Harley Quinn #16 Review and **SPOILERS**

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Writers: Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner 

Artist: John Timms, Joseph Michael Linsner 

Colors: Alex Sinclair 

Letters: Dave Sharpe 

Cover: Amanda Conner & Alex Sinclair 

Cover Price: $2.99 

On Sale Date: March 15, 2017

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

I’m in Miami right now, enjoying some sun and fun and food that is way to rich for my middle-aged gastrointestinal system. And being in the state where most of Palmiotti and Conner’s Starfire miniseries took place, I have to ask the question posed by Eric two episodes of the podcast ago: why isn’t Harley Quinn partnering up with Starfire and Atlee instead of Power Girl and Atlee? I mean, Atlee doesn’t even know PeeGee, until now, and both she and Kori have equivalent power sets. Besides the annoying continuity flub in establishing Power Girl on Prime Earth when she’s been on Earth-2 for years, it seems like the long way around a story. I bet there’s a swell reason! I’m too sunburnt to think on it too long, so let’s just get to my review of Harley Quinn #16, right here!

Explain It!

So after Harley Quinn couldn’t quell Zorcrom’s pastrami hankering, she got tossed in a wide arc into Manhattan’s night sky, as observed by the newly-teamed Atlee and Power Girl. Rightfully, Karen takes off to save Harley, and when she takes off Zorcrom passes Atlee a note asking if she likes him Y/N. Seems he wants her to be his Queen for when he takes over the planet, a ploy about which Atlee is very dubious…so she gets chucked into the dusk as Power Girl is returning with Harley. It’s always something around here!

Harley seizes upon the idea of sending Karen and Zorcrom on a date, which is suitably silly and misogynistic. As they while away the evening, Zorcrom’s solar battery powers down, making him vulnerable to a severe beating by P. Girl. When he’s been subdued, he froths at the mouth because he contracted rabies from that squirrel last issue—and now he’s weakened enough to exhibit symptoms. Then he gets pushed in front of a bus, but a rat makes off with his rabies-infected eyeball, so we have that to look forward to.

Elsewhere in the book, we see more of those homeless-eating vampires, who turn out to be mere cannibals with an expansive palate, and further detail on the much more interesting story from last week, about a future Fight Club in Gotham City, 2167, where Batfan 2021, aka Devani Kage, takes out the reigning meathead using some questionable (but apparently acceptable) tactics, earning her a visit to the past to visit her hero, Batman. But instead, she’s going to use the trip to take out the person that killed Batman: Harley Quinn!

Just these few pages are so much more interesting than anything else in the book, I didn’t even want to get back to that stupid Zorcrom storyline. I mean, it could have been resolved any one of a million ways, he’s clearly easy to manipulate and probably could have been kltpzyxmed back to Strata if the gals were so inclined. Considering Power Girl did the beatdown, why was Harley even there? She should have headed back to Coney Island the minute Karen was enlisted. I’m not sure what happened here, based on solicits it looks like the nature of this story arc changed somewhere during production. It sort of came down like a bag of bricks, though. Not the worst Harley offering, but I’ll sure be glad to get to this future assassin thing coming down the pike. I don’t know that I even care about cannibals eating the homeless (in the story, I mean. I would find it riveting in real life.)

Bits and Pieces:

A pretty dull resolution tempered by copious cleavage makes for a fairly middling issue of Harley Quinn. The things being seeded for future stories wind up being more interesting than the main tale. Ah well, at least we have Paul Dini coming on to write some backups in two weeks. I think that might be the assist the creative teams needs to get this book back into order.

6.5/10