Harley Quinn #3

I'm a huge fan of Ivy's new dildo.

The Facts!
• Previously in Harley Quinn, Harley was living with a stuffed beaver, a wiener dog, and a cock named Mike. If those three things set you to giggling, you'll love this fucking comic book.

• The issue begins with Wannabe Deadpool (who is Wannabe Deathstroke, so we're really getting into some comic book history layers here) receiving a new arm in the hospital. I didn't know that if you arrived at a hospital missing an arm, they'd just stick a new one on! I'll have to remember that!

• Vertigax, the alien who became hot dogs which turned everybody into zombies, has parents who care for him on a planet far away. They had put a tracker on their teenage son because they're busybody, micromanaging assholes. Maybe it's a good thing they did though because now they can track him to Earth and discover he's been spread out among dozens of human stomachs.

• Did you grow up in the late 70s and early 80s? Remember how they used to have days at school where they would fingerprint all of the kids just in case they went missing? I can't believe our parents fell for that shit out of fear. All the fucking cops wanted was a record of our prints so we could easily be caught when we became teenagers later and began vandalizing shit. Fucking pigs! Do they take samples of children's DNA now and pretend it's for safety reasons?

• You can get DNA samples in other ways then jerking kids off, right?!

This page takes care of all of the formulaic bits at once! Harley and Ivy being sexy and naked. Mike Cock strutting around all hard and erect. Harley's stuffed beaver turning into Eclipso. And the wiener dog licking the weed whacker. If that doesn't sound dirty, I probably should have put a little more thought into it to make it sound dirtier.

• I just remembered I forgot to buy Sheriff of Babylon #10 this week. Eep!

• Oh wait! Here's a better Mike Cock joke!

"Dammit! Mike Cock is blocking the television!" Har har har!

• Harley and Ivy shower together so I'll be stuck on those panels for awhile.

• Oh yeah. Scrub that back. Lower. Come on! Lower!

• That reminds me of a time I was lying in my friend Doom Bunny's bed the day after a party. He was lying next to me and next to him was his friend Amanda. That's her secret name because I don't want to expose her true identity or the fact that I can't actually remember her name. We were talking and I was rubbing her back with my arm over Doom Bunny. I said something about how I didn't want to rub any lower because things would get weird and Amanda said, "You can rub lower." So things got weird.

• Sorry! That's the end of the story! Actually, the end of the story was when I couldn't get my shoelaces to tie later and I said, "Please Baby Jesus! If you let me tie my shoes, I'll never ask for anything ever again!" And then they were tied! I really fucked up with my huge miracle prayer! The really scary part was that I was getting on a plane in an hour!

• Speaking of planes and flying, I used to do this thing where I would carefully check out everybody in the waiting area to make sure they looked like major characters in their lives. Because major characters don't die! You don't want to look around you and realize you're getting on a plane with background players and people who only ever get one line!

• Wannabe Deadpool wakes up from his operation to learn he was given the arm and hand of a chronic masturbator. One who did it in public even! Constantly! He totally freaks out because, I suppose, he believes the hand is gay. I mean, it did touch a lot of another guy's cock.

Like that matters! I'm right-handed and I jerk off with my left hand! Seriously! It's because when I was a teenager, I noticed my cock was getting a curve in the other direction from the frequency of my masturbation. So even though it was awkward at first, I began jerking off with my left hand. And now it's the only one I use! I mean, it's the main one I use! I totally need both to do it properly! Wink, wink! You know why I'm winking, right? Because I need to put a finger of my right hand up my ass to really do it right.

• Also, it turns out Chronic probably was right-handed and the doctor was just calming down a patient. Does that mean I exposed my way too personal history for nothing?!

• Enh. I'm sure I've told that story before!

• The Harley Crew (different from the Gang) decide to escape the area via the tunnels under the Wax Museum. This allows me to complete my Harley Quinn Bingo Card when she says, "Holee Spelunkerolee!"

• Harley's House of Leaves Exploration B Outfit is pretty cute. I'd buy the Action Figure.

• Poison Ivy smells mothballs on the way to the tunnel and I want to smell them too! So I pull out my Leather Goddesses of Phobos Scratch 'n' Sniff card and go to town!

• Nope. That's chocolate.

• Leather.

• Pizza.

• Oh! There we go! Mothballs! Ew. Gross.

• You know what? Supergirl #1 was a total rip-off because there wasn't one shot of Supergirl's Bum. There wasn't one in Supergirl Rebirth #1 either! I guess I'm going to have to drop Supergirl as my favorite butt in comics. Good thing there seems to be a replacement in this issue of Harley Quinn!

Oh yeah, Ivy. That's the stuff! Is that costume painted on?

• The door to the tunnel is the most obvious door to Hell anybody has ever seen. Which makes Harley want to go through it more than ever.

• The tunnel leads to a room full of doors. I think it might be the Hall of the Mountain King.

• The doors are just plot droppings for future plots. For now, the Harley Crew stick to the plan and go through the door that will lead them outside the radius of the Alien Zombie Hot Dog Apocalypse.

• The exit doesn't go far enough and the Harley Crew find themselves once again fighting zombies. Who's going to save them this time? Catwoman with a powerful laser pointer?

• Of course it isn't Catwoman! It's the alien's parents! They pull a transporter beam trick which yanks out all of the pieces of their son so they can put him back together. All of the creatures he was inside die in the transfer though. Oh well! The Aliens Ex Machina saved the day!

The Opinions!
So far, this series has breathed some fresh life into the way too formulaic and overused Harley Quinn. I'm enjoying it and not dreading it in the way I used to. I'm going to allow the comic book to get the credit for that this month and not my brain chemistry. But it could be my brain chemistry. Because--let's face it--I really enjoy the me part of these commentaries more than the comic book part of these commentaries.

Harley Quinn #2

I guess it's okay for Amanda Conner to sneak a zombie finger sliding up Harley's clown car. But it would be wrong if Frank Cho drew this, right?

The Commentary!
Tumblr has that "Recommended Blogs" column off to the right on the home page which I sometimes click on but mostly ignore. But I think I need to ignore it forever now because just looking at it depresses the fuck out of me. Thanks, Tumblr, for recommending Monster Man's blog so that I could click over to see some "Monsters Forever" and be greeted with this post:

Hi all, on Sunday, June 12th, the Monsterman passed away. He leaves behind his beautiful daughter and me his loving wife. Running this site gave him so much joy. We will miss him and love him always.

I suppose I shouldn't complain. It's a loving note of tribute and more than anybody will get on my blog when I'm found lying face-down in the cat's litter box, bloated from the gasses of decomposition. It's not like it's Tumblr's responsibility to post warning signs all over the place that life fucking sucks and, to top it all off, it just ends in the complete erasure of your existence. It's not like there aren't little reminders all around us every day which we desperately try to avoid although, when we can't, we frantically try to figure out a way to repress the reminder and get back into our heady, daily denial of the Faustian deal we unknowingly made with the universe! Because don't get me wrong! I'm glad I somehow, improbably, exist to experience all of this! But if the universe had an identifiable set of testicles, I'd definitely kick them as hard as I could.

