You Damned Kids with Your Facebooks and Your YouTubes
Writer: Sam Humphries
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colors: Alex Sinclair
Letters: Dave Sharpe
Cover: Guillem March & Tomeu Morey
Variant Cover: Frank Cho
Editor: Alex Antone
Assistant Editor: Andrea Shea
Group Editor: Brian Cunningham
Cover Price: $3.99
On Sale Date: November 7, 2018
**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**
I sure hope Captain Triumph isn’t still farting around somehow. Have a look at my review of Harley Quinn #53 and find out if he is!
Explain It!
The kids today, they like their YouTube. While those in my generation use YouTube primarily to watch old toy commercials and poorly-produced videos about alt-right conspiracy theories, the younger set watches YouTube more regularly. There are series adored by those born in this century, featuring all kinds of mind-boggling content: shows where people open mail, extended video of folks playing video games. Terrific footage of people pouring molten aluminum into ant hills. Some of the most popular shows feature pranks, pulled on friends, family and strangers, and situations where the videographer puts themselves in grave danger. Due to recently-incurred debts, Harley Quinn finds herself in this latter class of YouTuber, flinging herself into cartoonish levels of danger, under the direction of Coach, and filmed by Petite Tina. At the expense of her health and well-being, Harley has almost 140 million subscribers, and her videos get hundreds of millions of views. This stuff is important to YouTubers.
It’s a grind, though, of constantly uploading content and trying to placate a massive, capricious audience. Coach pushes Harley to keep entertaining the people, but it begins to affect her negatively. Their schedule requires a new upload every eight hours, and this is physically and mentally draining to everyone. When Harley snaps at the YouTube audience while filming a makeup tutorial, that footage must be scrapped, which only further sets them back. Every time they miss an upload, the channel loses hundreds of thousands of regular views to the nearly infinite selection of other channels on the same website. When you really consider the effort it takes to keep a YouTube channel relevant, you have to appreciate what the professionals go through on a daily basis. You must also wonder if it’s all really worth it.
Oh yes, there’s a story here, too! Major Disaster’s daughter, Penny, has created a diminutive Disaster Dial. Unlike her father’s equipment, which caused earthquakes and other calamities, Penny’s results in only minor disasters––and so that becomes her villainous name! She uses it to humiliate Harley Quinn during her outrageous stunts, and causes her to accidentally upload a video of Harley talking badly about her ravenous fan base. As you can imagine, this result is quite undesirable!
So if you are, like me, a middle-aged recluse without children, this issue might be very informative regarding YouTube culture, and what it takes to be a successful YouTuber. If you thought you might read an entertaining comic book about the antics of Harley Quinn, then you’ve come to the wrong place. If you wanted to read a comic book that features Harley Quinn shitting her pants, then you’re out of luck. The introduction of Minor Disaster is intriguing enough, but we get so little of the character that it’s tough to make a determination. We see that she’s been texting her father, seeking his approval, without any replies, but since I couldn’t tell you what the status of Minor Disaster is to save my life, I’m not sure if I should be sad about that or treat it with a shrug. The highlight of this book is the playful, expertly-rendered artwork by Lucas Werneck. I don’t remember seeing his name before, but I sure liked the way this issue looked. Brought me back to the John Timms-drawn issues of the Palmiotti and Conner era, excepting that this comic book isn’t even in the least bit funny.
Bits and Pieces:
Harley Quinn takes to YouTube in order to drum up some funds, but her attempts are thwarted by someone that wants to usurp her fame. Huh. That was surprisingly easy to recap.
3.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment