Harley Quinn #73 // Review
Things have seemed hopelessly muddled for a certain crazy clown girl lately. Her mother’s passed on. Her quest for a kind of godhood was ultimately something that she had chosen to discard. Her career in Hollywood-based pro-wrestling was cut short by a suicide she thought was a murder. Her movie got mixed reviews and only sort of managed to break even at the worldwide box office. Things begin to turn around for her in Harley Quinn #73. Writer Sam Humphries orchestrates an apt return to equilibrium in an issue drawn by Sami Basri. Everything finally begins to unravel for Harley in a way that begins to feel remarkably satisfying by the issue’s end.
Harley has burst into a placid estate to confront LA real estate scumbag Jonathan Wittleson. She’s convinced that he was involved in the death of her friend Alicia. She may be right about that, but Wittleson has a bit of news for Harley that seriously derails her investigation, only six pages into the issue. Naturally, she’s going to feel a bit lost wandering aimlessly straight through the next several pages. She’s well past the centerfold when she wanders into the office of a tarot card reader whose advice finds her pulled right back into the ring for a revelation that slams into her while her body is getting pummeled half to death by a guy calling himself The Übermensch.
Humphries pulls together a script that’s every bit as scattered and distracted as its protagonist. The weird cascade of events doesn’t seem to have much of a central rhythm to it until everything falls on top of Harley near chapter’s end with all the force of a sleazy mesomorphic guy wearing a stylized swastika in a wrestling ring. There’s some cleverness in Humphries rendering of the plot, including a tarot reading that involves archetypes stylishly drawn from the DC universe. Humphries may have lost a degree of focus in recent issues, but he’s clearly back in properly anarchic form with this issue.
Basri gives Harley a striking range of motion and emotion as she slides, tumbles, and ambles through a very iconic Hollywood. There’s sharp, dynamic energy motivating the action even as Harley trudges through a moody, purple nighttime walk of fame totally despondent and totally sans-color when all around her is vivid. The range of emotion that Basri manages in the title character has no trouble drawing-in the reader as Harley’s inner emotional life bursts out of the page with heartbreaking intensity.
Humphries and Basri give Harley a needed infusion of direction and vitality. Harley’s life may still lack a great deal of direction, but she’s much more in the rhythm of her own psychosis as the current storyline reaches the end of its fourth chapter. Harley might not ever find a totally well-adjusted lifestyle. Still, Humphries continues to push her in a direction that at least FEELS like it’s progressing to some sort of stability even though she’s unlikely to ever really stabilize.