I wonder if during the years Carl Sagan was battling with cancer if he ever just went into his backyard at night and flipped off the stars. That guy was way too optimistic and chipper. I'd feel better if I knew he had some bad days where he felt the full weight of the universe's mocking betrayal of his curiosity and wonder. Fuck you, universe! Fuck you!

I wish I believed in God because screaming "Fuck you, God!" is so much more satisfying than screaming at the universe. It's like calling the coffee table in the living room a cunt after stubbing your toe on it. I'd rather yell at the person who put it there.

I wonder how many people who believe in God just switched into their own issue after that and started yelling at me, "That's proof! Proof of God! Who do you think put the universe there? Hunh? Hunh? Hunh?!" I'm not falling for your simplistic arguments! If you can believe in a magical being who can do anything (but seemingly does nothing!) who has existed forever then maybe you can imagine matter that has, somehow, existed forever and isn't magical at all. It's just, you know, a mystery! Not God's mystery! Enough with God! Shove God!

At this point, you might be thinking, "Tess? Do you have anything to say about Harley Quinn?" It's a fair question! And a good one to since the answer is "No. No I do not. It's the same fucking comic book every month and I really don't have anything new to say about it!" I suppose I'll try anyway but I'll warn you: my Carl Sagan bit was the best part of this entire entry. It's all downhill from here! Probably. I mean, I haven't written anything else yet (or read the comic book, for that matter!) but I can't see myself being clever from this point on.

How cute! The BLAMs look like a little mushroom!

Hopefully an out of context panel of Harley firing off round after round from her AK-47 wasn't too disturbing for people constantly thinking about the next mass shooting. She wasn't doing anything intentionally horrible with her gun. She was just shooting out the windows of three floors of a hospital and endangering everybody within just to save Redtool's life. She's so thoughtful when it comes to people she knows!

Meanwhile, zombies are ravaging her neighborhood. But it's okay because her Gang of Harleys and all of her friends are safe. The people getting their arms ripped off and their faces bitten off and their legs torn off don't matter. You know how it is! Writers don't have time to write fulfilling conclusions to the story of everybody who just marginally appears in their stories. If they had that kind of time or interest or writing ability, why would they do what they did to Barb Holland in Stranger Things? Sometimes fucking a character in the ass and tossing them in the garbage is the only move an auteur has left, time and money being what they are. You know, time and money!

Luckily for the rest of the DC Universe, the zombies won't go further than a half mile away from the source of the infection: Nate-Man's Hot Dog Stand. I guess the alien that's infected them can't spread itself too thin.

Harley winds up falling off of the roof and into the horde of zombies. Previously, she didn't want to kill them because they're the people in her neighborhood, in her neighborhood, in her neigh-bor-hoooooood! But now she doesn't mind kicking their heads off because remember what I said about non-essential characters? Fuck 'em! They're like the Monster Men in my life! Their deaths only exist to remind me of my own mortality! Although, really, I just wish they'd stop with all of these reminders. But just like me, Harley decides she needs to do whatever she can to survive! In her case, that means having a great time killing her neighbors. In my case, that means playing video games until the constant thoughts of my eventual demise disappear into a flat hum in the background of my brain!

Harley's tits looked pretty good while she fought the zombies though! I didn't want to type that but I've decided to allow my Male Gaze at least one sentence per commentary. I have to pay a daily tithe to my masculinity or it'll go toxic!

Harley gets a few pages of crazy scenes like this as she Dead Risings her way across Coney Island.

Harley is rescued by her friends but then they all wind up trapped in the Bumper Car ring because apparently Nate-man's is a popular place to eat. They're surrounded by hundreds of zombies! It's the end for the heroes! Which is fine because why should they get to live when everybody else is dying? Seems so unfair, not to mention totally contrived.

But wait! One last savior appears and she's really doing the Dead Rising thing! Poison Ivy appears with a table saw blade attached to a weed whacker! Unless maybe it's just supposed to be a weed whacker but since when do those have blades in them? Maybe it's some kind of tree branch trimming tool! I might be able to tell the difference between a spade and a shovel but that's about where my gardening expertise ends. And speaking of endings, this is where the issue ends! What a smooth conclusion! It's like I'm back in high school writing another shitty paper that I was way too proud of! And I was probably just marked down right there for not writing "of which I was way too proud!" Mr. Borror was a dick! May he rest in peace. Probably. I mean, no way he can still be alive, can he?

Apparently he is! 82 years old! I actually really liked him but the dick thing wasn't too far off if you were a piece of shit who wasted his time. Check out his ratings at Mission College (I had him as my high school AP English teacher)!

The Review!
Just because I don't really have much to say about this comic book except that it's formulaic and repetitive, it doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable. It's just the no-calorie rice cake of writing! If you love Harley, you probably love this book. You get to spend twenty pages with her silly antics and cute tush and violent tendencies. It can be a fun ride! It's just a ride that maybe I've been on one too many times and I'm beginning to feel nauseated by it!

Harley Quinn #1

I would like to think this cover means Harley is going to be more crazy-scary and less crazy-goofy-scatapulty.

The Review!
I read a lot of comic books that I know don't have any reason for existing except so that fans of the characters can give DC Comics their money and then complain that DC is writing them wrong. I know that I'm really not getting anything out of them since I'm generally not a fan of the character, and the amount I enjoy the experience is proportional to the amount I found ways to make writing about it fun. Harley Quinn isn't one of those comic books because it just seems to be the same comic book every month. Amanda and Jimmy figured out their template and they beat it into Harley fans' brains month after month. It's like eating a familiar sugar-free candy sitting in a bowl in front of me. I know what I'm going to get when I reach out for another one--a bland, uninteresting, semi-sweet taste that's gone from my memory as quickly as it's gone from my tongue--but I grab one after the other out of habit and boredom. Maybe I should take up painting instead of reading Harley Quinn comic books?

The Commentary!
I guess I misinterpreted the cover! I guess Harley chopping off somebody's hands and using them to pose for a picture is crazy-goofy-scatapulty because the issue begins by definitely sticking to the New 52 Harley recipe: lots of half-naked women and near lesbian action! It ends as if Rebirth never happened and then has the audacity to call this issue "Afterbirth" as if I haven't been calling Rebirth books that since before Rebirth even started. Probably before The New 52 even started! I can't find any proof of that but I'm sure it's out there. Just take my word for it. And if you don't, just give me some time to edit an old commentary with a bit about me calling the Post New 52 universe the Afterbirth Universe. That should convince you dumb dumbs.

Harley and Poison Ivy have gone to a spa and possibly the Bahamas just like they planned on doing at the end of Harley Quinn #30. It gives them a chance to show a lot of side-boob! They even hang out with a woman whose fuzzy pink towel somehow shows the contours of her belly button. It might even go up her vagina but there's some steam blocking her secret garden so I can't be totally sure. Except that I'm totally sure anyway. It's way up there!

Once again, Harley doesn't wind up with Poison Ivy in every crevice. This comic book is the biggest tease in the world.

