Also, I couldn't say why he's got a face like a terrier, but whatever. From 2016, Harley Quinn and the Suicide Squad April Fools' Special #1, "Evil Anonymous" Written by Rob Williams, pencils by Jim Lee and Sean "Cheeks" Galloway; inks by Scott Williams, Sandra Hope, Richard Friend, and Sean "Cheeks" Galloway.
I got this (cheap, of course!) with a big order of comics from Midtown Comics, and I got the more-cartoony Galloway cover. I thought it would be a larf, wacky Harley hijinks, and there are some; but overall it's a bit darker. A bored and depressed Harley wants a change of direction, and gets one delivered to her door in a sequence resembling scenes from the Exorcist. It's a card and a file for "Evil Anonymous," like Alcoholics Anonymous for baddies. Harl wonders if that's why she became, as she puts it, "colorful," to walk like them, talk like them, in order to help them. Hmm, now who's a super-villain that could use her help? Man-Bat is the unlucky first recipient of Harley's "treatment," picked because he didn't look like a happy camper. Jumping on his back as he flies through Gotham, seemingly minding his own business, Harley crashes Man-Bat in an alley: she takes a pretty good bump on the head, but Man-Bat takes a worse one, reverting back to Kirk Langstrom and looking kind of dead. But, he's not a bat anymore, so yay, he's cured!
Probably concussed, as denoted by the art changing from Jim Lee to Sean Galloway, Harl is on the run from the cops and gets a lift from a mysterious--and noticeably large--benefactor. She wakes up, dressed as a psychiatrist, with an office to match. The next patient for Evil Anonymous arrives, Killer Moth, and Harley decides she can combine her two lives, cure super-villains, get a Nobel Peace Prize, then take over as president of the world. Well, it's no more grandiose than any of Lex Luthor's plans, I guess. She doesn't really question where her patients are coming from, until Poison Ivy suggests she not only "needs the bad," someone set this up with her in mind. In turn, Harley sets Killer Moth up with the next of "the Evil Anonymous Twelve Steps," namely helping someone else. Unfortunately for him, the Scarecrow "isn't quite ready to embrace change," but Harl is able to pick up a tank full of fear gas, which she uses on her patients, since she had learned all their secrets, like where their loot was. Kind of a dick move, and one that gets squashed immediately, by the larger-than-life arrival of the Justice League!
Although furious at the "bullies," Harley doesn't stand a chance, and is quickly straitjacketed up by Green Lantern. She does still give Batman a solid headbutt, though. As she loses consciousness, she tries to ask her subconscious inner voice, hey, who did set all this up, anyway? Amanda Waller, of course; who has Harl strapped into a pretty elaborate looking brainwashing set-up. Worse, apparently separate from that, a Joker hallucination advises Harley that she's going to want to get onboard with whatever Waller has planned, it might be a hoot. Was it all a dream? Does it matter? An off-panel member of the Squad (probably Captain Boomerang) chastises Waller for this particularly egregious violation of personal liberties, but Waller needed Harley motivated for what was coming...
Poor Man-Bat. He was just minding his own business and then he gets hijacked and crashed like one of the planes during 9/11.
ReplyDeleteAnd why does Lee draw him looking like a dumb, wet dog?
I will say Harley's theory on treating super-villains due to her experience as one isn't a bad idea and could conceivably merit a entire series based off just that idea.