Harley Quinn is a Comic Book that started in March 2021 and featuring Harley Quinn. Written by Stephanie Phillips with art by Riley Rossmo, it is part of DCâs Infinite Frontier line following Dark Nights: Death Metal. It is also a relaunch of Harley's monthly book following the conclusion of Sam Humphries' DC Rebirth-era Harley Quinn (Rebirth), and a spinoff from Batman (James Tynion IV).
In the wake of The Joker War, Harley has returned home to Gotham City for good after her time in Brooklyn during the New 52 and DC Rebirth eras. Thanks to her assistance during the Joker War and its aftermath, Batman has made her a probationary member of the Bat Family. Harley is trying to honor the Dark Knight's trust and help protect Gotham while atoning for her crimes while working for the Joker.
Rossmo ultimately departed the run following "The Verdict" (Harley #13-17). Philips likewise left the book a year later in the aftermath of Dark Crisis. Following her departure with Harley Quinn #27, Tini Howard and Boo Sweeney inherited custodianship of the book for Dawn of DC.
Harley Quinn (Infinite Frontier) provides examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: Issue #36's secondary story, "Harley the Barbarian", features artwork that is very reminiscent of Heavy Metal.
- All There in the Manual: Played with for "Task Force XX". While the ending of "The Verdict" leads directly into it, Phillips' Harley-centric story from the Shadow War tie-in anthology reveals in advance that Luke Fox is the team's benefactor.
- Anti-Hero: Harley as always.
- Arc Villain: There isn't a single overarching villain of the run. Rather, Phillips utilizes a rotating roster of antagonists:
- Hugo Strange is the run's initial antagonist through Fear State before ultimately fleeing Gotham to avoid the heat from Simon Saint's downfall and S.A.F.E.'s links to the Magistrate program.
- Keepsake is an interim villain between Fear State and "The Verdict".
- The Verdict: Takes over following Keepsake's brief tenure.
- The Atoner: Harley. It's part of why she bonds with Kevin (who likewise is trying to make up for his actions as a Joker goon during Joker War).
- Bat Family Crossover: Issues #6-9 tie in to the "Fear State" Gotham crossover event.
- Big Bad Wannabe: Keepsake. He tries. Bless his heart, he tries, but he's more of a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis than the Big Bad he envisions himself to be.
- Brick Joke: Several issues later, it turns out the Bat-branded toaster that Harley persuaded Batman to give her was cheap and nasty, and set fire to her flat.
- Byronic Hero: A rare female example.
- Harley drops a lot of her Heroic Comedic Sociopath schtick and reveals a deeper self-loathing over the things she did as The Joker's minion. She's intelligent, athletic, and conventionally attractive, but she's also extremely psychologically warped and damaged by her past relationships. She knows that she can never make up for the atrocities she helped him commit or all of the lives she helped destroy, but tries regardless because it's the only way she can live with herself. This vulnerability is what allows people, even someone like Batman, to take pity on her, and make her a tentative unofficial member of the extended Bat-Family.
- One of the reasons that Harley genuinely hates Punchline is that Harley can't help but see a version of herself in Joker's new sidekick, but one with absolutely zero redemptive qualities.
- Chained to a Railway: Keepsake does this to Kevin in order to mess with Harley.
- Continuity Overlap: As part of the Infinite Frontier publishing initiative, and a spinoff of Tynion's Batman, Phillips' narrative is impacted by events both in Gotham and in the larger DCU. This was very much intentional and the culmination of the shift that had begun during the post-Amanda Conner/Jimmy Palmiotti Harley era (wherein their New 52/DC Rebirth run had been taking place in its own bubble and was all but disconnected from larger DCU developments).
- Fear State: In addition to running parallel with Batman, Harley's tie-ins are heavily intertwined with Ram V's Catwoman tie-ins (to the point where you need to be reading both books to get the full story).
- Batman (Joshua Williamson): A plot point during "The Verdict". With Bruce out of the country, it's up to Batwoman and Oracle to save Harley once they realize she's been framed for murder.
- Shadow War: Harley ties into the event's anthology (and her story serves as the prelude to "Task Force XX"
- Dark Crisis: While it doesn't directly cross over, "Task Force XX" runs parallel with the event (and is actually the catalyst for Harley's recruitment).
- Create Your Own Villain: A jailbreak while Harley was still working with the Joker set off the chain of events that destroyed Sam's faith in the GCPD and Gotham's institutions — and turned her into the murderous Verdict.
- Costume Copycat: Verdict slaughters a bunch of mafiosi in a restaurant while dressed as Harley in order to frame her.
- Creator Cameo: In the boxing dream sequence in issue #17, artist Riley Rossmo and writer Stephanie Phillips appear in the audience and have a brief dialogue exchange.
- Crimefighting with Cash: Hilariously averted. As a probationary Bat Family member, Harley naturally expects to be given access to the same kinds of resources the rest of the kids get. She's more than a little miffed at Batman when the latter bluntly tells her she's not getting a paycheck. It's justified, though, between Harley's probationary status and Bruce's finances having been hit hard due to events in Tynion's Batman.
- Dating Catwoman: Averted. After being briefly reunited with Ivy, Harley breaks up with her again in #10, after Ivy wanted to round off their date with a spot of armed robbery despite Harley genuinely trying to stop committing crime.
- Determined Defeatist: Harley knows that she can never make up for the atrocities she did in the name of the Joker, nor can she rebuild all of the lives she helped destroy. But she tries to do the right thing regardless, because it's the only way she can live with herself. It's this side of Harley that allows her to gain a second chance from the Batfamily.
