Harley Quinn #20

Yay! More location based humor from Connor and Palmiotti!

If you think things were wacky and funny when Harley Quinn was in New York, just wait until you see her in Los Angeles! I bet it's as wacky as Starfire living in Key West! This shit is about to get crazy! But first, let's learn some secrets about The X-Files!

Look at them! They're practically babies!

I found this TV Guide while digging around in the attic for the copy of our lease. Yeah, my organizational skills aren't great and now I have no proof of our original lease for the new property managing company that has taken over. Oh well! This TV Guide is more interesting. Let's see the twenty things everybody needed to know about The X-Files in 1996! Although the tidbits are from TV Guide so don't be too surprised if you fall asleep while learning them.

#1. "Mulder and Scully don't have a love life because they're too busy!" Okay, so I'm paraphrasing instead of quoting the entire thing but that's about the crux of it. And you thought it was because Mulder was addicted to porn and Scully was saving herself for marriage and/or an alien lover.

#2. "Mulder and Scully will never have a love life because fans don't want them fucking anybody but each other." That's true enough. One of the things I loved about the show was that it didn't force a romantic plot into the series. At least not until the series had already been fitted for an adult diaper and had been shitting itself on a regular basis.

#3. "Duchovny hopes for more scenes of Mulder playing basketball." Here's David's quote on the subject: "I don't see why we can't do something that plays to my strengths." Well, Dave, I guess you eventually got to show your strengths with Californication, didn't you?

#4. "Gillian Anderson has a beauty mark on her upper lip." Gillian's quote on why Carter insisted it be covered with make-up: "Chris felt that there wasn't enough room for it on my face." TV Guide used that quote straight while I'm pretty sure Gillian was being a smart ass. Because Gillian is the greatest human being on the face of the Earth.

#5. "Something about being skeptical or something." Most of these things everybody needs to know are apparently really fucking dumb. I kept the TV Guide for the pictures.

#6. "Mulder and Scully both prefer the Beatles over the Rolling Stones." Whew! I'm glad that's cleared up!

#7. "The X-Files theme has no words because it was written without having any words." It should have lyrics. "Aliens are coming now! Here they come to steal a cow! I think I saw some take my sis! We're almost at the part where we start to whistle."

#8. "If a TV is on in a scene, it is playing a sci-fi horror movie." Really, TV Guide? Every fan would already know that. Do you think amateur television watchers were fans of this show? Snort! I don't think so.

#9. "Sometimes there's subtext." That wasn't paraphrased. That's actually how #9 begins. "Sometimes there's subtext." Holy fuck, TV Guide! You really did your fucking homework on this, didn't you? Although the subtext they discuss is whether or not Scully and Mulder fucked in an elevator in the episode "Paper Clip". Jesus, Guide. Shipping subtext discussion? That's barely even worthy of Intro to The X-Files 101.

#10. "And sometimes there's no subtext." I would be dead right now after reading that if I owned a gun. I did point out at the beginning that this was going to be TV Guide level journalism!

#11. "Sometimes the show doesn't make it past the censors." Apparently Fox didn't want a character on the show who fucked corpses so the character became a death fetishist. But incest was okay! Kind of.

#12. "The episode names are purposefully inscrutable." Like I even knew what the episodes were called when I watched them airing for the first time anyway. I doubt I even realized episodes of television had names back when The X-Files first aired!

#13. "Gillian's worst experience was wrestling with a fake cat covered in rabbit fur." Suddenly I have an erection.

#14. "Duchovny finds maggots gross." The real story isn't that David finds them disgusting because that's just being a fairly typical person. The real story is why he finds them off-putting. It's because they're "so needy." That sounds about right.

#15. "Gillian never ate that cricket in that episode about freaks written by that guy who wrote the best episode of all time starring the master of everything Charles Nelson Reilly." The truth? She spit it out! Move over Woodward and Bernstein! Here comes TV Guide!

