Harley Quinn: Our Worlds At War

October 2001
Harley Quinn's pal - Jimmy Olsen
"Our Fighting Forces"
Writer: Karl Kesel
Colours/Seperations: Ro Bleyaert
Art: Various
Aron Wiesenfeld pg1-8
Paul Grist pg9-17
Paul Chadwick pg18-25
Amanda Connor & Jimmy Palmiotti pg26-34
Steve Lieber pg35-38

Our Worlds at War was a cross over comic storyline that was mainly focussed on Superman and his ilk but also featured in the comics of Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern and several supporting characters like Harley Quinn. The plot revolved around heroes uniting to defeat Imperiex who was attacking the Earth. 

Honestly, I've only ever read the Harley Quinn issue and the Wonder Woman arc of this series but it's not hard to pick up what's going on in the one shots. Well, mostly. If you're keen to start reading the arc, here's some more information at Wikipedia about the issues and story line. 

Now, when I read the Harley Quinn issue I took little notice of the artists names because I figured I was reading a comic and not an autobiography but check it out... the people responsible for the horror that is Harley Quinn volume two and rebirth also featured in this comic. 

It's funny, because when I think of Amanda Connor and Harley Quinn her puddin' pop statue comes to mind, but not much else because I really thought she got the character with that statue.. but the comic she produces now shows otherwise. 

 Anyway, we open this comic with Jimmy Olsen in his space suit giving a bit of exposition. A bit? Okay, a lot. I can look past this though because given the story line is over several comics as I mentioned before and if you were like me and weren't keeping up.. yes, you need the exposition.

Good thing about Jimmy - he's the every man and he's at least funny to read. Nice bit of foreshadowing here - alone in an alien radio room wishing he'd run into some super heroes, or even a super villain.

He puts on a headset and gets a binary overload.
This is why we don't touch alien things, kiddies.

 He ends up in an escape pod and 'tumbling like forgotten underwear in the dryer' falls to Earth and landing in... Gotham!

Remember when I mentioned Jimmy was funny?
The epic burn he delivers on Gotham City is knee slappingly good.

Probably the last place you'd want to end up in even at the best of times is Gotham City.

Jimmy continues his internal monologue.. realising the citizens aren't exactly worried about his health and well being.

He flees the scene, his thoughts becoming more binary.






He runs into some police officers, but instead of the usual dirty cops of Gotham they're actually alien deserters who are trying to blend into our society by replicating our look.

Jimmy has the brilliant idea to check how close they got by kicking one in the balls and then makes a run for it.

Turns out they got fairly close to the original.

They shoot at him so he runs around a corner and unfortunately into a dead end.
The aliens are about to kill him by spouting distorted proverbs but a two toned figure jumps down and asks them to take a survey.



One of the alien's blaster thingies was damaged in the attack and it blows up. Harley Quinn assumes it was spontaneous human combustion because why wouldn't you?

Harley asks Jimmy what his deal is and Jimmy has a moment of freaking out because he realises he's run into the Joker's girlfriend who would would just as soon kill him.

He lies about what he's doing, and explains he's trying to get back to his pregnant fiance because everyone needs a fiance/father to be who's not dead! Alive! Living! Laying it on thick!
He asks for directions to Metropolis saying that he'll leave her alone but Harley says no way man, you're in so much love that I'll do my best to see you to Metropolis myself!

She then promptly heaves Jimmy over her shoulder in a fireperson's lift and straight into his own nightmares.

She brings him to one of her Joker hideouts - all the while Jimmy thinking she's bringing him into this darkened place to end him.

In trying to hot wire the Joker-mobile they discover that a bunch of displaced hench people had been hiding out here from the war.

Harley gets on well with Joe, the Joker henchman but Que the Riddler's hench doesn't like it. Two-Face's Tim and Tom seem a bit wary but Jude from Calendar Man's team is angry.

Firstly that Joe can't remember who he henched for, and now he's the butt of even more jokes at his own expense.

Harley shows her manipulative side in casually playing the hench people against themselves but it's soon time to leave.

As they drive away, Jimmy geeks out about the war effort and they idly chat about Freckle's fiance.. he panicked and gave Talia's name. Yes, Talia as in Ra's Al Ghul Talia and is paying for it because he doesn't know a thing about her family. He tries to wing it but Harley puts it out there that she heard a rumour Talia's father was a super villain. Maybe she heard wrong..



Jokermobile needs re-filling so they stop at Midway. Midway is a small town in between Gotham and Metropolis that has just enough of commute either way to keep it's people satisfied.

Different to Midway City then from the PoopyPants Squad movie?
Looks about as much of a craphole though.

An alien attacks Harley while they're filling up and Jimmy is dragged to safety by the sheriff of Midway. A man who is alone in the evacuated city but has been facing off against the alien ever since.

He reveals a device taken from the alien when they first captured it - Jimmy asks if it's something the alien needs like a translator or something like that, and to make sure the alien wasn't one of their allies in the war.




The sheriff doesn't care, and also isn't too fussed if he takes out Harley Quinn when he kills the alien.

Jimmy grabs the device and runs out speaking the aliens language. Reaching a sort of peace between the alien and themselves, Jimmy goes to hand over the device when the sheriff shoots it out of his hand. Ominously telling him to get out of town, the sheriff tells Jimmy he'll get what he deserves sooner or later. Driving away after the service station explodes, they reflect that no one won today.



Here are the Connor/Palmiotti pages... while the art is a lot more do-able than it normally is in their series (whether they're actually drawing them or not) a fair bit of their interpretation seeps through.Much like my venomous rage whenever I read one of their comics. Fortunately, it's not soooo bad here.. relatively speaking.

Their version of the Female Furies of Apokolips are about right although the way Lashina is drawn makes me wonder how she actually walks, or sits down... or breathes...





Harley and Mad Harriet get along a leeeeetle too well and Bernadeth gets caught in the cross fire.

Honestly, what would these people do if they had normal names? Accounting? Ugh.

Harley tries to sneak away in teh confusion and meets Stompa... and manages to confuse her.

To be fair, this doesn't seem very hard.

 Harley wakes Jimmy up after they realise they're safe and have arrived at Metropolis. He couldn't be happier and plants a sloppy smooch on Harley's lips earning him a snappy slap.

She shoots at him to scare him off but sneakily reveals it was all part of her fiendish plan to avoid the onset of boredom.