I particularly liked what I dubbed Šejić’s “Harvey-vision,” the psychedelic double-images representing what nightmares Dent sees through his injured left eye. That’s a very cool bit of historical fiction (built on a fictional history), and Šejić draws a particularly gruesome Two-Face, too. 1: Their Dark Designs how Harley increasingly gets “original” Batman villain status these days (a case that involved Legion of Doom stalwarts Joker, Penguin, Riddler … plus Harley Quinn), and Harleen imagines her way back at the beginning, before Harvey Dent turned bad. I noted in my review of James Tynion’s Batman Vol. No, not knit caps and bridge fights, but inasmuch as this is an origin of Harley Quinn, it’s also an origin of Two-Face Harvey Dent, and how - in Šejić’s story - the two influenced one another. What thrilled me most while reading Šejić’s Harleen is that, as it turns out, it’s something of a “Batman: Year One”-esque story. In all, a much better contribution to the volumous library of Harley Quinn lore than I expected it to be. Some of it is ruined for me simply because I couldn’t help still hearing dream boy Joker talking in Mark Hamill’s voice. To his credit, Šejić gets some moments in, Arkham Asylum meet cutes that I didn’t think would be possible. That’s a heavy lift, and I’m not sure anyone could be successful with it, Šejić aside. We are not supposed to love the Joker as Harley Quinn loves the Joker here, though we are perhaps meant to understand what it is that caused Harley to fall in love with him. Šejić does more than the other book does in about 100 fewer pages.
That his story itself is so nuanced and detailed, however, and the other Batman lore that Šejić plays well with, are great and happy surprises. That Šejić’s art is amazing here almost doesn’t bear mentioning, given what we already know Šejić is capable of. Where Garcia’s imagines a rather different forensic psychologist Harley Quinn on the trail of mysterious serial killer the Joker, Šejić’s is a traditional Harley Quinn origin story with generous continuity liberties. They are, to be sure, two different books. It is not, of course, a competition necessarily and no reason one can’t enjoy both, but given DC’s two different (and perhaps excessive) mature readers Harley Quinn books published at the same time, I was curious which was the stronger of the two. To the question of which is the better DC Black Label book, Kami Garcia’s Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity or Stjepan Šejić’s Harleen, the answer (contrary to my initial expectation) is Harleen.
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