It’s an unusual premise, this: a woman with a tendency for mania moves back to her old neighborhood and opens an agency bent on stopping the burgeoning local gentrification, destruction preferred. Sunny came home, as it were. It’s the kind of thing that would fit right in Image Comics' line — slightly autobiographical, location-rich, effectively realistic but just a little bent. Forestall the mobsters or monster hunting as long as possible.

But of course it’s not an Image comic; it’s Elliott Kalan and Mindy Lee’s Harley Quinn Vol. 1: Destructive Comics. And while it’s a premise with promise, is it Harley? Not that Harley hasn’t lit up city boroughs before, not that she hasn’t previously had a cast of quirky urbanites, but she has had that before, and then come a long way since. More so than shunting Harley through the Multiverse, more so than Harley as Bat-ally turned villain psychologist, taking Harley back to Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti’s Brooklyn — er, Gotham’s Throatcutter Hill feels like the ultimate in author’s fiat, a book that if it might have felt right for Harley once upon a time, but doesn’t feel right any more.

And that’s the puzzle of it all. To an extent, this is DC doing indie comics, something they could stand to do a little more, a book that can favors social commentary over superheroics (except when it doesn’t) and largely separated from the DCU (except when it chooses not to be). Kalan’s antics here are wise and biting; the problem is that the site of it is Harley Quinn, and while she might once have been the go-to character for this kind of thing, I’m not sure she is any more.

[Review contains spoilers]

I appreciate that Kalan wastes no time before acknowledging the irony of Harley’s so-called “quest for a sort of unholy real estate-based vengeance,” remarking early on, “How dare they [gentrify] the part of town I haven’t bothered to visit in years?!” It’s even more pronounced later when Harley buys overpriced smoothies for herself and vagrant friend Chicken Fingers, and then, once the smoothies are enjoyed, goes about destroying the smoothie place.

If by the end Harley does gain some genuine affection for Throatcutter Hill’s residents, her actions at least still have their roots in performance. When Harley moved to Brooklyn, she’d just broken up with the Joker, he’d blown up all her stuff, and she’d inherited ownership of an apartment building. Here, as Kalan’s Harley acknowledges, nothing drives her to her situation aside from having nothing else to do, and she is hardly so much against the changes to Throatcutter Hill as it is that she’s simply picked a side (she ordinarily wouldn’t be against disposing of “some old rich guy’s statue” except for the fact that it’s “historic”).

This, plus the fact that Harley’s tastes seem to align more with Throatcutter’s new residents than its old ones, adds a note of tragedy to Kalan’s comedy. We could see this as a parody of Instagram-ready public art and overpriced coffee, but moreover it’s a parody of fly-by-night activism, of tsk-tsking over progress that one themselves benefits from. Harley fights against what’s wrong, but she herself is also what’s wrong, and she appears to know it, a rich and creative stew for Kalan’s story to unfold in.

If only it weren’t Harley! I guess the fact that it is Harley, that the audience knows as well as the characters that Harley really has no hyena in this fight, reinforces the hypocrisy that’s important in defining all the sides of this conflict. But that’s a long way around and I don’t find it particularly convincing; really, despite Poison Ivy and the other Bat-rogues that show up (all of which that could be written around), there’s little that makes this inextricably a Harley Quinn story.

Indeed superheroics are the least effective part of Destructive Comics. In early issues Kalan has Harley fighting the Amenity, a muscle-bound on-call hero of the rich, and Convoy, the En-Truckulated Man, minion of the online shipping conglomerate (you know). Both of these are meant for laughs but not particularly funny, parodies of 1990s-esque bad guys of the kind we’ve seen many times before. (The bit where the delivery driver can’t remember the names of Batman’s enemies did get a chuckle, though.)

Kalan does better when Harley is tricked into fighting a bunch of Clayfaces, though it’s the trick more than the villains that’s effective. Later Harley fights Professor Pyg, who attacks her because he likes what she’s doing in Throatcutter, a story that takes place within the current events but doesn’t really actually move things forward.

What to do with Harley Quinn? I’ve just finished Tini Howard’s run, which I thought started strong with Harley messing about across the DC Multiverse, but petered out toward the end, neither particularly funny nor engrossing. I’m inclined here to praise Stephanie Phillips' run before that, and Harley Quinn Vol. 3: Verdict specifically, for putting Harley up against villains still semi-serious but not parodic, though looking at my review, I see I had some misgivings on that one, too. Does teaming Harley with the Bat-family make her just another Robin? Should we dump the comedy and go back to crime noir like the latter days of Conner and Palmiotti?

I know, though, after Harley Quinn Vol. 1: Destructive Comics, this can’t possibly be it. Creative, totally unexpected, but creators come and go so swiftly these days, I can’t imagine this status quo lasts beyond DC’s next line-wide rebrand. Harley Quinn must assuredly be one of DC’s best-recognized characters. Why is a workable series for her so hard?

[Includes original and variant covers]