Merry Shrugmas
Writer: Sam Humphries
Artist: John Timms
Colors: Alex Sinclair
Letters: Dave Sharpe
Cover: Guillem March & Arif Prianto
Variant Cover: Frank Cho
Assistant Editor: Andrea Shea
Editor: Alex Antone
Group Editor: Brian Cunningham
Cover Price: $3.99
On Sale Date: December 5, 2018
**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE
BOTTOM**
Christmas,
Christmas time is here, time for boobs and time for beer. That’s not the song? What are people celebrating,
then? The birth of what? I don’t
wanna hear any of that noise. Just move on to reading my review of Harley Quinn #55, and we’ll forget the
conversation ever happened.
Explain
It!
The Holiday Season is upon us, and you know what that
means: you’ve got to rub elbows with your stinking family. Unless, that is, you
are the excommunicated member of a cult, and the rest of your family is still
munching lentils and fabricating bootleg cell phone charging cords inside the
compound. But then, within the cult, there’s probably not a lot of traditional
holiday celebration anyway. Harley Quinn is preparing for Christmas—despite
having been canonically Jewish to my memory—where she hopes to assemble her
acquired, and therefore better family. But guess who crashes the festivities?
Her crummy biological family. This really cheeses Harley off, despite having
hung out with her mother over the last six or eight issues.
They mean well, but Harley’s family winds up making a
goof of everything like a bunch of Jerry Lewises. Her one brother, who’s become
a goth metalhead or something, shreds some guitar that ruins Harley’s ice
sculpture. Her other brother, now a tech nerd, ruins dinner when he tries to
deliver all of the food by remote-controlled drone. You know, writing these
scenarios out really highlights how supremely dumb they are. Dad dresses as
Santa Claus and breaks a flimsy prop chair from the movie Santa Saves the Multiverse. How lazy is this shit? The youngest
brother, an arsonist, sets the Christmas tree on fire.
Harley blows her stack, then the li’l firebug is like
“Mom’s got cancer,” and things have to get real deep all of a sudden. This used
to be a pretty funny comic book, you know that? It wasn’t like some crazy
sequel to Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, produced
on an even smaller budget. Harley and her mom have a heart-to-heart that lasts
for about fifty-six pages, then she returns to the apartment to announce the
commencement of a food fight. She’s also wielding her brother’s awesome-looking
electric guitar, which my brother never allowed. In the end, there’s a full
dinner for everyone, despite an entire one having been flung around the room,
and both of Harley’s families are blended at the table, a Christmas miracle
except for the part where her mom still has cancer.
And If you were curious about whether or not we’ll be
seeing Big Tony, Goatboy, Eggy, Sy Borgman, the Gang of Harleys, or any of the
other characters established prior to Sam Humphries’ entrance on the series,
the answer is: nope. They were nowhere to be seen at this soiree, and I suspect
they’ve been dispensed with until another writer takes over and decides to make
use of ‘em. This was an incredibly flat story, a bunch of lame gags about the
bumbling Quinzell family, then a forced tear-jerker moment that doesn’t even
land. It is great, however, to see John Timms back on Harley Quinn, even if
temporarily, and he did some great work here, particularly on backgrounds. The
story is like some forgettable shit my grandma would tell, but the art is worth
a look if you can find a secure corner of the comic shop.
Bits and
Pieces:
Humor-wise, it's about on the level of an episode of Family Matters from season one. Stakes-wise, it has the ramifications of an episode of Family Matters from season six. You know: where Urkel would become a Bruce Lee robot or whatever. The art in this issue is great, though.
4/10
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