Harley Quinn : Breaking Glass by Bubble

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BD Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass, a refreshingly political comic. To this day, it's one of my favorite comics. Harleen, a teenager, comes to Gotham to live with her grandmother for a year... Of course, things don't go as planned, and she finds herself in the middle of a group of drag queens. In high school, she meets Ivy, who is in love with politics, plants and culture. Things get complicated when Kane Enterprises pokes its nose into the neighborhood where Harleen and Ivy live. Then when a young man introduces himself to Harleen as the Joker. Having struggled with my first readings on Harley Quinn written and drawn by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, this new story set in an alternative universe clearly reconciled me with the character. Mariko Tamaki unfolds over the 9 chapters, with tenderness and humility, the portrait of an endearing Harleen, well-intentioned, funny but naive and prone to violence.

The tone of the narration, carried precisely by the heroine, is similar to that of the movie Birds of Prey, so fans will be in their element! And all this is supported by Steve Pugh's drawings. A delight both for the softness of the lines and the beauty of the colours, exploited marvellously all along. Ivy is, moreover, clearly an asset to the story. In fact, it is an alternative version of the Poison Ivy character: her name here is Ivy Du-Barry, not Pamela Isley. But the resemblance remains striking.

Deeply involved politically, she gives us her feminist, anti-racist and, if I'm not mistaken, anti-capitalist analyses at several points. We see her leading, sometimes with Harleen, sometimes with her parents, militant actions for causes that are close to her heart. It is a pity that Ivy was never a full-fledged heroine in the story, in which she only participates in the development of the character of Harleen. In any case, this version of Ivy deserves to be the heroine of a solo story. Her presence in Breaking Glass also contributes to the realism of the story.

The plot is well and truly rooted in real political, social and psychological issues. It is about gentrification, social and political power relations, psychological manipulation and injustice. And it is often Ivy who highlights the issues presented. In short, Breaking Glass offers a beautiful approach to Harleen and Ivy that is worth looking at, in a truly enjoyable story. But also a very interesting version of The Joker that breaks away from the psychophobic traditions of the DC Comics universe when it comes to writing super villains in the Batman universe. The first VF chapter has recently been put online by Urban Comics, I invite you to read it to make your own opinion and to visit Themiscyra to discover all the references of Harley Quinn comics in VF and VO.

By the Themiscyra Collective

Breaking Glass by Mariko Tamaki & Steve Pugh, Urban Comics "Bubble click and collect"

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