seedy manager tells Harley to deliberately lose a match to her closest friend in the business. The overall thrust of Humphries’ series seems to have lost quite a bit of steam as Harley lost direction at the end of last year, but this issue manages a few fun moments nonetheless.
Harley didn’t put too much thought into entering the ring. A scrappy, little fighter like her didn’t have to. Didn’t put a whole heck of a lot of thought about the persona she was going to dive into when she got there. Harlene, the Queen, seemed to be a pretty good fit for her. So did the rest of the community of freaks and rejects she started hanging out with. It makes sense that a DC Universe LA pro wrestling circuit might be populated by castaways from society. It also makes sense that there might be something shady going on behind the scenes that might result in murder.
Humphries’ sense of poetry about the adventure serves it well. He pummels darkness into a splashy world of professional fighters that balances quite a bit of humor into the story. There might not be much to the central story corruption in wrestling management, but Humphries keeps it fun. The underlying problem with the issue is that it lacks the overall momentum that Humphries was building-up in the second half of last year as Harley was dealing with the impending loss of her mother and strangely cosmic things. The story here isn’t bad. It’s just not tapped into anything deeper that advances Harley’s journey.
Basri has some great moments in an issue that is otherwise hampered by a less than inspired story set in and around wrestling rings. The pulse of the story rolls from Harley in a hospital bed to Harley in a ring to the inevitable murder and investigation. Basri has a solid handle on the action, but the actual visuals of the issue aren’t all that interesting. A dangerous world of theatrical fighters in the DC universe could have been a really fun place to render visually. Still, Humphries’ script doesn’t give Basri a whole lot of inspiration to really explore what could have been an interesting world in the shadow of established society in a world of aliens and mutants and weird psychos and things. Basri’s handling of the inner psyche of Harley seems solid, but that isn’t nearly enough to keep the issue appealing visually.
It’s fun to see Harley roll through a parade of weird backgrounds in a variety of different stories, but this issue and the one before it are a bit of a jarring departure from the high weirdness that cartwheeled through the title in the second half of 2019. With any luck, Humphries and Basri can find that energy again in the months to come.
