As alluded to by the title and the cover, THE STRANGE CASE OF HARLEEN AND HARLEY from writer Melissa Marr (WICKED LOVELY) and Jenn St-Onge (JEM & THE MISFITS) tackles Robert Lewis Stevenson’s DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE via an alternate young adult take on one Harleen Quinzel.
Harleen and her family — her mother, her criminal associate dad, and her younger sister and older brother Miri and Joey — are exiled from Gotham to the suburbs.
During a brief break-up with one Pamela Isley, Harleen became entangled with a dude named Bernie who straight-up murders a schoolmate for making fun of Harleen. Bernie is jailed, and Harleen and family pay the price by association in more ways than one.
Sidelined, her father is having a hard time paying the bills. Due to court-appointed probation, Harleen drive. Without car access, she can’t get a job. No job means no money to pay her gym coach.
No gym coach, no training.
No training, no college scholarship.
Reunited and joyriding with Pam, Harleen spots a billboard for Hawthorne Biomedical Laboratory, who pay volunteers for medical experiments. Even better? One of the experiments studies the effects of a new anti-anxiety medication, giving Harleen hope for a respite from her crippling anxiety.
The meds relieve her anxiety far too well. After each dose she becomes the far more gregarious, hedonistic, risk-taking, and fast-talking Harley Quinn. Pam immediately notices, impressed, stating: “You seem different. […] You don’t feel like ‘Harleen’ tonight.”
Matters escalate, including Harley freeing lab animals from Hawthorne with Pam, who Harley names “Ivy” because “I like how your arms feel wrapped around me.” Harley riles up a prison riot. Harley discovers that, thanks to the experimental drugs, Pamela blooms into Poison Ivy. (Couldn’t resist.) Also? Harley starts running criminal errands for one Jack Napier.
(If you know that name, you know and, no, you do not have to worry. If that name is new to you? You also don’t have to worry about it!)
In adapting JEKYLL + HYDE, Marr ditches the classic Harleen/Harley chemical transformation story in favor of emphasizing continuous duality, as opposed to kicking Harleen to the curb via a one-time traumatic incident.
While STRANGE CASE adheres pretty closely to JEKYLL + HYDE with the serums, as Harleen + Jekyll have similar changed character traits of hedonism and moral ambiguity in tandem with escalating doses, it doesn’t go as far as to mirror murderous impulses.
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that Marr’s context of the serum being a functioning anti-anxiety drug with severe side-effects mirrors some cases where anti-depressants are prescribed for those with bipolar and anxiety disorders. For example, as I can attest to, SSRIs can ease anxiety but can also cause pronounced and frequent stages of mania or hypomania.
In other words: the same side-effects that turn Harleen into Harley.
When I was misdiagnosed and prescribed SSRIs, the same fucking thing happened to me, even down to being described as “not acting like myself”. Like with Harley + Harleen in this text, the side-effects can have their positive attributes but, ultimately, the cure can be more destructive than the condition.
That duality was eventually rectified and to see that journey reflected here — and for youths that may be reading STRANGE CASE and may have to endure something similar — is not something I expected from a Harley work, even if Harley is often a wellspring of meditations on mental health.
(A brief aside: It’s worth noting that this Harleen/Harley is one of the few characterizations where she doesn’t seem to have ADHD.)
I do not mean to give short shrift to the visual stylings of Jenn St-Onge and Lea Caballero, as well as colorist Jeremy Lawson and letterer Luca Gattoni! The line work contracts and expands, occasionally appears harried and sketchy, then might pool together in swirls and curls, such as with one Mucha-inspired tableau. There’s Harleen’s chipped and worn nail polish — a visual testament to her anxiety — that I always appreciate. Additionally, the diamond pupils are a damn fine touch.
Lawson’s colors give a point-of-view glow, green bleeding into red when Harley and Ivy are together, predominantly darker greens and purples when Napier is overseeing matters. The defined shadows cast about the frame emphasize St-Onge’s verve and extremely welcome. Gattoni’s words anchor the page, exuberant but only distracting when they should be.
If I have one complaint about STRANGE CASE, it’s that Pamela is severely backgrounded. While this is first-and-foremost a Harley Quinn story, Pamela goes through a lot, what with Harleen’s distance and legal woes, the domestic abuse in the Isley family, the superpowers she gains from a company she wants to take down that may or may not be temporary, it feels like there should have been more or less going on there. I would love to have Marr and St-Onge return to tell the story from Pam’s perspective.
However, that’s simply a case of wanting more of a good thing. Like HARLEY QUINN: BREAKING GLASS, THE STRANGE CASE OF HARLEEN AND HARLEY is another exceptional offering from the DC’s Young Adult imprint, and I can’t to see what’s next.