After getting the nearly nude scene out of the way immediately, along with the almost sex with Poison Ivy (two staple ingredients of this book), Harley rushes right into a barrage of naughty innuendo.

Is there anything more to say about this issue? This pretty much covers the experience!

Just in case somebody picking up this comic book didn't know anything about Harley Quinn, this first issue reads a lot like if it were a Rebirth #1 issue. I don't know why Harley didn't get one of those. Maybe she accidentally had sex with Poison Ivy in it and DC had to scrap it because they hate their fans.

Apparently there is a new character named Jimm Salabim, a genie who lost his magic, who appeared in Harley Quinn Loot Crate Special which I totally don't have and will never have because Loot Crates are fucking garbage. Oh, sure! Getting presents is a lot of fun! For exactly the minute it takes to root through your new crate of crap to discover all of the secret treasures. And then you just have a big box of crap to clutter up your life. But the cool stuff makes you unique and quirky, I guess! Or at least as unique and quirky as everybody else willing to pay a monthly subscription to have somebody else tell them what they should like. Fuck you, Harley Quinn Loot Crate Special! I will never read you! Ever!

Unless you come with some candy and a surprise paranormal toy!

While Harley tells Deadfool that he's never going to put his hammer in her toolbox, the Scooby Gang are attacked by zombies. I don't know. Do you think hammer in her tool box was the way to go? Should I maybe have mentioned a drill or a screwdriver? Why is a ratchet ho called that? Is it because a ratchet fucks dozens of sockets?

The zombies are a bunch of New Yorkers who ate hot dogs made out of an alien cow. It's this whole story within a story thing that had a lot of disgusting imagery like a guy stroking off a dog and a man sucking on a horse's wiener and some nearly naked people deep throating some shlongsages. It almost made me ashamed of my own body and how many times I've put my penis in a bun and slathered it with hot mustard and relish.

And that's the final ingredient for a typical Harley Quinn comic book! The Holee Wordarollee!

Tooldude winds up getting bitten in the arm by one of the zombie people and Harley decides to cut his arm off so that he doesn't turn into a zombie too. So this is sort of like what happened to Hacken in Hitman. A probably unnecessary amputation for kicks and giggles. Tooldude whines a bit about his arm and Harley decides maybe she jumped the gun a bit. So she decides to send him and his arm to the hospital via the scatapult. I guess if I hadn't realized this entire thing was crazy goofy up until this point, the fact that the scatapult made an appearance would have clinched it.

Deadfool gets launched toward the hospital but he passes out in midair. So he'll probably plummet to his death next issue. Which is a good thing because there are way too many characters for this comic book. Although Redtool and Harley Quinn have yet to appear in their own six issue mini-series, so I imagine he'll live.

Harley Quinn #29

Issue #29?! I ran out of things to say about Harley by Issue #11!

The Review or Whatever!
I figured out the main ingredients to a Harley Quinn comic book last issue! I know, I know! How the hell did it take me nearly thirty issues to figure out what makes this book tick?! I suppose I was distracted by one of the main ingredients: lots of half-nude panels! This one starts off strong with the near nudity right there on the cover! Okay, so it's just a bit of breast smashed against a window. But you know what seeing a bit of breast means to a twelve year old boy¹? Plus the image of Harley as a gigantic robot on the first page is so sexy that I just fucked my toaster². Another main ingredient of a Harley Quinn comic book is loads of innuendo. Consider innuendo the onions of a Harley Quinn meal. If prepared right, they'll highlight the flavors and bring it all together. But if you fuck up, you've got food that tasted like an onion farted on it. While reading this issue, I will almost certainly wind up with innuendo fart breath. On the first page alone, you have a picture of a rooster named Mike which is a totally great dirty joke if you're just the right mix of mature and immature to understand it, and picture of Harley's beaver. That's an innuendo because she has a real beaver. It's stuffed³. And the main ingredient of a Harley Quinn comic which can successfully bring all of the other ingredients together: hinted at sex with Poison Ivy! I'm pretty sure that's the main reason fans read this book. Because they get some in canon material to help them jerk off⁴ to their Harley on Poison Ivy action. Oh! I almost forgot the spices! Sprinkle in a whole bunch of Holee Wordarollees and you're done!

This issue begins with a Japanese business man buying a Transformer to kill his unfaithful wife.

Here she is being unfaithful. And here I sit with an erection. I don't think the man's nipple had much to do with the erection.

The man the wife is fucking gets his head blown off in the middle of coitus. I think this means this comic book can't be sold in Germany! At least not to kids. Of course it's Rated Teen Plus, so obviously no kids in America are reading it either! If it weren't for the fucking bit, I bet this would be rated G for Goodness Sakes, Why Can't All The Little Tykes Enjoy It?!

After killing his wife's lover, his wife, and everybody in the company except his sexretary, the man makes the Transformer blows it's head off⁵. And since the head is where the pilot sits, the guy just killed himself. I suppose Harley will gain access to a Transformer herself before this issue is over. And maybe her Transformer will totally eat Poison Ivy's transformer's robot pussy!

After the robot death intro, Harley Quinn and Little Tony take to fussing with snow globes.

First actual Beaver Joke of the issue.

I maybe should have read a little further because Amanda and Jimmy make the Beaver Joke more explicit, just in case all of these beaver innuendos are way too subtle for the sophisticated readers of Harley Quinn.

After filling her beaver with balls, Harley heads out to get lunch with Poison Ivy. I don't think editorial has allowed anybody to make Harley and Poison Ivy's relationship sexually explicit, so it's just a bunch of scenes of cheek kisses and ramming huge hot dogs down their throats and talk of how they would fuck each other if stupid editorial would just butt the goddamned fuck out.

To pay their bills, Harley and Little Tony head out to steal some Transforming cars. They don't know they're Transformers yet! They'll probably figure that out when later they're attacked by that mobster who wants to kill Harley.

For some reason, they have a monkey with them.

After the job is a success and some bowling gets played, it's time for the robot fight. And then after the robot fight, it's time to kill the mobster who wanted Harley killed! And then after that, it's all over⁶!

_____________________________________________________________________________⁷
¹Twelve-year old boy is a synonym for "men of all ages".
²That didn't work out as well as I was hoping.
³I know it's stuffed because there's a formula for how many times that joke has been used. (X*Y)/(8=D) where all of the variables are equal to too many times.
⁴Jerk off is used here as a term for both male and female masturbation. Because it just sounds great even if women have nothing to jerk. Or do they?
⁵If it's called a cockpit, why isn't it in the cock? Not that this robot had a cock. But then shouldn't a synonym for vagina be cockpit?
⁶I suppose I could go into greater detail but it's all kind of silly.
⁷Is that enough underscores?

Harley Quinn #26

Nobody else is completely sick of Harley Quinn yet? Just me?

Rating: It's a Harley Quinn comic book by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti. Does it even need a review? Half of the copies sold probably never even get read. Harley fans just pick them up because they can't be the biggest Harley Quinn fan in the world if they don't have a complete Harley Quinn comic book collection! Or a tattoo of Harley within one or two inches of their asshole.

