Review: _Harleen_

I mostly dropped DC Comics some time back (after Flashpoint, which left me going, "You're rebooting the universe again?!?"), which is why I don't talk about them much here -- aside from a couple of Vertigo titles, I'm just not reading it. But when I saw that Stjepan Sejic was doing an interpretation of the origin of Harley Quinn, it caught my eye.

Some context...

On the one hand, Harley has always been a rather problematic character. Her origin story has long been known: Dr. Harleen Quinzel starts working at Arkham Asylum, meets the Joker, falls in love with him, and somehow winds up his somewhat psychotic girlfriend/sidekick. As such, it's never rung even remotely true for me -- Harley is a fun character, but the journey from then to now didn't make much sense.

OTOH, there's Sejic. He's best known as the author of Sunstone, my very favorite romance comic of all time. (Here's my review.). If anyone could do it, he's the one.

Harleen is the result: three large issues collected into a really beautiful oversized hardcover. In first person, Harley narrates her own descent into madness -- the analytical side of her mind describing how she got there.

The result is sort of a dark mirror of Sunstone. There's a similar tone in many ways: a realistic woman -- smart, brainy, but quite lonely -- meeting an intriguing person, being very nervous and cautious at first, but slowly falling quite deeply in love. If I didn't know where it was going, it would feel almost sweet.

The most unsettling part is, of course, the Joker. Perhaps the smartest thing this story does is that it never really goes into his head. We get two diametrically-opposed viewpoints on him. One (Harley) is that he is damaged, but there is a real person underneath that she is getting through to, and who is falling equally in love with her. The other (Bruce) is that he is a sociopathic master manipulator who is very carefully pushing her buttons and turning her into his pet. Both are entirely valid readings of the story, and that careful ambiguity is downright chilling -- if you step out of her head, this is most plausibly a story of gaslighting and emotional abuse. (There are hints that even she knows that, deep down.)

Along the way, this is still a Gotham tale. Batman is a significant (if not foreground) character; we also get the beginnings of Harley's relationship with Poison Ivy, and the origin of Two-Face is deeply entwined with Harley's story. All of that frames much of the plot -- but as with Sunstone, this book is mainly about the lead characters and their relationship, with plot mainly there to move things along.

The art is what I expect from Sejic: beautifully expressive and pretty. Not High Art, but reliably better than most comics.

Obvious content warnings for sex and violence, both a bit graphic but not exceptionally so for modern comics. More serious warnings for reasonably realistic depictions of emotional abuse and manipulation.

Anyway, in summary it's pretty great. The gorgeous hardcover edition is going on The Shelf for now -- I suspect it'll get shoved down the bookcase eventually, but it's one of the best things I've read this year, so it's taking some pride of place. Well worth reading if you're interested in a good character study and a lovely but chilling romantic tragedy -- the story of a woman who finds love by going, rather consciously, quite insane.