REBIRTH HARLEY QUINN #18 - Red Meat Abduction Reduction

It's a strange state of affairs when I find myself more preferential to the Rebirth Hardly Cover instead of the variant showing Classic Harley gazing adoringly at a Suicide Squad Hardly outfit.
Pee-yeew that's so on the nose,  it honestly stinks.

Anyway, in the last shitty instalment of this comic, Hardly was abducted after posing as a wannabe homeless person and now people are trying to eat her.

I for one, welcome our new cannibalising overlords.

But first, here's some random crap thrown in as part of the plot. It's Gotham in 2167!

Good lord, who would want to see the cesspit of Gotham now let alone the future? Anyway, some random girl named Catie... ugh. I see the future didn't fix any spelling issues with kids names.

Anyway, she's being sent on some time jump mission to take down Hardly Quinn in present day. But she's not in Gotham? Oh well.

I for one, welcome our new Terminator overlords.

They clearly have their priorities straight and the art in these few pages is already better than the current comic by a mile. Did they add this in to kick themselves when they were down?

I for one, support this.





Meanwhile in present day Suckville, hired goons drag Hardly into a van and make obligatory comments about how succulent she is. I know they've been eating hobo's but even the filthiest hobo that hadn't washed in years would be more appetising to a sane person than this Smylex white corpse.

Question, can she even be eaten without poisoning everyone? Also question, what's wrong with her eyes in the opening splash? Is this her idea of incognito - leaving her effed up makeup on or can she literally not take it off because reasons.


This page sums the plot up and it's as coherent as it's ever going to be. They really don't subtle out how evil this Mayor is going to be.

Before I stopped collecting this run, I remember Hardly had basically threatened him into letting her run literal interference with her little group of wannabes, then there was some drama when he tried to revenge on Mason and yadda yadda...

I have full sympathy of the big, bad, mayor. He was opposed to Hardly's little team for good reasons but she thought she was above all that noise. You make your own enemies, you can friggin' deal with it you psycho wannabe harlequin.

The next couple of pages get a bit more boring, if that's possible.
It's basically just Hardly shrugging off the knock off gas, and fighting off thugs in the van while Red Tool chases them down.
There's at least four pages of this stuff. If they're trying to tie it back to the original Harley's immunity to drugs and poison then I can appreciate the sentiment but I think they're just trying to show off how 'tough' and 'hardcore' Hardly is, while she makes threats about how they're alllll going to regret this.

What'd be nice to show instead would be an actual plot, but hey what do I know.

I do wonder why - if she's such an issue to deal with, they don't simply kill her?

Here we go again.

What a catch! Don't let her porcelain skin, tiny size and skinny frame fool you. Also, look at her huge knockers and long legs. Don't forget she's wearing hot pants to show off her pert butt cheeks.

I only exaggerated half of that paragraph, the rest was word for word. These hack writers are completely in love with their bastardised Harley Quinn, aren't they? Kinda sad.

For one.. it's not porcelain skin. That's a compliment. No, what she has is dead fish underbelly skin. That's a condition. Secondly, maybe if the art was nicer to look at we could believe some of the compliments but it's hard to understand the  fawning about her petite-ness when they've clearly given her a boob job and she looks hideous.



Oh no, we can't kill her yet because reasons! Mayor reasons! He can't answer his phone because of more reasons! I know this mayor less than my neighbour's bar of soap but I can honestly tell you he wouldn't care if she was killed. So we better put her in an easily escapable trap while she's alive and take our eyes off her for an extended period of time.

Anyway they throw her into a trash compactor or something filled with bones and skulls. She immediately decides one is Skipper - you know, the homeless 'friend' she wanted to feed scraps to and didn't give a shit if he was alive or dead? Still no sympathy for him, but she imagines hearing a voice from Skipper-Skull that sympathises all about her tough, tough life.

Crazy person, or is the craziness just convenient for her?

Speaking of convenience, Red Tool arrives and is here to save Hardly because.. I don't know, these two terrible knock offs are perfectly bland for each other?

Part Two of Harley loves Joker 

Well Joker saves Harley from falling post explosion and gives her gifts, calls her nice names and then decides they're going to rob a store and not leave any clue that it was them.

Which totally sounds like something the Joker would do..

They keep their 'ooh is it abusive yet, haha no tricked you' charade up again for this issue. It works about as well as it did the first time...

Harley here is pretty much a sufferin' sex doll only wanting nookie, the Joker - who by this point in their time line is still an established crime lord, acts like a crime wannabe, a news reporter manages to speak to Batman when the entire police force can't catch up with him. There is a whole news spiel about a mysterious crime spree and then two seconds later there's Batman holding up Harley's abandoned coat. Is this actually supposed to be live TV or can no one edit worth a damn?

It's worth pointing out that they seem to be trying to make this Harley more 'independent' and by that I mean she openly fights with Joker.

It doesn't work because she attacks him for giving her as replacement jacket when she was the friggin' arse wipe that left her personalised jacket in the bin at the scene of the crime.

Classic Harley fought back when it mattered but otherwise drew back from confrontation, this Harley fights back even when she's clearly in the wrong. That doesn't make her a stronger character, that makes her an overbearing idiot and a lot more like the Joker.

Batman bursts in through a skylight because of course he does and the last panel just says 'CONTINUED!'




As in... to be continued? Was the whole thing so hard to write?

Well, it must have been at least as hard to read as this jumbled mess! What a disappointment the Harley loves Joker segment has been so far. I expected nothing but bland stupidity from the first half of the comic and I shouldn't even have to explain in detail why.

Let's just summarise it as - when I want to read a Harley Quinn comic, a character born out of infatuation with the Joker who was funny and dressed like a harlequin to his clown...

I don't want to read about some pasty bimbo who acts like she's so tough with her murderey little ways and infiltrating hobo-eating cannibal gangs with her Marvel knock off boyfriend and Wonder Woman villain knock off friend while in the future people actually plan to go back in time to flat out kill her unfunny ass because she's such a horrible character.

When they say 'one of the 21st centuries most horrific monsters' and they don't mean the Joker..
Then you have royally screwed up your character when the nice characters at the start are willing to risk their lives to take her out.

This book started out as bad fan fiction and somehow got worse.. I don't understand why it's popular when it's so painfully awful.