• It doesn't matter what was happening last issue. I think a bunch of sexual innuendos were said and somebody learned a cock's name was Mike. Did you know he also hunts? Oh, Harley probably also spoke to her beaver at least once. And she might have fingered Poison Ivy. Unless that was the previous issue.

• Harley commits some violence against some people on the beach. But it's okay because they were bullying her and one called her a bitch. That excuses Harley for insulting their aesthetic and making them bleed.

• I totally get where Harley's coming from though. I grew up in Santa Clara, California, and spent many summers on the beaches of Santa Cruz. Not the tourist beaches crowded with assholes! No way! We went to the beaches through holes in people's backyard fences spray painted with sayings like "VALLEYS GO HOME" and "LOCALS ONLY". I never had to rip anybody's hair off for my right to be on the beach though. Apparently the locals at Santa Cruz weren't as bad-ass as The Lost Boys made them seem.

• Big Tony reminds me that I'm going to have to purchase yet another fucking Harley Book in April. Egad.

• Harley Quinn has a tasty ass.

• Some Deathstroke wannabe motherfucker with one arm has a vendetta against somebody named "Nutbuckets."

• Harley gets a makeover so when all the fans flock to her comic book after seeing the movie, they'll recognize her.

• Oh wait! I get it! Harley is Nutbuckets!

• The comic really improves when some women get in their underwear.

• The guy in the flashbacks challenges Harley in the Skate Club ring. Rink? Um, anyway, he's a Deadpool parody which everybody else probably already understood with the Wayne Wilkons name thing. I'm so old school that I flew right past that reference and hit on the guy Deadpool was a parody of.

Harley Quinn #23

Blood in the water? Whut.

I want a job writing the captions on the covers of comic books. Apparently you don't need to make any sense at all. "Hey, it's a shower scene! There's water in showers! And Harley is going to beat the crap out of a lot of people in the shower! And there's blood in people! Oh! 'Blood in the water!' Nailed it!"

I should apologize to whoever came up with "blood in the water" because I've been trying to think of a better caption for the cover and I can't do it. I mean, I can do it! I can think up a whole bunch of them! But every single won can easily be purposefully misinterpreted by fascist youth bullyboys as being a prison rape joke. So I'll just quietly go on to reading the comic book rather than listing my hilarious captions because I don't have the time or the patience to be Youthsplained to by humorless internet youths making the world a better place through bullying.

This issue takes place in a bowling alley because Amanda and Jimmy had some bowling jokes burning holes in their pockets. That was a bowling pun in case you missed it.

Zena Bendemova has Sy Borgman held hostage in Lane 21 at Flatbush Lanes. She's throwing bowling balls into him so he'll probably be dead before Harley can get there. I'm surprised he lived through being hit with even one!

I've recently burned through every series of the British "game" show Would I Lie To You? which got me to thinking about things in my life that I could read off of a card to try to make people think it was a lie. Being that we're currently in a bowling themed commentary, my true story would probably be that I once rode a BMX bike down a bowling alley. It's slippery as fuck but I made it to the end. It was only later that I realized how much trouble I would have been in if I had wiped out and one of the pedals had gouged the fuck out of the lane. My cousin worked at a bowling alley and we would hang out after it was closed drinking and playing darts or just listening to music. One of those times, I chose to ride a bike down an alley. Apparently being incapable of understanding consequences even in my early twenties, we left without thinking about the tire trail down the alley or the trail of wax the bike tires left across the approaches to all of the lanes as I rode it back behind the pin reset machines. Luckily I didn't get in trouble because I didn't work there and I didn't cause any damage and you can't prosecute me, Lawman!

Harley gets to the bowling alley and finds that Sy isn't being held against his will at all.

The pin and balls are like genitals! So hilarious!

So Sy and Zena are fuck buddies now. Which means Harley has a new friend with a dirty name. Zena Bendemova meet Mike Cock and Harley's Beaver!

Sy and Zena leave the comic book for awhile because there were too many characters (even after the Harley Quinntuplets left). But with Sy out of the picture, it's time to get Mason back in the mix. For some reason. I don't mind if he stays in prison. How about just letting Poison Ivy visit for a two or three page adult slumber party every issue?

The Mason Rescue Mission is a bunch of pages of this highfalutin littyrature:

Is anybody else as bored as I am with Harley Quinn?

Mason is too hurt to move so Harley leaves him but threaten's the warden to make sure he's moved to a different prison where the mayor's goons can't get to him but then she finds out that new prison is Arkham Asylum and now she has to break in to Arkham to save Mason and maybe while she's there she can have some sexy innuendo time with Poison Ivy. The end.

Harley Quinn #23 Rating: No change. I guess if you like naughty innuendo or love Harley Quinn so much you'll read anything she's in, this is the comic book for you. But I'm burned out on her. I've grown overly tired of the same old shtick and recycled jokes issue after issue. Conner and Palmiotti are the new Giffen and DeMatteis!

Harley Quinn #22

I feel a bit uncomfortable now. Is this comic book making light of domestic terrorism?!

I don't really care if this comic book were making light of domestic terrorism! Because making light of domestic terrorism isn't domestic terrorism. Making jokes about a clown who goes around murdering people doesn't end up with dead people everywhere. You know what else it doesn't do? It doesn't create a culture in which domestic terrorism is more likely to happen. This is true of a lot of things that people joke about that doesn't end in anybody actually being hurt. It's weird that way, you know? It's almost as if some people who feel powerless want to gain some kind of power and so they tell other people what they can and can't do because, as they explain it, what those people are doing is literally the same thing as the thing being done. People like to throw "literally" in there a lot. Mostly because they're idiots and they don't see that writing a comic book about a domestic terrorist clown doesn't literally cause terrorism. Those people also probably believe they know what propaganda is and that they would never fall for it ever.

I was using domestic terrorism as a metaphor in the previous paragraph because it's less controversial than the thing I was actually talking about.

This issue begins with Harley Quinn going on a shopping spree using Deadshot's credit card. Hey! I have a secret to tell you! I don't really like this comic book very much. Sure, it's fine. It's whimsical and cartoonish and stars one of comic book fandom's favorite characters. And I enjoy the art. But it's kind of...boring. I think I've hit my Harley Quinn threshold!

Zena Bendemova was resurrected and had her youth restored just like Deathstroke! I wonder if the first thing she'll do is look at her vadge?

The resurrection happened a week ago so that Zena can be prepared to attack Harley as soon as she gets back from Los Angeles. I'm not sure why she went to Los Angeles. I guess she still had some leftover jokes about Los Angeles that she forgot to use in her Road Trip Special.

The attack really does happen the instant she gets back! She's picked up at the airport by Zena's goons instead of by her pal Goatboy who's tied up in a closet with being tied up.

The limousine takes her to an ambush where Harley manages to kill all of Zena's thugs. It happens across four pages and not just one sentence but I don't think blow-by-blow accounts of comic book battles should make up the bulk of my commentaries. Although in one panel, you get a glimpse of a Russian woman's underwear which is super hot except that she's dead on the next page which kind of ruins the moment for me. I wish I'd masturbated before turning the page! Now if I want to wank to it (it was a really nice pair of underwear!), I'm going to feel weird and be thinking about her corpse. That might lead me down a strange path that I think I'm too old to begin walking down. Necrophilia is a young man's game! It just seems like a lot of work unless you accidentally stumble into it.

