Harley Quinn and Batman #4

Part four of five opens with us seeing Shrubby curse Harley for wrecking up the club after he vouched for her. He also calls her a 'skirt.' Isn't that like, 20's Italian mafia speak coming out of the mouth of a 70's themed disco vegetable? Plus, she isn't even wearing a skirt which makes it a bit stupid to refer to a female as a certain part of clothing if she doesn't normally wear that style.

Anyway, Batman and Nightwing are waiting in Shrubby's apartment because of course they are and the whole thing sounds like a bad domestic violence screenplay

Batman: That's quite a shiner there, Dougie. Been in a fight?
Shrubby: I walked into a door.

While they're talking, Shrubby just straight up walks over to the window, opens it up and tumbles out. Does Nightwing make a habit of this happening? Of course, Batman's put a tracer on him and they're going to follow him straight to Harley Quinn.

Side note, Shrubby's feet just don't look big enough to support him standing let alone jumping out of a few storeys and running off. What is he, a six year old ballerina?

How much time has passed here? I assumed this was all occurring immediately after Harley flipped out for no real reason but in this time frame Batman and Nightwing have already heard the news about the fight and have in their own words - talked to literally everyone - and now Poison Ivy is apparently on a weird tutorial date with the Floronic Man.



Is this supposed to be canon now as well? I'm sure we've seen Ivy use plants that she hasn't specifically made herself to do her bidding! At the moment, I can only recall points from Gotham City Sirens but I'm sure more will come to me later.

They talk more about the divide between plant people and not.. plant... people. Ivy gets angry and kicks him out saying it was a mistake to let him come back. What does that mean?
A mistake to let him come back to the hothouse hideout? Are they going from her original storyline where he was the one who made her into Poison Ivy? Have they met before like this or just through selling chemicals?

Harley comes up with some random idea to fill city hall with jelly beans. As a purveyor of the beans of jelly, I personally feel this is a waste of good candy and also, a large, large amount of candy in the first place. Also Harley has... covered her bazooka in floral print? Ugh.

Harley rants on like an idiot and Ivy's like what the shit is your problem bitch that ain't fun so of course because Harley is hell bent on doing stupid things for no apparent reason she has to fly off the handle again.

Ivy gets Harley to calm down momentarily but this loses ground when Ivy accidentally brings up the fact that she doesn't consider herself human anymore. Harley starts to cry - sensing a theme here, is this Harley going through the terrible two's or something? - and she runs off dramatically from whence she came. The front door of this obvious hideout.

She runs into Shrubby and he tells her to run because the Bat's right behind him.

Harley's ticked off and want to fight Batman because nothing cools your temper down than a stint in Arkham!
I like that Harley is very athletic in this series but what on Earth is going on in that last pose? Imitation straight-jacket?

Next thing we know, she's running back into Ivy's increasingly obvious hideout and surrendering her to Batman.

The Short End of the Jester Schtick

Probably due to the limited page runs but damn, this Harley changes emotions on a dime. Where's all this dramatic hate for being a side-kick coming from? I would probably buy some pent up rage about it exploding but we kind of have to see the pent up part bubbling away first otherwise what's the point? Where's the development? Why should we care?

I mean, shit, she join's Ivy's scheme - IVY'S SCHEME - then throws a hissy fit because she feels like a sidekick and it's no fair because Ivy never wants to take time off from her plant-human drama or her scheduled scheme to do really stupid pointless unfunny shit like waste candy and become a wanton flasher pervert. Like, what the actual hell? 

This one comic just seems to see the original character and then go uh oh, she's not completely independent! Quick! Retcon everything! From now on, the Joker beatings are going to be... uh, a kinky relationship saver! Yeah! And uh, she can't be *anyone's* sidekick! Yeah! And... and... she's no push over! So.. she can just table flip whenever because she has to be bad ass! Yeah! That'll work!

I really don't know what to make of this comic. It doesn't make much sense and it's painful to watch Batman and Nightwing relegated to near-wallpaper status, character wise.