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Dr Harleen Frances Quinzel is a complicated character - one who has operated on both sides of the law since she was first introduced to the world in Batman: The Animated Series back in 1992.
While she started life as a villain, and a lovesick foil for the Joker, she has grown, matured and changed a lot in her 32 years of publication. She's dumped the Joker entirely and, these days, is pretty firmly established as more of a heroic type. She's a core part of the current line-up of Birds of Prey while her own title focuses on her life and adventures with her love, Poison Ivy.
This week's Harley Quinn #38, however, shows that Dr Quinzel - currently working as a teacher at Gotham Community College - still has a little bit of the dark side left in her. The new issue, written by Tini Howard and drawn by Natacha Bustos, with colors by Nick Filardi, seems to be setting her on the path to supervillainy once more...
Spoilers for Harley Quinn #38
The issue begins lightly enough. Harley is going about her daily routine: she washes, takes the hyenas out, gets her coffee, goes to work. "Schedule's good for someone like me," she muses to herself, while a clock ominously counts down in the corner of each panel.
What she's not mentioning here is that today is her birthday. Ivy has noticed and arranged a surprise party, which goes down well, but still, it's clear that something is up. Harley is still troubled by their recent encounters with the multiverse and feeling a little down on herself.
To get her out of her funk, Ivy arranges for the two of them to do something a little bit naughty: a nighttime raid on Golly Gotham's Chocolate Factory, a company that has been ravaging the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, while simultaneously greenwashing their reputation. Ivy and Harley break in, battle some robots, then put the factory firmly out of operation.
It feels good to be back in the field and this makes Harley realise that she misses studying criminals, even if she doesn't want to get back into the villain business herself. So she decides to tag along with her friends Carmen and Bonny - AKA The Body Doubles as they take on Dominic Temper, Golly Gotham's owner, who has come to inspect the ruins of his factory. There's another fight, this time with some human goons, but there are more serious consequences this time: Carmen is injured in a shoot out, and the Body Doubles blow up Temper's yacht, presumably killing him and his men.
Harley for her part appears to feel little remorse about this - she didn't plant the bombs or trigger the detonator, after all. Still, word gets around about her return to criminality and that in turn leads her to a new potential collaborator, Mr. Freeze, who shows up in the story's final pages with an offer to work together.
It's a funny old issue this. The humor is on point, but the characterization feels a little disjointed. Harley seems both happy and perhaps a little frustrated in her life as a teacher, which makes sense, but her sudden switch back to being totally fine with murder and mayhem at the end feels perhaps a little sudden. The Harley we've seen in previous issues of this comic, and especially in Birds of Prey, is usually more empathetic.
This isn't the only example of Harley being bad in current DC comics, of course. Suicide Squad Kill Arkham Asylum (which is set in the universe of the Arkham games) features the full-on skull-cracking Quinn of days past. Even so, it feels a little jarring here to have her seem so callous in the main comic, especially when just a few pages before she was worrying that she causes too much trouble for people. Then again, when has Harley Quinn ever been consistent?
So are we about to see the return of a fully evil Harley as she re-enters the world of the supervillain? Or is this merely a flirtation with the dark side that will rapidly come crashing down? Harley may tell herself that she's only studying the likes of Freeze, but we can't help but think that a nasty wake up call is on the way...
Harley Quinn #38 is out now from DC.
Check out our interview with Tini Howard and Sweeney Boo about bringing Harley Quinn into the Dawn of DC era.