Meanwhile in prison, Mason is having a rough go since somebody put a hit out on him. Since Harley plans on putting Mason's penis in her mouth and her vagina and probably her butthole too, she's going to have to save him later. But first she has to deal with Zena Bendemova.

Now that she's back home, we can get some hilariously fresh Harley's beaver and my cock jokes!

After the Mike Cock zinger, there's a panel of a bunch of birds shitting on a guy who told a woman to get back into the kitchen. The "fap" sound effect is used liberally. Does that mean jerking off sounds like a swarm of birds shitting? I think I can see that.

Harley Quinn calls a meeting of the Harleys because she has two missions for them: save Mason and find Sy Borgman. That means the team will have to split up and also make some titty jokes and call penises "yogurt slingers" and talk about twiddling chocolate donuts which--I'm assuming!--means something hilariously gross.

Harley Quinn #22 Rating: No change. This comic book really doesn't hold my interest. It's the main reason why most of my commentaries on the Harley Quinn books are so short. I'm usually thinking about playing more Call of Duty or eating a huge slice of carrot cake or finally getting around to rewatching Wizards and Warriors for the first time since it aired on television in 1983. What I am not thinking about is how intriguing the plot of the comic book is or what themes might emerge if I looked closer at all the cock, beaver, and poop jokes. Normally I'd really be up for delving into cocks, beavers, and poop! But this comic book is skirting Giffen/DeMatteis territory. That means it's recycling the same jokes over and over again while keeping the main story as stale and predictable as possible. But I do love Chad Hardin's art!

Harley Quinn #19

Even though this is a continuation of Amanda and Jimmy's Popeye Fan-Fiction, I still spent $3.99 on it. What made them think a Popeye parody was what the world currently needed? I bet it was Scotch!

The entire Gang of Harleys have been kidnapped by Popeye and taken out to sea. So now Harley has teamed up with Poison Ivy, Tony, and Egg Fu to rescue them. Also, Harley's beaver seems to have made a cock friend.

Get it? His name's Mike Cock!

Harley's plan is to use the Shit Launcher to launch her over Popeye's boat and parachute in to the rescue. She's leaving her beaver behind with Poison Ivy for safe keeping.

This parody needs more Alice the Goon.

Popeye is stricken with a terrible case of e. coli from eating raw, unwashed sea spinach that was probably covered in seahorse manure. He rushes off to shit himself as Harley unties her gang. Some other stuff takes place back on the mainland but I don't think it's worth mentioning. It's not like Poison Ivy fucks anybody or anything.

Popeye returns in his skivvies bigger and stronger than ever. But just before the big fight takes place, the Harley Quinntuplets's mom comes Scatapulting out of the sky with an AK-47. That was part of the mainland stuff not worth mentioning. At least not until now when she parachutes down to save the day.

Popeye survives being riddled with bullets but it seems he's finally out of spinach and the Harleys are able to tie him up. I guess he's off to Vegetable Rehab for awhile.

During the cartoon, Harley finds out that the Harley Quinntuplets are only fourteen years old. And since she has a better sense of doing the right thing than Batman, she sends them back home with their mother.

Harley gets her next job from Sy Borgman.

I hope she teams up with Blue Devil and Black Lightning while in Los Angeles.

Harley Quinn #19 Rating: No change. Early on when I began this blog with four months worth of New 52 comic books purchased over the last week of December 2011, I was trying to do three or four entries a day to catch up. A lot of those blog entries were short summaries like this one. Once I caught up and I realized other people were reading this blog, I began to feel obligated to really flesh out the entries. But now I've realized that I when I don't have anything to really say, I can go back to the short summaries as long as I make this final thoughts review section interesting because now I'm reblogging just this final bit as well as the entire commentary! Which doesn't help this time because I filled up all of this space with nonsense when I should have been pointing out how Harley Quinn #19 is exactly what you've come to expect from Conner and Palmiotti and Hardin. If you liked previous issues, you'll like this one too. And if you didn't like previous issues, why the hell did you buy this issue? Are you a Popeye fan or something?

Harley Quinn #18

Aww! Violence is so cute! I'm going to put on roller blades and go stab somebody!

The worst thing about the internet is not that it allows everybody to have a voice but that it causes people to think that their voice is somehow too important not to be expressed. I mean other people! Obviously I'm above that criticism because I made the criticism! But even if I have to wade through endless pictures of bullshit from people who have dropped writing in complete sentences in favor of only speaking in hashtags in the wild chance that somebody on Instagram will look up "#kickinitcalistyle" and find their picture of them doing the most mundane bullshit, the internet is worth it. Because many voices that are worth hearing would never before have had a chance at such a wide circulation if they had to rely on traditional media and old fashioned outlets. The internet is simply millions of zines with the potential of a much wider audience than the customers at Tower Records or the local comic book shop. Mainstream culture often looked down on zines as people self-publishing because what they had to say wasn't worth being said in a professional magazine. But the best part about zines is that they are filled with passionate voices that needed a means to express those voices. Instead of a bunch of faceless managers and accountants trying to figure out what kinds of articles will make them the most money and then have a dispassionate writer work on that idea, zines simply exist because the writer had an idea or a humorous thought or a raging hate-boner which couldn't be contained anymore. The writer was enough in love with what was in their head to go through the trouble of printing and stapling and copying and graphic design, not to mention the torture of asking businesses if they'd carry their zine. The internet makes this process much easier (which is why so much of the web is shit) and expands the potential audience for voices that have something important or interesting or funny to say (which is why so much of the web is glorious).

If I had to honestly assess my little part of the internet, I'd say it's just slightly above "shit" because--I mean, I just have to face the facts--I don't really have anything important to say. And even if I did, it's about comic books! And nobody should care about comic books when we have out of control police officers believing they're all goddamned Judge Dredd, and old white men believing woman's bodies should be legislated, and an increasing number of bigoted assholes hiding behind their religion to treat other people like shit. How poorly Scott Lobdell is writing Jason Todd should be the least of our worries.

I think that's as close to a compliment as I'll ever give Scott Lobdell!

At the end of the last issue of Harley Quinn, Popeye was beating up a couple of the Harleys. Now Harley and the rest of the Gang need to swoop in and beat the living shit out of Popeye the way Bluto never could.

You know who was to blame for all of that violence between Bluto and Popeye (and maybe Brutus if he was a third person and not just an alternate name for Bluto)? Olive Oil. I know that wasn't much of a revelation which is why I chose to end it in a period instead of an exclamation point. If she didn't just keep leading them both on and just chose one (since Popeye and Bluto obviously weren't into anything more vanilla than monogamy), they wouldn't have had to beat the shit out of each other for decades. Although I suppose either one of them could have just been an adult about it and moved on with their lives. I suppose it wasn't fair to Olive that she had feelings for both of them and she couldn't decide on which of the violent bastards she wanted to spend her life with. It's also possible that Olive Oil didn't love Bluto at all and he was just a creepy rapist that wouldn't leave her alone. I can't remember the last time I saw a Popeye cartoon. One thing I know for sure! It was bullshit the way everybody decided to call the pacifist "Wimpy." You can always count on the majority to come together on any issue by attacking the pacifists and atheists!

