Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, loyal readers of Harley Quinn: it’s official.

We have a gimmick on our hands.

And it has arrived at a most disappointing time in the lifespan of any new run, when the new creative team is typically expected to establish a narrative or stylistic foothold for their title.

Now, in fairness to the duo of Kalan and Lee, they’re dealing with a character who can be forgiven a moment or two of good, old fashioned shtick.

But there’s gotta be some there there, as the poet said.

And there just ain’t. Not in this new issue.

We pick things up with Miss Quinn as she continues her quest to rid Gotham’s most recently and aggressively gentrified neighborhood of Throatcutter Hill, rechristened by the evil corporate investors as NoWeGoSoe (short for North West Gotham South East, a fairly clever nod recognizable to anyone who has spent enough time in New York City to have witnessed the forced burgeoning of new neighborhoods and their directionality-obsessed faux-catchy names). Her latest foe are the neighborhood’s invasive fleets of e-commerce delivery truck convoys and the harm they do to local neighborhood businesses. In addition to Harley’s now-routine destruction of corporate billionaire property, she once again faces off against a hired goon doing the bidding of those corporate billionaires. This time around, she battles The Convoy, a formidable bruiser who seems to be able to weaponize and telekinetically control those same delivery trucks.

As I tried to lay out in my introduction to this review, we seem to have taken a few steps backward in the narrative arc for this Harley Quinn run. I certainly get what Elliot Kalan is going for, but there’s some dissonance occurring between the social messaging of Harley’s civic crusading and the tongue-in-cheek, slapstick flavor of the month tone that DC editorial seems to be prescribing the title. Much has been made in online discussion circles about how much DC is clamoring to turn Harley Quinn into their version of Deadpool (so much so that virtually any mention of HQ on and commentable post will see at least one intrepid commenter commenting, in so many words, “HARLEY IS NOT DEADPOOL!”) and while this reviewer doesn’t strictly buy that line of thinking as a fair assessment, its repetitive storytelling and a tendency to rely on gimmicks that can make such a sentiment difficult to argue with.

The pencilling effort in the expository stages of this issue also leaves a lot to be desired. The facial expressions of Harley’s beloved neighbors from Mindy Lee are mushy and unfocused, and background detail seems to get dropped in favor of efficiency. Lee wins back some points with dynamic chase and fight scenes, however.

I believe that in my last review, I said we were still in the “early days” of this title. While this remains true just one month later, I issue the same cautionary sentiment as it relates to this issue; except where last month, I meant to ring out with cautious optimism. This time around, I’m attaching it to the benefit of the doubt.

Recommend if:

• You’re dying to check out Harley’s new character design
• You’re sick of massive delivery vans polluting your neighborhood
• You go for combination car chase/fight scenes

Overall:

This third issue of what started off as a promising new arc is settling into a predictable groove. It’s not a totally incompetent satire, but it might be the low point of 2024 for Gotham’s favorite psycho-psychiatrist.

Score: 4/10