- The Dragon: Hugo Strange's assistant Lockwood.
- Easily Forgiven: Harley lampshades how easily Hugo Strange seems to get hired as the head of SAFE despite his own lengthy history of Mad Scientist and Psycho Psychologist supervillainy.
- Even Evil Has Standards: As an ambitious henchman, Keepsake has cycled through nearly all of the Gotham rogues — and all of them have inevitably fired him. While it's mostly a combination of Keepsake's laziness and kleptomania, Keepsake's also turned out to be creepy even to the hardened veterans of Arkham Asylum.
- Eye Scream: Verdict's calling card is to remove one of each of her victims' eyes, as a pun on "eye for an eye".
- Face Doodling: Harley's idea of a disguise after Batwoman breaks her out of prison in the "Verdict" arc is to draw a moustache and goatee on her face.
- False Soulmate: Kevin's girlfriend Sam turns out to be the villain Verdict.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: In the 2021 Annual, Kevin and Solomon Grundy do a mysterious and sinister deal with Mr. Freeze for information on Keepsake. It's then revealed that the "deal" was for the two of them to act as childrens' entertainers at Freeze's niece's birthday party.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: When Kevin is trying to decide whether to rescue Lockwood from a fire, his shoulder angel and devil are both sexy versions of Harley, who then have a Cat Fight.
- In Prison with the Rogues: When Harley is accused of murder, she ends up in Blackgate prison with a bunch of female prisoners who despise her attempt to go straight and want to ingratiate themselves with Punchline by killing her.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: When Kevin finds out that she's Verdict and rejects her, Sam decides to suicide-bomb Gotham City Hall and kill everyone inside, regardless of how corrupt or not they are.
- MookâFace Turn: Harley's new sidekick Kevin is a reformed former mook for the Joker.
- Mythology Gag: Bengal's variant cover for #14 shows Harley's bedroom. Among the clothes hanging up are her corset-style dress from Batman: Arkham City, her harlequin-pattern minidress from Suicide Squad (2016), and her red dress from The Suicide Squad.
- The Needs of the Many: Keepsake sets up a literalised "trolley problem" for Harley by setting up a train laden with explosives that will either run into central Gotham and explode or run Kevin over. She naturally choses the second option and saves Kevin.
- Pet the Dog: After nastily confronting Harley at the beginning of the first issue, at the end of it Batman leaves her the Bat-branded toaster that she'd asked him for.
- Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Before Harley beats her up, Kevin tells Sam that their break-up was entirely her fault.
- Pseudo-Crisis: Issue #4 ends with Harley being confronted with an apparently raging Solomon Grundy in Gotham's sewer system. At the beginning of the next issue, they're having a friendly conversation.
- Retool: The series, after some years, brings Harley back to Gotham and is far more closely aligned with Batman and general DC continuity.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: In the flashback to Verdict's origin, Harley immediately kills a corrupt cop who was bribed by the Joker to let her escape custody.
- Safe Word: When arrested and handcuffed by the cops in the "Verdict" arc, Harley jokes that her safeword should be "sauerkraut" because "it's fun to say".
- Shoddy Knockoff Product: Keepsake uses mind-control drugs borrowed from Hugo Strange to temporarily turn Harley's friends into inferior knock-offs of various big-name Gotham villains.
- Shout-Out:
- While fighting Keepsake at one point, Harley goes on a lengthy rant about her love for the Terminator franchise and Sarah Connor in particular.
- In her narration in #13, Harley admits to having a sexual attraction to the hero of Robin Hood (1973).
- Special Person, Normal Name: As Harley's sidekick and would-be hero in his own right, Kevin hasn't developed a costumed-character name yet, leading to various characters being underwhelmed when he introduces himself.
- Spinoff: Of Tynion's Batman.
- Stalker with a Crush: Subverted with Keepsake and Harley, he acts stalkerish to her but he isn't motivated by desire for her so much as really, really wanting to be the Joker, with having Harley as a girlfriend being part of that.
- Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Ironically and cleverly utilized as the catalyst for "Task Force XX". It's because of this Trope (due to the concurrent events of Dark Crisis) that Luke Fox recruits Harley for the team.
- Tamer and Chaster: Harley's new costume designed by Rossmo is basically a tank top and tight full-length pants, in contrast to the extremely revealing costumes that she's been notorious for since the New 52 era. (Although some artists other than Rossmo draw it with a lot of cleavage.)
- Tank-Top Tomboy: Harley's costume in this era has a tank top, and she's as violent and crass as ever.
- Tattooed Crook:
- Rossmo's new design for Harley gives her playing-card-suit club and diamond (which sometimes changes to a heart depending on her mood) tattoos on her shoulders.
- Kevin has a Monster Clown face tattooed on his enormous chin.
- Tropaholics Anonymous: Harley attempts to set up a support group for other ex-Joker minions, but its first meeting gets attacked by agents of Hugo Strange's anti-"clown" group SAFE.
- Vengeance Feels Empty: Harley persuades Annie not to kill Keepsake by convincing her of this.
- Vigilante Man: The brutally murderous new Gotham vigilante known as Verdict.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Hugo Strange following Fear State.
- Where's the Kaboom?: Happens when Verdict tries to detonate the bombs at City Hall, because Batwoman defused them.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: During the "Fear State" tie-ins, Hugo Strange tries to kill all his former SAFE minions by burning down the building.