The first few pages are spent on catch up Narration Boxes, some first act Law and Order procedural bullshit, a long comment on gentrification, and then a mugging. I'm sure Popeye will be coming up soon!

I know I shouldn't be judging Harley by her intelligent schemes so I probably shouldn't mention how putting a bomb in a cell phone that explodes when it's out of your vicinity is a bad idea, considering how often people misplace their phones.

Harley and Bolly find Popeye in a tattoo parlor just up the street. They confront him and...wait a second. Is this Popeye fanfic? Did I just pay $3.99 for fan fiction of Popeye the Sailor Man?! I am such an idiot.

Harley steals Popeye's spinach (which is actually irradiated seaweed) and eats it herself so that she can get huge forearms. But instead she just gets a hallucination in which she plays the part of a pirate. Her pirate ship is named Bernie. So I guess she set out to sea in her vagina.

Before the year is out, this hallucination will have its own mini-series.

Harley wakes up in the hospital with Ivy. When did this comic book become an anti-drug pamphlet?! Taking illicit substances that cause you to hallucinate is fun, kids! Don't believe this crap about winding up in a hospital! I've been rereading my X-Statix comics from the early 2000s and they're full of anti-marijuana and anti-smoking ads. I was actually surprised that those ads lasted into the new millennium. The smoking ads proclaim "Tobacco is whacko!" in huge letters with crazy images to go along with them. And then in smaller writing hidden somewhere else on the page, "If you're a teen." Ha ha! Stupid anti-smoking ads put out by cigarette companies! Please tell us why smoking is "whacko" if you're a teen but not if you're an adult? Are you saying it's only wrong to smoke before the law has accepted that you can make rational decisions on your own? I love how they want to make it seem like they're doing a good thing but they don't want to risk alienating the adults who smoke so they add the "if you're a teen" bullshit. And the anti-marijuana ads are no better. They generally end with something like "TRUTH" or "FACT" as being the reason not to do drugs. But the entire ad relies on hyperbolic hypothetical situations. It really would be nice if an ad just pointed out actual dangers to different drugs. But then I guess they really wouldn't have many reasons to tell kids not to smoke pot. They could bring up lung cancer but pot doesn't have to be smoked so their ad would really just be an anti-smoking ad while extolling the virtue of brownie mixes.

While Harley was out of it, the rest of the gang confronted Popeye and were defeated.

Hee hee. Behind! Don't you pervs fap to this image scan! Go out and pay $3.99 to fap to it like the rest of us!

Popeye has taken the Gang of Harleys out to sea and now he's planning on killing them all. It's up to Ivy and Harley to rescue them! But hopefully not all of them because, let's face it, there are way too many characters to care about in this comic book!

Harley Quinn #18 Rating: No change. I'm not entirely sure if this is an anti-drug comic book, an anti-spinach comic book, or an anti-fisherman comic book. I suppose it could be all of them as well as a slight anti-gentrification screed and a bit of a rant against the modern materialist culture. It's also possible it's just a story about a bunch of women kicking ass, taking drugs, and fucking. The fucking part isn't blatant though. It's things like Harley in the hospital with an "IV inside of her" and The Joker's Blunderbuss going "BANG" and how Harley never minded Ivy's "seafood buffet" smell before. It's all really classy!

Harley Quinn #17

This cover is a parody of a cover that hasn't been published yet. Which will basically make the We Are Robins cover the parody.

DC Comics' new West Coast offices must have been built on an ancient Indian time anomaly. How else do you explain Superman books with notes from the editor telling readers to reference books that haven't been published yet and this cover parodying a non-existent comic book (Yes, it exists now but it didn't the week this book came out)? The ancient Indian time anomaly is probably what gave DC Comics the idea for Convergence. The entire staff working in the building might actually think Crisis On Infinite Earths ended with the Anti-Monitor being defeated before he could destroy enough of the Infinite Earths so that you couldn't regard them as infinite any more (that would be an infinite amount, by the way, if you're bad at math). The ancient Indian time anomaly also caused DC to forget that they were drawing a line at $2.99 because over a third of their comics are now $3.99! Bastards! Although if that extra dollar added to the more popular characters' books helps subsidize less popular characters and weird series that wouldn't be attempted otherwise, I'm all for it. Also, since the subsidizing thing was my idea way back when, DC Comics should probably pay me a consultation fee.

This issue begins at 4 AM with a bunch of dumb pricks stealing garbage cans so that the owners will have to repurchase those garbage cans from the place the dumb pricks work. It's an idiotic scheme that can't be worth the trouble. How much profit does a store make on a garbage can? Is that a lucrative business? Too bad for these kids, they haven't learned the simplest lesson in crime: never hit the same mark on a regular basis. You see, in this day and age, people have access to all sorts of recording equipment. You may not be filmed committing your crime the first night because not everybody is paranoid. You might not get filmed committing the crime the second night because who thinks they're going to have their trash cans pilfered two weeks in a row? But that third night? You're going to be caught on film because you've begun a pattern. Although too bad for these kids, the person losing their garbage cans decided to pay for The Gang of Harleys instead of a web cam.

Shit. These kids would be better off in Gotham.

The Gang of Harleys earn a rooster for solving the case of the missing garbage cans. They also make some extra money salvaging the van the thieves used, stealing the money in the kids' wallets, probably selling the garbage cans, and possibly selling the organs of the murdered kid on the black market. Justice pays off in lots of little ways.

Harley goes to see the mayor and strikes up a deal which will allow her and her gang to commit murder for hire throughout the city.

Meanwhile in a scene foreshadowing future problems, Popeye eats some seaweed irradiated by an alien ship.

Harley and Mason finally have their date. It feels like Jimmy and Amanda are probably just writing about themselves here. But how would I know?! I don't know anything about them and I don't stalk them or obsess over their Wikipedia pages or anything. Harley Quinn somehow avoids making a beaver joke during dinner. Mason does not avoid being arrested for murder and jail breaking and what else ya gotting.

There's the beaver joke! It's also a masturbation joke but it's tame enough for the kids. Just like the eye-popping and dismemberment earlier was also kid friendly. It's just like watching a Looney Tunes cartoon. Except with masturbation and beaver jokes.

Harley receives a delivery of parakeets which she sets free on the roof. I'm sure they'll be important later in much the same way that Popeye was going to be important later. Which he is! Because the Gang of Harleys get a job to track him down. Harlem and Harvey find him in the men's bathroom of a dive bar on the coast.

Duh nuh nuh nuh NUH NUH! Duh nuh nuh nuh nuh NUH NUH!

Harley Quinn #17 Rating: No change. I can't wait until the Gang of Harley battle Baby Huey or Wile E. Coyote!

