More of the same
Harley Quinn is a Comic Book that started in August 2016 and featuring Harley Quinn. Written by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti with art by Chad Hardinwith, it is part of DC’s Rebirth line.
The series, now twice-monthly and with a new #1 issue, is a seamless continuation of Harley Quinn (New 52) with hardly any changes, keeping Palmiotti and Conner as writers, and Harley on Coney Island with the same supporting cast. Connor and Palmiotti left after issue #35; from issue #36, Frank Tieri took over as writer for seven issues and Christopher Sabela for two, before Sam Humphries became the new ongoing writer with #45. The series went monthly again from issue #57. The series ended with #75.
Harley Quinn (Rebirth) provides examples of:
- Acquired Poison Immunity: Harley's encounter with Hugo Strange reveals that she has this to a degree, as a natural consequence of having been in sexual relationships with both the Joker and Ivy.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Jonni DC, a "continuity cop" and personification of DC continuity.
- Armed with Canon:
- In the Black Label Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey, Harley asks Huntress her opinion on two possible costumes, one of which is one of her usual costumes from the comics and the other of which is her costume from Suicide Squad (2016). When Huntress picks the former, Harley approves.
- Also in that miniseries, Harley mocks Harley Sinn for believing that her heavy tattoos make her "interesting", which seems like a swipe at the depictions of both Harley and the Joker as heavily tattooed in the DC Extended Universe.
- Book Ends: The first and last arcs of the Humphries run pit Harley against Granny Goodness. Despite the lack of obvious in-universe linkage, it's metaphorically appropriate to confront DC's highest-profile survivor of domestic abuse with DC's Anthropomorphic Personification of child abuse.
- Captain Ersatz: Issue #69 features barely-camouflaged versions of the McDonaldland characters (Hambezzler, Clown McCrown, etc.).
- Cerebus Syndrome:
- Takes over during the Rebirth half of the Conner/Palmiotti run — it never loses the humour or the Bloody Hilarious element, but the comic is increasingly taken over by a very long arc about Harley's conflict with the Mayor, who is no longer comically corrupt but utterly evil, and in the final issues features one of Harley's love interests being brutally killed off, which leads to an entirely serious Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- The overall arc of the Humphries run has Harley realising that her carefree Heroic Comedic Sociopath persona is no longer enough to protect her from realising how screwed-up her personal life has become.
- Chained Heat: In #57-8, Harley handcuffs herself to Batman as a token of her willingness to co-operate when they investigate a murder that somebody tried to frame her for.
- Color-Coded Characters: The Gang of Harleys.
- Continuity Nod: When trying to calm Captain Triumph down, Harley changes into her 1940s-style period costume from the DC Comics Bombshells crossover in Little Black Book.
- Cops Need the Vigilante: Chief of Police Spoonsdale moves from tolerating to actively helping Harley as the Mayor increasingly prevents him from fighting the crime that the corrupt mayor is actively involved in.
- Covers Always Lie: The covers of #35-6 (the Man-Bat arc) depict Man-Bat-transformed Harley as a Cute Monster Girl with unchanged facial features. In the interior art, she's depicted with the usual Man-Bat design, including horrific bat head.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: At the end of the Gotham Legion of Doom arc, Condiment King decides to stay in Coney Island and go straight, after his hot-dog-seasoning abilities make him a legit local success.
- Decapitation Presentation: As the climax of Harley's Roaring Rampage of Revenge after Mason is killed, the Mayor wakes up in bed with Madison's severed head placed upright between his legs. And yes, Harley probably did mean the obvious symbolism.
- Episode of the Dead: The series starts with Coney Island invaded by zombies. Their origin? An alien named Vertigax crash-landing on a farm and disguising himself as a cow, who accidentally gets butchered. After the meat-processing, we see that Vertigax has been shipped all over as various meat products (particularly Coney Island hot dogs), contaminating everyone who eats him. This, naturally, results in zombies.
- The Future Is Shocking: Obscure Golden Age hero Captain Triumph gets accidentally transported to Harley's era and doesn't deal with it well.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Happens when Harley's friends try to subdue her after she becomes a Man-Bat. It doesn't work until Francine attacks them and arouses her protective instincts.
- It's Not You, It's My Enemies: In the Tieri run, Harley cuts herself off from her friends after Mason's murder makes her think that she's a Doom Magnet. It's made much worse by Hugo Strange messing with her head.
- Jenny's Number: Mason Macabre is Prisoner 8675309.
- Jungle Princess: Harley is so upset by her mother's funeral that she retreats to the volcanic island that appeared just of Brooklyn in an earlier issue to play Jungle Princess games.
- Kill the Poor: The overarching plot-arc of the Rebirth era has Harley fighting a corrupt mayor of New York, with her pivotal This Is Unforgivable! moment being when he (it was his second-in-command's idea initially, but he loved it when he heard) hires a South American cannibal cult to "clean the streets" by killing and eating the city's homeless people.
- Legion of Doom: The first major arc of the Tieri run has the Penguin, still holding a grudge after his confrontation with Harley early in the Rebirth era, inviting every Gotham villain to cause havoc in Coney Island.
- Life Will Kill You: A major subplot of the Humphries run is Harley's mother dying from cancer, which Harley doesn't react well to.
- Magic Kiss: When Harley is dosed with fear gas by Scarecrow, Ivy snaps her out of it with a kiss, powered partly by love and partly by a buttload of oppositely-mind-altering substances.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The cannibal cult laughingly deny being vampires, and they don't show any unambiguous inhuman powers, but they have a very creepy appearance and are very strong.
