Sam Humphries

Harley Quinn, vol. 3: The Trials of Harley Quinn collects Harley Quinn nos. 55 and 57-63 written by Sam Humphries with art by John Timms, Otto Schmidt, and Sami Basri, color by Alex Sinclair and Otto Schmidt, and letters by Dave Sharpe. The initial story gets to the heart underlying the best Harley Quinn tales, with her family spending Christmas together as the future is uncertain following her mother’s cancer diagnosis. While it has the humor one expects from an issue of Harley Quinn, the show more story’s emotional weight makes it stand out as one of the stronger single issues. It also sets up a plotline for future stories to reference, helping to keep things grounded as Harley has ever more high-flying adventures.

From there, Harley finds herself facing a set of trials after Mirand’r of Tamaran (Starfire’s planet) appears on behalf of the Lords of Chaos and Order to offer Harley the chance to become their Galactic Angel of Retribution. In the first story, she must work with Batman to clear her name after someone frames her for murder. From there, she needs to face a curse from the witches she offended when she accidentally brought Captain Triumph from the Golden Age to her own time. After this, Harley learns about empathy while battling some alien bugs. Humphries follows this up with a two-part story featuring the return of Enchantress, who no longer shares her existence with June Moon. Enchantress casts a spell to create a high-fantasy world in which magic reigned supreme for a thousand years without the rise of science and reason. Harley is the only one who remembers the world as it should be and must help Queen Selina to defeat the Enchantress’ forces and break the spell. The final story brings the volume full-circle, returning to Harley’s mom’s health and her efforts to help.

While Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti never shied away from the wacky, Humphries’ Harley has a tendency to go beyond her usual bailiwick, finding herself in cosmic stories rather than the more Earth-bound stories that defined the character, where humor and heart drove the plot rather than outer space and mystical setups. Previously, those were reserved for limited tales, like Harley Quinn and Power Girl or Old Lady Harley. The new normal seems to focus on pushing the book outside its comfort zone, which could work so long as it doesn’t lose sight of its strengths. Further, while some of these stories feature Catwoman, the fact that most of the book’s regular supporting characters have dwindled into the background and that Poison Ivy only gets the occasional mention creates a sense of discontinuity and leaves the reader wondering if they’ll return. There are some excellent moments in this volume for Harley Quinn fans, but there’s also a lot that will leave them scratching their heads. show less

It's been a while since I read any, but I love me some X-Folx. I loved the Astonishing X-Men series that started with Whedon (fuck that guy) and all the Schism stuff, so I understand Wolverine and the new school, but the situation with everyone else was new to me, which seemed to significantly affect how flummoxed and struggling to engage.

Logan is a headmaster, so he can't be mutant back ops, but he can be their Professor X, sending Psylocke and Storm to join Puck in investigating mind show more control ecstacy. There's a multi-armed space ninja, a little girl in a safe, Bishop doing timey wimey stuff as he is does, there's bad(?) Stands that infect people, dream stuff, and Fantomex and Control are also in here for some reason.

X-Folx has always been a whole lotta WTF and go with it, but this is a lot and absolutely does not feel like a volume 1 of a new series that barely gives any context to anything or anyone, but then a few issues in starts telling the story through huge and boring infodumps. The script seemed like a scattershot mess mess to me that was supposed to be conveying big emotional and significant stuff, but never did I feel able to connect, and I'm someone who has become way too attached, engaged, and bawled more time than I would like to admit at comics in general, but a lot of X-Folx stuff.

Like so many comics, I imagine this must have been running alongside other series because there are jumps and so much unexplained stuff. It just feels like whole scenes are missing and for a TPB it just makes for an incredibly jarring experience.

The art has some moments, but it feels very Marvel house style without much flare. Some of the dream stuff is cool, but from noth a script and art style the dream stuff seems wasted. I found the whole thing extremely dull.

I know I swore off random Marvel stuff without recommendation, but I am addicted to getting stuff from the library and thought I could trust X-Folx to at least be interesting.

(Increasingly feeling like in getting old, grumpy, and my tastes changing, so your mileage may vary) show less

Well that sucked.

The Art

The art was good…sometimes. Usually, it was painfully awkward and had that certain quality so common in Western comics and graphic novels: what I call “rushed by a deft hand.” The artist was good, undeniably so, but they were also very clearly rushed, or just didn’t care about their art enough to make it look any good.

The spectacle shots were all beautiful but the regular panels and character designs looked just really strange, at least in my opinion. Facial show more expressions didn’t match logical emotions for the scene, physical stances often looked uncomfortable, and character designs themselves didn’t really give any insight into the characters themselves (which was weird because clothing choice was kind of a theme in this). Essentially, think bad animation from the 90s, but with a 2020 makeover.

Pretty color palette, though. I’ll give ’em that.

The Story

I don’t know what I expected when I heard “neo-noir fantasy,” but whatever it was, this wasn’t it. I guess its comparison to Riverdale is accurate though, because this was flashy, overly dramatic, and made absolutely no sense.

The world could have been really cool, but instead it was generic. There were some really cool elements, but they were mostly background and when they did come into play, I had literally no idea what was happening. The magic system was very poorly explained.

The entire conflict of the story was so beyond convoluted, and so drenched in spoilers that I can’t even complain about what I hated without telling you the entire plot. So I’ll just give you this gif to explain the plot:



The MC is the dumbest Mary Sue I’ve ever encountered. She hears a lot of evidence that the people she trusts are actually 1) not who she thinks they are, 2) lying about everything, and 3) not looking out for her best interests. And yet she still trusts them?? And forgets about all the information she knows about them because ~their aura was telling the truth~? And to make it worse, she knows that her spooky cat only speaks in lies and then when it’s telling her that she failed, she gets all angry?? He’s saying you succeeded, you idiot! But the thing is, she did fail so I really don’t get any of it.

The writing was also really cringey. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if this was actually written by an AI that was fed only Wattpad stories and then edited by a sleep-deprived human. It was all around not good.

Also, would a logical transition kill you, Sam Humphries? Because scenes changed like that *snaps* and I never knew where I was, how much time had passed, and what was going on.

TL;DR & Conclusion

This had the potential to be really good but instead it’s just…really not. If it wasn’t for the insufferable MC and the mediocre art and the dreadful plot and generic yet confusing world, I might have liked it. But I didn’t. I will not be continuing this series. show less

Read as individual issues. Steve with a dinosaur is awesome. Planet Hulk itself is irritatingly underwritten, given everything that's supposedly in the setting. Queer interest tag because all of the Bucky/Steve flashbacks are coded as "love of my life". Also, Bucky and Steve in gladiator dress are absolutely 100% Gabrielle and Xena, Warrior Princess, right down to the choice of skirts. That might be my favorite thing.