Harley Quinn #16

Everybody in the whole cell block was doing something that's too vulgar to type that rhymes with "block"!

Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy have decided to take in a movie. Harley Quinn lies to Pamela and tries to tell her that Mad Max was "sooo cool." No! Wrong! Mad Max was boring shit with a sort of interesting idea that led to two of the greatest movie sequels to ever be made! But Mad Max was a boring piece of shit! If you're currently arguing with me, then you're probably only remembering the five or six minutes of Mad Max that weren't a total snorefest!

Even for its time it wasn't amazing! But she did say "in the first film," so I'm going to assume that she's just mentioning the first movie to set up her description of the beauty that was The Road Warrior and the orgy of action sadness and Tina Turner's chainmail tits that was Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome!

More important than telling everybody that they're wrong in their opinions if they thought Mad Max was a decent film is this conundrum: How the fuck did Harley and Pamela get tickets to see a screening of the new Road Warrior movie!? Do movies come out sooner in the DC Universe? Because this is the first time that I've ever wanted to truly be a comic book character! Let me see the movie now!

Harley and Pamela walk out of the movies because Harley needs to take a breath after not beating somebody's ass because they told her to shut the fuck up. Good for Harley! Fucking loud ass movie assholes. I mean she was being one of those so it would have been wrong for her to pretend that the people asking her to be quiet were being the dicks. They decide to duck into the DC version of Fifty Shades of Grey.

I'm pretty sure it's coming from the lap of the blond lady on the end of the aisle.

I don't get why anybody chose to go see Fifty Shades of Grey. Wasn't the allure of the novel that it had graphic sex scenes? So shouldn't the movie have been pornographic? Not the typical porn that the porn industry produces, of course. That's all built on the male gaze. This movie should have been a porn for females. Not a titillating Rated-R movie about two people who fuck and stuff. Not erotica. Just plain old porn! Was the movie porn? I have no idea!

Actually, since I know pretty much nothing about the book or the movie, I'll just shut up about it and move on.

Everybody clears the theater when one of the women's vibrators explodes, so Harley and Pam head off to get something to eat.

I hope it's a gang like the Warriors! Then they can all wear clown paint and drive around in a tiny clown car and have weapons like a bucket full of confetti and razorblades or cream pies full of nitroglycerin or seltzer bottles that shoot bullets!

Harley explains how she's going to buy another building nearby her current building. It will be the headquarters for her gang of Harley riding sexpots! And the name of the building (which was an old hotel) is The Dreamin' Seaman because Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti have the sense of humor of four eighth grade boys.

Pamela goes back to Gotham because she has to file a long overdue rape report on Clayface but she promises to come back in a week to see how badly Harley has fucked everything up and to hear Harley make a joke about washing her beaver.

And then it's time for Harley to interview her prospective assistants! I bet she hires all the women that were spotlighted last issue! And maybe a few more!

A bunch of candidates answer questions in totally hilarious ways for a few pages. One is like "I'm blind and in a wheelchair and I can smell your beaver!" And another one is all "I hate ghosts!" And another one is five girls. And another one is all "I'm a gay man and not a woman!" And another one is "I'm the super cute girl with the chopsticks in the hair from last issue so you know you're going to hire me!" And one is all "I'm the super cute Indian girl from last issue so I'll be hired too!" And one of them is all "I'm the big strappin' black lady who loves to flip people off and look super cute so I'll be hired too!" And one of them is all "I hate clowns and kill babies!" And one of them is all "I'm stuck up!" And one of them is all "ROCK AND ROLL, BITCHES!" And one of them is all "Kids are sucking my tits during the interview. Ha!" And one of them is all "I'm Syborg's niece! Tee hee!" And one of them is all "I'm pregnant Gail Simone!" And one of them is all "I can lick my own asshole!" And one of them is all "I do podcasts where I podcast and I have like so many downloads and likes and reblogs and shizzlenit!" And the last one is all "I have sores all over my body and am obsessed with death!" Woo-ee! It's gonna be tough to pick just twelve of these ladies!

And that's why Harley is going to turn off the lights and make them fight to the death for the job! Or near-death, more probably.

There's the beaver joke! Pam is going to be sorry she missed it.

When the lights go out, the Letterer John J. Hill makes an appearance to whine about how hard his job is. I might be sympathetic to his plight but on the page where the lights go out and he letters all of the Batman Fight Sound Effects for the unseen battle, he adds "FONDLE!" That's just going too far. I'll accept chaos and violence and endless murder and mayhem! But to suggest that one of these women took advantage of one of the other women when the lights were out?! That's just too much. Offense taken, sir. OFFENSE. TAKEN.

I wonder who fondled who's what? Tee hee! Maybe the blind girl accidentally groped a gay guy's nutsack.

When Harley turns the lights back on, every woman still standing gets a job! Even the gay guy!

The blind woman wasn't "still standing" at the end of the fight because she's sitting in her wheelchair but Harley hires her anyway or else she's going to face a lawsuit. And I bet Matt Murdock represents this woman. Not because she's blind and he's blind! Because he's the best Goddamned lawyer in New York! After She-hulk! Also I don't think he practices law in New York anymore. So she's probably represented by She-hulk.

Are any of DC's characters lawyers? I can't think of any! That makes me a bad comic book fan!

And here they are! Your 2015 New York Harleys!

Harley Quinn #16 Rating: +1 Ranking. The art is always terrific and the whimsy is always whimsical. If I were smarter, I would wax philosophical about Harley's life in this closing paragraph but I'm no good at philosophy and I used all of my sex wax on my board earlier this morning. I guess I could leave you with a Jerry Seinfeldian observation? What's the deal with French fries? They're neither French nor fried. Hmm, I think that joke needs a little more work. I hope I didn't offend anybody by it! But I've got to workshop my humor somewhere! Please be kind in your criticisms.

Harley Quinn #15

Have the first fourteen issues and twenty-nine specials just been a long hallucination brought on by swallowing The Joker's jizz?

Just to put the following statement in context, I'm not sexually aroused by cocks. I mean, I get aroused by blow job porn which is essentially just massively hard pricks. But, I mean, that's just because I'm into blow jobs, right? Or am I actually into those throbbing rods full of pulsing veins? I think I'm just really into the women's mouth parts all over the man's man parts (which I'm totally not into at all! Gross!). Although I don't get aroused when I see pictures of women eating popsicles even though those images have all of the same women's mouth parts doing practically the same thing! Do other men find women eating phallic objects sexually pleasing? Maybe it is the cock I'm into! But I always scroll quickly past gay blow job gifs because I'm not interested in them. Or am I uncomfortable with the way my penis twitches as I look at them?! Why did one sentence to provide context suddenly turn into a paragraph of lies! Look, I don't like cock, okay!?

But...I'm just saying...if jizz were hallucinatory, I'd be sucking guys off left and right!

This issue begins with some women in Harlem having a bit of a chat.

I was thoroughly confused by that last image for about a minute. I thought that maybe she was expressing some kind of weird super power.

