Book Review: Harley Quinn: Preludes and Knock-Knock Jokes

Book: Harley Quinn: Preludes and Knock-Knock Jokes written by Karl Kesel with illustrations by Terry Dodson and Rachel Dodson (Issues #1-7)

Rating: 5 stars

Review:

I thought this was really good and very funny. This book was a great way to showcase Harley Quinn as her own person and not just the love interest and sidekick of the Joker.

This showed Harley Quinn moving on from the Joker who appeared in the first story. In the first story, Harley was going along with the Joker's plan to sabotage an amusement park that was trying to cash in on the super villain's image amongst others. But after Harley was doubled crossed by the Joker she decided to go out on her own. However, unbeknownst to Harley there is someone out to get her due to her involvement with the amusement park sabotage.

Harley's new life started with her working with Two-Face but not liking the way he was handling an abduction of a movie star. Harley decides to pull her own double cross on Two-Face. As usual Two-Face along with so many others underestimate Harley's intelligence and abilities but she's the one laughing at the end when she out smarts them.

Another story had Harley having a party which included some of the criminal worlds villainesses such as Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Mercy Graves, The Body Doubles and few more. There was a funny scene where The Body Doubles asked Mercy and Hope if they could introduce them to Superman and Mercy responds by saying "I believe even Superman prefers women with I.Q.'s bigger than their --shall we say--chest circumference". This nearly caused a fight between the four ladies. This was just a crazy insane party that of course only Harley would throw.

Issues #4-7 focused on Harley starting her own criminal enterprise and hiring her own henchmen. She ended up with two former henchmen for the Joker, Lewis and Buster, two freelance henchmen Kenny and Nixon Two-Bear and one guy who was a bit delusional who thought he looked liked the Joker (which he didn't). Harley went from one crazy caper to the next and with bad luck continuing to happen to the fifth member of her henchmen.

In issues #6 and 7 Harley and her henchmen decided to rob Wayne Manor but the Riddler and his henchmen also had the same idea. With Bruce/Batman out of the manor it's up to Oracle (Barbara Gordon) to try to get the villains out of the manor and keep them from finding the Bat cave. So she sends in power house Big Barda who stops the villians but with disastrous yet funny results.

This book ended on a cliffhanger, with an old college professors of Harley's being used by private investigators to try to trap her. This was such an amazing read, the only problem is now I want to read the second volume to see what happens next.