The Emancipation Of Harley – Review Of Suicide Squad #15

Fifteen issues into various DC “New 52” titles and I have to tell you – if you’d have asked me who would still be standing as the long term writer of a title at the end of 2012, I’m not sure I would’ve named Adam Glass over Scott Snyder or Gail Simone. Snyder’s Swamp Thing was an unexpected initial hit, although its sales have been in decline lately; Simone’s Batgirl, despite being uneven in places, was garnering solid sales. According to Comics Beat, last October Batgirl #13 sold 50,074 issues versus Suicide Squad #13’s 27,644. So, what gives? Why does Glass continue to get the green light?

After the jump, we puzzle out the nature of sales, love, and rubber chickens – with spoilers!

Issue #15 gives the readers a glimpse into the Joker’s reunion with Harley Quinn, in this continued crossover from the Death Of The Family event going on across the various Bat-books. Previously, Mr. J had kidnapped liberated Harley from Amanda Waller at Deadshot’s funeral. This new issue explains why Waller didn’t activate the nanobots in Harley’s system and blow her head off to spite the Joker after the funeral. Turns out The Wall is willing to share her toys…after bionically augmenting them so she can use them to get intel on “one of the greatest criminal minds of our time in action.”

As Waller and Yo-yo watch through Harley’s special contact lenses, Waller postulates that the reason that the Joker came back to Harley is because he can’t live without her – rather than the other way around. Nevermind that this theory completely ignores:

-the fact that the Joker has been turning up on the doorstep of nearly every individual remotely related to Batman;

-or that the first thing that Harley did when the Joker was sent away was kill a bunch of lawyers she held responsible;

-or that Harley broke into the Gotham PD headquarters to steal the Joker’s face to make Deadshot wear while she gave him a lap dance.

But, that’s ok because I don’t think that Glass is out to convince the reader that Waller is correct. We’ll see that the Joker isn’t necessarily there for Harley out of love when all is said and done. However, Glass needs an open door to connect Waller to Harley so that she can get Harley out of there when the Joker is done with her. At least it’s a less jarring conceit than the narrative thought boxes Glass uses at the opening of the issue to show Harley’s state of mind, which only show up in the first few pages and are never used again:

Have you ever been in the presence of true greatness?

I’m not talking about a celebrity or an athlete.

I’m talking about someone who changes the world.

Someone who history will never forget.

So have you? Well, I have, and I’ll tell you something…

…It’s to die for.

You might think from that monologue that Harley is still stuck in her obsession with the Joker. You’d be wrong. However, Glass has Harley share the reasons that opening is a bit of a misdirection in her dialogue with the Joker. Between her weird lap-dancey closure speech in issue #7 and the reality of the new and improved Mr. J. trying to remove the skin of her face “to peel away her weakness”, Harley apparently has now had enough time away from her codependency on the Joker to realize that she can love him but also know that he’s no good for her. Probably didn’t help that he gave her hyenas rabies either, but I digress. Me, I probably wouldn’t have lasted much past the first acid bath…because I would have run screaming from Arkham before it even got that far. And then the Joker would have hunted me down and killed me…and I’m clearly taking this entirely too personally…and…anyway…

About that vat of acid from issue #7? The one where I speculated that the Joker may have tried out this little experiment before with women before Harley? Yeah, I was totally right:

If Death Of The Family is about the Joker cutting away that which would hold Batman back from reaching his full potential, it would seem he’s already been practicing in smaller scale the evolution of Harley as a being he has freed to tap into her own potential…or, at least one in a series of them. The problem is he doesn’t like what he’s created. She’s a broken toy and broken toys get thrown away. What does that foreshadow for Batman down the road?

Harley is able to escape and is picked up by Waller and Boomerang. She’s free, but is she still someone’s broken toy?

Oh, and meanwhile, turns out Deadshot’s not dead. So, there’s that.

So, why is Adam Glass still on this title? Well, the numbers may not be a big as Batgirl, but they’re consistent. When Glass has the opportunity to turn his attention to a story that gets to follow a single character or two, he’s turned in much more developed stories – of which this one is a good example. Which may be why readers like me come back every month.