NO SLEEP TILL… GOTHAM!
HARLEY QUINN AND THE BIRDS OF PREY #1
 Published: 12th February 2020 Cover Date: April 2020 Cover Artists: Amanda Conner / Alex Sinclair Writer: Amanda Conner / Jimmy Palmiotti Penciler: Amanda Conner Inker: Amanda Conner Colourist: Paul Mounts Letterer: John J. Hill Editors: Chris Conroy |
Introduction
Harley is a complicated character in some way in that she’s changed so radically in the three decades since her introduction, going from animated, to comics, to back to animated and the reason for this special movies! The thing is where you came upon Harley is how you tend to view the character, if you came in on the edgier reboot of the New 52 version then she still has the stink of a villain who murders buses of children just for fun!
Though in the last nine years, the character had been carving her own little corner of the DC universe as an anti-hero getting into her own little adventures. In fact, those stories were written by the very people who are involved with this little mini! Really it’s weird that it’s both a black label (DC’s mature label, because Vertigo didn’t have enough Batman) and an obvious attempt to sell to the movie crowd when it’s a continuation of the plots of her ongoing.
Before we start though let me just pay my respect to the woman who defined the original Harley Quinn, Arleen Sorkin, who unfortunately passed away only a few days (25th August 2023) before this blog came out.
Synopsis
We start with Harley and Ivy on a tropical island being waited on hand and foot but Superman, who’s doing this to get the location of Jimmy’s who’s in danger. But this is actually a dream sequence and Harley wakes up in a bed full to the brim with a half dozen or so of Harley’s allies. I couldn’t tell you who all these people are, but apparently, she’s picked them up in her ongoing series.
After some fresh air, she makes her way up to the roof of the building she lives in, and this is where we get the appearance of the reason we are here, Power Girl!
Harley and Pee Gee have had adventures before, way back in 2014, and if this version is the New 52 version or the original version, which returned in Rebirth, is a problem for future me to tackle when we get to those issues! Really the reason she’s here is that Amanda Conner really likes to draw Pee Gee, she did after all draw the 2005 Power Girl series.
Pee Gee here acts as the reason for an exposition dump, apparently, Harley and Ivy are on a break after a surprise holiday on a desert island that went a little off the rails. Meanwhile, she owes a lot of money to the local mobsters which leads to one of her buddies getting beaten up and their building being burnt down. Not being able to help in any real way, especially illegal stuff, Pee Gee leaves the plot and Harley decides to go to Gotham to get the necessary money to set things right.
After we get the gang visiting their injured buddy, and taking down the mobsters that caused all these problems, a scene violent enough to justify the Black Label, if it wasn’t for Conner cartoon-like art that softens the violence to a major degree. Really I’m not complaining, I think it suits the comedic stylings of the comic.
And with that done Harley gets the train to Gotham and here’s where we finally start to get the Bird of Prey show up! First Huntress, the Helena Bertinelli version, who turns up to save Harley. We get Harley getting very hands-on, something she also showed with Pee Gee who she apparently has a massive crush on. The two then get into costume and we get an appearance of Harley’s costume from the Suicide Squad movie (the Daddies ‘lil Monster one), which raises all sorts of weird questions about how the movie relates to the main DC Universe and is really the only reference that refers to the Bird of Prey movie!
Anyway, the two fight through a train carriage full of mobsters, helped by our second Bird of Prey Cassandra, who thankfully is her comic version rather than the one from the movie (the one misstep of the movie really). Finally, when the train arrives in Gotham we get the last of the Birds of Prey, Renee Montoya!
Final Thoughts
Before 2005 my history of comics is complicated and whilst I must have watched some of the Batman The Animated Series episodes, though it was more JLU that I remember (my favourite was Galatea, the shows not!Power Girl which explains a lot really, so Harley was never a character I have a fondness for. Really the only Harley I’ve read was where she teamed up with Pee Gee. Now I have a little more context with the movies, Harley Quinn and The Bird of Prey was the last movies I watched in cinemas before lockdown. And the current animated show, which is very like this comic version of Harley, is one I really enjoy.
All that said despite the comic being a hot mess as someone who’s not read the entire series I still enjoyed this one, partially because we get that little hit of the 2005 version of Pee Gee, who was criminally underused in this era, and partially because the whole things is violent absurdist fun from begging to end without having to break any of the characters for the sake of the joke.