A
Killers’ Eye Tour of New York City
Written
By: Frank Tieri & Jimmy Palmiotti
Art By: Mauricet,
Hi-Fi
Letters
By: Dave Sharpe
Cover
Price: $3.99
On Sale
Date: May 11, 2016
**NON-SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**
I’m gonna
give it to you straight, folks: New York City really blows right now. I suppose
its got the same tourist stuff that’s always enticed the grazers, but if you’re
looking for a livable city and you’re not an investment banker or accruing
extra money through graft, I’d say you could skip it. Most of the cool,
affordable places are gone, the outer boroughs are becoming as expensive as
Manhattan used to be (and Manhattan real estate is obscenely overblown), and
it’s become a veritable police state with a real antagonistic relationship
between cops and citizens. Mayor DiBlasio is a real old-time New York mayor in
the tradition of many other glad handing fake-outs that talked big and did very
little. What this city needs, in actuality, is Harley and her gang, to come
cause a little chaos and mayhem and shake the coke-fueled blatherati out of
their reverie. A fella can dream, can’t he? Until a bunch of leather-clad
chicks do ride down Fifth Avenue whipping chains and spiked maces like
something out of the Road Warrior,
we’ve got issue #2 of Harley Quinn and
Her Gang of Harleys, which you will find I’ve reviewed if you read on!
Isn’t it
always the way? You stage a fake kidnapping of yourself in order to motivate
and galvanize your gang of do-gooders, and wind up actually getting kidnapped
by some wacko who puts the families of your gang members to shame. That’s what
happened to Harley last issue, at the hands of the enigmatic and kind of gross
Harley Sinn, a woman with a bunch of facial tattoos and a haircut like Betty
Boop. Now Harley’s in a warehouse with a bunch of assassins hired by Sinn to
take out each member of Harley Quinn’s gang, minus one that Sinn had to kill
for disobeying orders. Still, Harley Sinn goes forward with her plan to send
one assassin to each member of the gang and kill them. Seems like a really,
really stupid plan that is bound to encounter way too many variables, but what
do I know? Back at Coney Island, Coach and Big Tony are acting as a hub for the
Harleys (I think I’ll call it…Harleys Hub), who have each gone to their
families and ascertain the threats against them, implied last issue when Sinn
revealed she had cameras on all of them. First is Bolly Quinn, who goes to see
her mom and grandma at their Indian restaurant (awesomely named “Tandoori 2 Die
4”) and packs them off to somewhere in Astoria, where they will be safe for
some reason. Then…though it’s actually twenty minutes earlier, Harvey Quinn is
being harassed outside some biker bar, and he beats the hell out of two bikers
when they knock over an old lady trying to intervene. He puts his visiting
Midwestern parents up at a hotel and checks in with Coach, who tells him to
rendezvous with Bolly at the restaurant. At this location, one of Sinn’s
assassins is there but she tells him to pull back as well…almost as if she
realizes this plan sucks!
 |
| Dude. |
Uptown,
Harlem Quinn is spied by another of Sinn’s minions (Let’s call them…Sinnions),
but before he can murder Sinn instructs him to fall back as well. Pissed at
missing his opportunity, he’s about to cut up a bunch of bystanders when Harlem
drop kicks him in the head. Then there’s this really funny sequence where the
bystanders try to get rid of the killer’s unconscious form that results in his
grisly death. I like this, I said the plan was stupid and here, it’s proving to
be stupid. Not like I would have pegged Harley Sinn to be the organized type to
being with. Harlem likewise gets instructions to meet Bolly and Harvey down at
the restaurant. Over in Flushing (Reggie’s birthplace!), Harley Queens checks
in on her parents, and finding them in good health and needling as usual, calls
Coach to get steered downtown to the same restaurant as the others. When Queens
leaves, we see that Sinn’s assassin has been behind one of the couches in the
living room the whole time! Which freaked me out a little because the first
scary movie I ever saw was When a
Stranger Calls, and I still can’t watch it to this day. Same deal happens
with Carli Quinn in the Bronx, except there’s no killer stalking her since that
was the one Harley Sinn killed in the beginning. So now everyone in the Gang of
Harleys, save for Coach, has convened at Bolly Quinn’s parents’ restaurant, and
all of Harley Sinn’s people, except for the two that died, are across the
street on a rooftop. Sinn wheels a bound and gagged Harley to a Brooklyn
rooftop, presumably just across the East River from the restaurant, to dig into
this long-winded villain speech that is really not that bad, but maybe a little
too much preamble for the obvious rocket launched into the restaurant by one of
the Sinnions across the way!
So this
issue was pretty reminiscent of last issue: little vignettes of each gang
member traipsing through their preferred part of New York City, this time
saving their friends and family instead of procrastinating in looking for
Harley Quinn. Still, I enjoyed it—the little diversions with Harvey and Harlem
served to liven things up, and I did feel a little bit like yelling, “Don’t you
all go to that restaurant! You’re gonna get killed!”
at the comic book as I read it. But I didn’t. Instead I spoke to the comic in
soft, cooing tones like I always do. “Who’s a good comic book? Yes, you are! You’re a very good comic book!” This is a
Palmiotti-derived Harley Quinn book, so guess what? The artwork is great (and
the same team as last time, incidentally) and the plotting is expertly, uh,
plotted. It was a little heavy on exposition and a little light on story, but
the high quality and few good quips make this a worthwhile read for any extant
fan of Harley Quinn.
Bits and Pieces:
There should be a warning label on the cover of this book: DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU ALREADY LIKE THE MAIN BOOK. I wouldn't expect people to just pick up the miniseries, but it takes all types in this world. If you are a fan of Harley Quinn, then I think you will enjoy this book quite a lot, because it's not short on the main Quinn herself, and has enough thrills and laughs to act as a good supplement to Harley's expanding continuity. This issue could have done with less talky and more punchy, but I enjoyed it enough and look forward to see what's in store for the Gang next issue!
8/10
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