Harley's Little Black Book #2

Going back to a bit of an older comic in this series featuring yet another gratuitous cameo.... chance for Hardly to completely mess up another character... Hardly both meets and screws up another character's entire premise and also features cameos from other characters that have no importance whatsoever.

The plot - or whatever passes for it - is this parody of some nineties dude bros finding a dead alien and immediately trying to make some money by selling the alien rings on an eBay knockoff.

Then it's just several pages of Hardly trying to outbid some random for some reason. She fails to get the Green Lantern ring but is able to get a hybrid red-black ring because of course.

These writers spend waaay too much time on unimportant backstory and fail to make any cohesive story-line. The first thing I thought of was how easily this would be nipped in the bud. I mean hell, you pick up goods that hot and you put them on eBay?

With no consequences? Sure. I'm sure the Lantern Corps.. any of them... won't mind the ring being sold to some random when it's supposed to assign to the next carrier automatically, even if they haven't bid the highest.



It's... kind of what they do. If these guys even knew what the whole Lanterns thing was about they could have tied this into it but as usual, they don't give much of a rats.







Now the next part of this comic introduces some weird parodies of what I think are supposed to be British people..

I say 'I think' because I'm British, my entire family - with one exception - was born in England and I have no idea what any of these people are saying apart from 'hey, we're horrible caricatures because racism is funny!'

I actually don't even know who these characters are. I assume they've been in a previous comic but obviously it wasn't a very good one, even for Hardly Quinn standards becasue they're not exactly memorable or interesting.

They've paid for flights and travelled to America only to go... oh wait, we don't know where Hardly lives at all. Der-derp.

The other funny thing is that some of Hardly's stupid Gang of Harley's see her flying overhead in her weird costume and literally don't care enough to comment more than 'she must have catapulted herself from her shit-chucker.'

Yep, this is the new standards of DC comics. They'll either gritty you to death or give you lame caca jokes until you kill yourself.

Fake Lantern Hardly turns evil (but doesn't actually act much different from her usual bastard self) and attracts the attention of someone who's normally effective but is hampered somewhat by even being near this crap-fest of a comic.

Hal's already humped around with a bad Russian stereotype earlier in the book and is now.. is... is now...
geez, this book is just non-stop stereotype over stereotype isn't it?

Aaaanyway he steps in once Hardly flat out kills some cops then the perps they were chasing, probably some innocent pedestrians on the bridge, tries her best to kill some innocent astronauts..

Again, this is a normal day for Hardly. The only difference is that she can fly (with wings that vanish immediately) and her hair looks even stupider than normal.

They battle or something like that. Hal thinks that elements of the red and black lanterns have affected Hardly, causing the ugly demon of destruction we have before us.






Good theory!

Although.....

Red Lanterns  

Emotional Spectrum: Rage

Powers: solid light constructs, blood replaced by burning plasma stuff, the standard personal shield, extreme rage-roid strength.

Weakness: basically being mindless rage monsters until they take a dip in a certain blood pool and dying if they remove the ring unless they lose their rage.

Fun facts: Anyone can be a Red Lantern if they're angry enough! Like former Green Lanterns, Supergirl or even cats.

I heart you, Dex-Starr

Black Lanterns

Emotional Spectrum: not really on there but Death or nothingness

Powers: reanimation/healing factor, aura recognition, infection of others

Weakness: unable to harm anyone who feels no emotion, weak against willpower rings combined with any other rings.

Fun fact: DC's version of Marvel Zombies but they're more obsessed with how you feel about things as opposed to how your brains taste.

Emotional Zombie League

So, uh, no, sorry. You can't just mish-mash two lantern colours together and say it's these two things. Besides, Red Lanterns are already black and red and Hardly famously abandoned those colours with her redesign. If anything, the original Harley would probably be a Star Sapphire but I don't know about Hardly.. probably a Black Lantern because she sounds interesting but really isn't.

Anyway, the whole thing just becomes a pissing match about who is stronger and who has more innuendos before Hardly loses her ring to some alien warlords that we don't really hear from again.

Despite having no protection from anything, Harley safely rides an unconscious Hal down from orbit and has no ill effects. Hopefully Hal doesn't catch anything either. She then steals his ring and uses it to save them/give herself yet another outfit.

One joke actually works here - when the aliens no one cares about are doing their obligatory count down to Earth destruction and one of them asks the other 'must you shout?' resulting in a much quieter countdown.

She then uses the power ring to mallet the aliens to death and thanks Obama, which is supposed to be funny I guess?



Then it's the obligatory cameo kisses Hardly's butt scene even though she caused the entire mess and has - AGAIN - killed several people, bridges and aliens.

For some reason, Hardly slobbers on Hal and he allows it. Is this part of her new independent persona? A new notch on the bedpost kiss-wise for another day and another fourth wall joke?

Then to top things off we find that the British stereotypes haven't even got accommodation and they used all their money for a taxi fare. I know New York is approximately 90% taxis but only a complete idiot would spend that much on fare.

They have a reunion with Harley (I guess?) who they recognise because she's buying a metric butt tonne of gross carny food (for herself) and one small diet soda. Gotta keep skinny somewhere?

Overall - I'd only recommend this book if you're a die hard Hardly fan or an aficionado of everything lantern-y even if it's only shoe-horned in.
Hardly Quinn is a book that already has too many characters than it needs or can cater for story wise so this issue only crams more in and forgets to competently add a story in.

I know, it's supposed to be a fun, irreverent romp that you're not supposed to think about too hard (like Suicide Squad?) but that's all this series does and it's no excuse for poor writing based off cash grabs, and pretty disappointing that a series that's been going for this long and has so many spin offs can't get the idea of funny or coherent story right.