Harley is currently shopping for birds. No matter how much somebody loves birds, it always struck me as a weird animal to keep as a pet. I'd be okay with a penguin if it had a nice pool to swim in. Maybe. And homing pigeons seem okay, especially if they're kept on a rooftop and they get to fly around a lot. But keeping a flying creature confined to a life of maybe getting to fly up onto the curtain rod and back to its cage just seems awful. I could be wrong though. Maybe birds spend their entire lives just hating to fucking fly anywhere. Kind of how I hate to get in a car and drive somewhere during the day. Maybe birds in captivity just think, "Whew! I'm so fucking lucky that all I have to do is sit here on this perch and learn to sound like the oven timer or the microwave oven. Flying is so overrated!"

I didn't know Mad had a centerfold-in! I bet it's like a picture of three kittens playing with a ball of yarn, then you fold it and...PORN!

On her way home, Harley passes by a building that's on fire. People are trapped on the top floor and she rushes in to rescue them. Because she's a hero? No! Because she's insane! I don't think she's crazy because she's risking her life to save some people. I think she's crazy because the front of the building plainly stated this was a law firm so she's risking her life to save lawyers. There are three kinds of people I'd never risk my life to save: lawyers, police officers, and everybody else.

The person behind the flames is a guy named Tinderbox. He's a second rate Firefly! Or Firebug. Or whatever that other second rate flamethrower villain's name is. Being the second rate version of a second rate character means you're a fourth rate character due to exponents or denominators or something.

Harley calls Tinderbox "Finger-lox" and I suddenly remember that we've seen a Tinderbox before! She was princess of the underground in Ann Nocenti's Catwoman. The reason I suddenly remembered that is that throughout that whole story, I constantly referred to her as something other than "Tinderbox" as well! Harley and I are practically the same person.

After kicking Timberlocks out of a window, Harley Quinn rushes off to save the rest of the people trapped upstairs.

I've never encountered a fire extinguisher that sprays foam. The only ones that I've set off...I mean, been around when they've been set off have basically sprayed chalk dust. It would have been more fun if they sprayed foam. I mean, the fire would have been put out in a more fun way!

While Harley saves all these lawyers who later pretend they're grateful but don't seem to want to spread any cash around to prove it, all of Harley's pet supplies are stolen. That'll teach her that fighting crime doesn't pay.

Meanwhile another character is being introduced. Her name is Shona and her mother and grandmother run an Indian restaurant so she probably smells delicious. Some asshats decide that they don't have to pay for their lunch because they're entitled pricks who believe they deserve to be waited on hand and foot no matter how busy the restaurant might be. Shona and her bat decide to debate them. Her bat presents most of the best arguments.

Her mouth brings up a few good points too.

Shona is kicked out of the restaurant because her mother doesn't approve of using violence to solve problems. But Shona's grandmother does, so she funds Shona's new life as a vigilante! I think she's going to be DC's answer to the Punisher. I mean DC's new answer to the Punisher. I don't remember who their old answer to him was.

Back to Harley, she returns home with another load of pet goodies to find Poison Ivy waiting for her in the tub. Now this is my kind of comic! I mean, it's my kind of porn! I mean...is there supposed to be a difference? Didn't Erik Larson say something about them being basically the same thing on Twitter recently?

The magic of being a guy! This scene is just a sweet moment between two best friends but when I turn my male gaze towards it...ha ha ha! It's now dirty and disgusting!

Seriously though! If this were Batman and Superman, I wouldn't think they were about to fuck. No, wait a second. I would think that. Carry on!

Meanwhile in yet another part of town full of minorities, we meet Carlita! Are we building to a new Roller Derby Team? Here's something that kids today won't get because they think if it happened before they were born, it happened in a time when everybody was a racist dickhole: Is Harley going to start a new 70s gang? All she needs now is an Asian member! Seriously though, remember the 70s when everything was multicultural and diversity was everywhere? Things really seemed like they were chugging along nicely. And then Reagan took office and the moral majority swooped in and suddenly we were all back to living in the whitest, most Christian, homophobic nation on Earth! I don't know who exactly is to blame but back in the 70s, real life seemed to be trending toward the world Tumblr thinks of when they say, "Are you kidding? It's 2015!" Sure, a lot of shit was still wrong but the effort was being made and it seemed like America had come as close as ever to that whole Melting Pot dream of the bicentennial. I think what happened in the eighties was the pendulum just swung back the other way as the Traditionalists (I could also have used "racists" here) pushed back.

Of course, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I may have had a slightly skewed view of America. I grew up watching the gay pride parade on KOFY TV-20 and staying up late for their dance parties. I'm fairly certain the 70s and early 80s were completely different in other parts of America. Every now and then I'll say something about how life was like back then and the Non-Certified Spouse, who grew up in Nebraska, reminds me that I grew up in Oz when compared to much of the rest of the country.

Antonia, Shona, and Carlita are all looking for jobs. I think that's the connection! They're all going to wind up working for Harley Quinn. Maybe as thugs in her new Joker Gang? Or maybe just taking care of her animals and firing the shit catapult.

This is the part where Harley gets into it with her beaver.

This is the part where Harley gets into it with Pamela's beaver.

Dammit! They neutralized my male gaze by making it dirty all on its own! Foiled again!

Mason drops by to let Harley know that he's sorry for having been so upset and he understands that her life is hectic and maybe they can try going on a dinner sex again sometime. He leaves to give Harley and Pamela some time to look for an assistant for Harley so she has more time to save lives and be a real hero. Oh, hey! Remember those three women looking for jobs?! I bet they're perfect for this gig! What luck!

There she is! The textbook cover 70s gang is complete!

Harley Quinn #15 Rating: +2 Ranking. I can't wait for Harley's version of The Joker's Gang! I mean, it's her own gang. I don't know why I bring him up since he's not involved in her life anymore and she's not making decisions based around his stupid male penis. Harley's Gang is going to kick ass. Right now, Shona is my favorite but that's because I love Indian food and also women that hit people with bats. But I think I'll probably like the Asian woman because she has a plushy alien cat creature and swords on her walls and she's reading the help wanted ad as if it were the greatest piece of fanfiction she's ever encountered. Seriously, she might be masturbating to the ad since her right hand is nowhere to be seen.

I did type "dinner date" back there, didn't I?!

Harley Quinn #14

Harley's losing her touch. She should be using a tattoo gun.

Harley has a bad day.

Harley Quinn #14 Rating: No change. It was just a bad day! She'll get it together next time. And maybe she'll even get to suck Mason's fat cock. And decapitate a girl on roller skates. Perhaps she'll finally get her beaver fixed up too. I wonder if she's heard The Joker is back in Gotham City? And that he's an immortal monster? I know she's been spending some time down there fucking around with Deathstroke and trying to get him killed by The Batman. That's always a bad plan though because doesn't she know Batman doesn't kill people? The best part about this comic book is that she looked crazy sexy on just about every page. The worst part was how she apparently reads G.I. Zombie. Look, Palmiotti. Nobody cares about your stupid war books for DC Comics. Unless the next one is Adventures of Naked Super Model Zombies and Big Cocked Marines, it's just not going to sell, okay?