Harley Quinn #12 - DC Comics

HARLEY QUINN No. 12, April 2022

Whilst this twenty-two page periodical’s plot undeniably provides its readers with both a resolution and the sort of acrobatic-based heroics they probably would’ve expected from its titular character, Stephanie Phillips’ storyline for Issue Twelve of “Harley Quinn” arguably contains a fair few dubious, head-scratching moments. In fact, despite the colourfully-costumed crime-fighter’s evident success over the utterly insane Keepsake “and his new robot pumpkin army”, it is disappointingly never made clear just how Paul Dini’s co-creation actually managed to derail her opponent’s speeding train of death just seconds from it running straight over a helpless Kevin; “Yeah… I cut that one a bit close. Sorry about that. My math was… a little off.”

Of course, that isn’t to say that this comic’s opening third, which sees Harleen Quinzel desperately battle her way towards a ludicrously-large bomb beneath a rampaging steam locomotive, doesn’t deliver plenty of pulse-pounding tension. As the tightly-penned action sequence debatably contains one of the book’s highlights as she imagines just how the likes of Zatanna, Superman or Aquaman would resolve the cliff-hanger. But the precise nature of the baseball bat-wielding vigilante’s solution is never shown, with the audience instead simply being informed that the Gotham City Siren somehow forced the exploding train into a river just as she threw herself clear of danger.

Likewise, the narrative ends with Quinn and the freshly rebranded “Caucus Of Kicking Keepsake’s ***” leaving the defeated villain to die alone beneath a fast-falling building, without lifting so much as a finger to save him from the rubble. This abandonment to ‘certain death’ debatably goes completely against the new ‘ethical code’ Harley is supposedly now following as a ‘wannabe member of the Bat-family’, and appears particularly incongruous as it occurs straight on from the “trained psychiatrist” lengthily lecturing her band “of ex-Joker henchpeople” about their plan to heartlessly kill Eli Kaufman in cold blood.

Enjoyably however, what this comic’s script might lack in logic or exposition, it definitely makes up for with eye-catching candy, courtesy of some stellar sketching by Riley Rossmo. The “instructor at the Alberta College of Art and Design” does an incredible job of illustrating Quinzel’s agility during Kevin’s rescue mission, and provides Anne’s attack upon Keepsake’s headquarters with all the chaotic gunplay, explosions and fisticuffs a bibliophile might expect from a large-scale skirmish within a closely-confined facility.

Writer: Stephanie Phillips, Artist: Riley Rossmo, and Colors: Ivan Plascencia