#16. "The best items Gillian and Duchovny received from fans." Okay, I'm going to just transcribe this entire one because it's quotes from Gillian and David, two of my favorite people on the planet (probably just under my mom's parents): "What kind of offerings do the starts receive from X-philes? A fan once sent Anderson a tape of a song he wrote called 'Oh Scully, When Will You Kiss Mulder?' 'It was this twangy hillbilly song,' Anderson says. 'It was fabulous.' Duchovny's most unusual gift? A sexually explicit jigsaw puzzle from a female admirer. 'I spent the whole afternoon working on it,' Duchovny says. 'It took me a long time to put it together.'" My god, they're both so droll. They say so much without saying so much! They're too smart for average fans!

#17. "Some famous people like the show." Famous fans include Stephen Spielberg and Tony Bennett. You would think they could have come up with a few more.

#18. "There will be a movie." Thanks, TV Guide! I was probably excited to hear about this when this came out.

#19. "Big named actors want to guest star in The X-Files but Carter won't cast them." Is that a slam against Charles Nelson Reilly because I won't stand for it!

#20. "Three things will never happen on The X-Files." Those three things are any paired relationship between Mulder, Scully, and Skinner. Probably because it would confuse everybody at every X-Files convention since somebody saying "Scinner" would just be confused for "Skinner" and "Skulder" and "Sculder" sound exactly alike.

I own one other TV Guide and it has the Tiny Toons on the cover. What surprised me most about the TV Guide is that people actually sent letters to them. But no editor took the time to answer them even though the letters seem to have mostly been written by idiots. I should just buy up as many TV Guides as I can find and answer the letters. Maybe I should just save that idea for a book!

One last thing. Here's almost certainly what I watched on the night of April 7th, 1996 on Channel 54 in San Francisco Bay Area: Blake's 7, Robotech, Robotech, Doctor Who.

Anyway, Harley Quinn has made her way back to Los Angeles. She didn't have much time for airport hilarity last time so she takes care of it in this issue.

Normally I'd say people demanding apologies are ruining the inherent idea of apologies as showing true remorse but here the lady did offer to give Harley one. She gets what she deserves: stuffed into a suitcase full of strawberry jam. Ha ha! Humiliated but not actually hurt. Good one, Harley.

Harley's mission is to save some girl named Sparrow from a cult. But the job was first offered to Deadshot who isn't happy to have been taken out of the loop without his hundred grand. He's got a point. He most likely lost other sources of income preparing for this job. Assassins and Mercenaries must be allowed the same rights other businesses have to protect their revenue stream. I always charge businesses who change the locks on their doors without alerting me prior to my scheduled floor cleaning visit!

Harley winds up at some naked guy's party and ends up in a fight with some home invaders. She winds up stealing a cop car and driving around with a guy dressed up like a cowboy named Cowboy. Look, it's Harley Quinn. If that all doesn't make enough sense, you should probably be reading Batman.

Mission accomplished!

I hope when Deadshot comes busting into the Motel, he makes a crack about that time Harley called her vagina a clown car!

After tying the girl up, Harley and Cowboy leave her in the motel room to go get something to eat. They pass by Grauman's Chinese Theatre so that Harley can interact with the actors in superhero costumes. She considers getting Batman and Superman to kiss, assaults the "Special Occasion" version of herself, and is propositioned by Wonder Woman. So you know, all the shit that's been written about already twelve dozen times in fanfiction.

Harley beats up a pink pussy while eating pink tacos. I think this might be one of those scenes with subtext. Unless it's one of those scenes without subtext. I don't think there are any other options.

After they eat, they head back to the motel where Deadshot arrives to shoot Cowboy in the chest which probably makes Harley's clown car flood.

Harley Quinn #20 Rating: No change. Does Harley Quinn's comic even need to be reviewed by anybody? Even if it maybe sucks sometimes or tends to be derivative of itself or is just a vehicle for commentary on comic book culture, it's still going to sell a ton of copies. I don't know what it would take for Harley to suddenly not be popular. Her fans are going to purchase anything she's in and I kind of get the feeling we're only going to see an uptick in her popularity when the Suicide Squad movie comes out. Although I think a lot of people are going to be confused when they realize comic book Deadshot looks more like Orange is the New Black's Pornstache than Will Smith. Maybe Deadshot will keep his mask on during this story to avoid confusion.