- My Eyes Are Up Here:
- In Issue #5, Harley says this to the Police Chief that is distracted from her legs.
- In Issue #8, it's Sy's turn to say this to Harley when she meets him at a nudist colony.
- Mythology Gag:
- Issue #8 opens with a dream sequence featuring Harley in her original costume.
- In Issue #7, Harley is in a superhero-themed BDSM sex club and, on spotting a girl doing a sexy routine with a trapeze bar in a cage, says that she did that once and it was fun, a reference to a Workout Fanservice scene from Suicide Squad (2016) that became notorious through its heavy appearance in the trailers.
- In Issue #12, there's a kinda-sorta dream sequence going over the Joker and Harley's history that includes Mad Love, with Harley in her original costume.
- In Old Lady Harley, when Harley and her friends visit Lobo's casino in Las Vegas, Harley and Selina are irritated to see exotic dancers dressed in even sexier versions of their costumes. The costumes are based on those that were given to Harley in Suicide Squad (2016) and the Patience Phillips Catwoman in Catwoman (2004).
- Perfectly Cromulent Word: Harley loves these too. Only in the first page of the Rebirth-branded Issue 4 we have "destructavated" and "vacationating".
- Reality-Breaking Paradox: The concept of issue #50, caused by Harley reading a Doujinshi about herself.
- Recursive Canon: Within this comic, Harley's participation in the DC Year of the Villain event is fanfiction about Harley by Meredith Clutterbuck, which includes considerable metafictional debate on whether crossover events are a good or bad thing.
- Retool: The Humphries run, while not entirely dropping Harley's Coney Island community, features a lot more interactions with the wider DC universe. While the comic issue numbering continued unchanged, the numbering of the TPBs began at one again.
- Sad Clown: The ongoing theme of Humphries' run on the title is that Harley's chaotic, thrill-seeking lifestyle and "I'm mad, me" posturing is a coping mechanism to avoid dealing with her very real emotional problems and the darkness of her past, which is beginning to break down. It's unclear if this was planned, but it acts as a plausible transition from the pure black comedy of the Conner-Palmiotti issues to Harley's characterisation in the Joker War crossover event and her subsequent relaunched comic spinning off from it.
- Seeks Another's Resurrection: After being made an angel by the Lords of Order and Chaos, Harley tries to force them to resurrect her mother, which fails when her mother doesn't want it.
- Self-Deprecation: In #51-2, when Harley contacts Jonnie DC to report back about Captain Triumph, Jonni is locked into a room with several variants of Donna Troy, attempting to sort out her notorious Continuity Snarl.
- Shout-Out:
- Issue #2. The green alien that became a cow (and caused a Zombie Apocalypse) is a reference to a famous Fantastic Four story with the Skrulls hypnotised and turned into cows.
- In Issue #5, when Harley first sees herself in the mirror after having her hair styled as a mohican, she exclaims "Holee Wendy O-lee!", a reference to the USA's most famous female mohican-wearer, Wendy O. Williams, lead singer of the band The Plasmatics.
- In Issue #33, Mason's crates of valuables include one labelled The Brave and the Bold 28, a reference to the famous and extremely collectible issue that introduces the Justice League of America to Silver Age DC, and recurring DC universe villain Starro the Conqueror.
- An issue in which Harley starts to turn into a giant ant is titled "Metamorphosis".
- Shower Scene: Several with Harley. Issue #3 has also Ivy take a shower with her.
- Stalker with a Crush: During the Humphries run, Lord Death Man develops a crush on her.
- Take That!:
- Issue #4 sees Harley going on a crusade against call center scams.
- Issue #56 is a gigantic parody of the "Gamergate"/"Rabid Puppies"/"Comicsgate" type of misogynist right-wing geek, as Harley attracts the attention of a group of fanatical MRA pet keepers.
- Targeted to Hurt the Hero: In the final Conner/Palmiotti arc, Mason Macabre, Harley's love interest throughout the series, gets his head blown off in front of her by the Mayor in an attempt to intimidate her. She doesn't take it well.
- Truer to the Text: Inverted case in Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey. Ostensibly a spin-off from the Birds of Prey (2020) film, the title's characters are more accurate to their original comic versions instead of the movie's. Harley is the same as from her Rebirth solo comics, Black Canary is the traditional blue-eyed-blond white woman, Cassandra Cain is more like her Orphan identity but still mute like back when she first debuted and then was the new Batgirl, and Helena Bertinelli is a composite of both her pre-New 52 and Rebirth versions, while Renee Montoya is a composite of her comic and movie versions.
- Issue #2 includes a guest appearance by the original founder of the comics' Birds of Prey herself, Barbara Gordon, who wasn't in the movie. Instead of being Oracle, though, she's Batgirl but is out of action due to a broken leg (accident).
- The Unreveal: In Issue #6, Tony asks Edgar what he is. Edgar tells him about his upbringing, but not about what he actually is. (He apparently has parents, so there's that.)
- Wake Up Fighting: At the beginning of Issue #8, Harley reflexively throws a knife at Eggsy when he wakes her up, killing him. Fortunately it turns out to be a nightmare.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Minor Disaster is obsessed with getting her supervillain father Major Disaster to acknowledge her. She finally accepts that he's just an asshole.
- Whole-Plot Reference: #42 and the subsequent Old Lady Harley miniseries parody The Apunkalypse in general, but specifically Mad Max (especially Fury Road in #42 and Beyond Thunderdome in the miniseries) and Marvel's Old Man... Bad Future stories.
