Previously best known to me for their adult webcomic Sunstone (which I'm totally going to review soon) Stjepan Sejic is a Croatian comic book writer and artist married to fellow creative Linda Šejić. He has also worked on Witchblade, Aphrodite IX, The Darkness, my favourite volume of Rat Queens, and part of a recent DC group title Harley Quinn: Black + White + Red.
As far as content warnings go, it's a DC Black label title, it stars Harley Quinn and the Joker, and is set in Arkham Asylum. Fictional mental health is extensively discussed and depicted and a psychiatrist becomes romantically involved with her patient.
But let's take a moment to discuss the use, or lack there of, of "mature comic" tropes. As a millennial who really got into comics as an adult, many of the first titles I picked up were under DC's old Vertigo label. One of these titles was the very popular Preacher series, and while I did enjoy some things to do with this series and should probably go back and re package my thoughts from before the great reset, it was constantly trying to be the most shocking thing ever. Sandman also did this to a certain extent (particularly in earlier volumes if my memory is to be trusted at all), among others. There always had to be the most shocking sex, the most shocking violence, and/or the "worst" drug use etc. And this always struck me as a bit stupid. Because even if I enjoyed other elements of the story, "shocking content" doesn't age very well and it generally lacks nuance. Whatever shocked people a decade ago is generally not shocking now and it comes across as a very silly kind of needy.
Circling back to Harleen however, while I was and remain not the biggest Harley Quinn fan in the world, I feel like the way that Šejić (who does make real erotic content) writes this mature DC title is much better. Not only because it is not trying to shock you with the biggest bloodiest most depraved scenario and will therefore age much better, but also because it's more (la shock) respectful. But I'll dig into more detail as we go along.
Moving on to the art section of my review, his style is one of the things I have found very interesting about Šejić, who has a great range of style that goes from very minimalist to very very detailed in a way that is very story driven. Well, I'm sure that some of it is due to being rushed for time, but the way its done always feels very intentional and this contrast is often used to draw attention to the focus of a scene. The cover design for this volume is also pretty on point - I mean who can resist this cover? Page layouts are highly varied and often expressive, but still easy to follow. And the colour scheme was perfect. I wish I had this strong a sense of style. Gees.
Clicking over to goodreads, the official synopsis is as follows: "A young psychiatrist with a potential cure for the madness that haunts Gotham City, Dr. Harleen Quinzel must prove her revolutionary theory to a skeptical establishment by delving into the disturbed minds of Arkham Asylum's deadliest inmates. But the more time she spends with her criminally insane subjects, the closer she is drawn to one patient in particular--and the further she falls away from reality. The birth of legendary antihero Harley Quinn and the shocking origins of her twisted romance with the Joker are revealed in Harleen, a stunning new tale of love and obsession."
Mental health, while not the worst representation in the world, is bound tightly by the restraints of popular consciousness in this book. And while I feel like Harleen herself has the best take of everyone in the story, we still have a lot of other people's much more black and white and stigmatizing thinking being talked about throughout. Plus, I'm not sure if having Dr. Quinzel becoming Harley Quinn sheds the most positive light on her her opinions. That said, I do feel like it could be argued that the callousness of the people around her drove her to becoming Harley more then anything she believed. Although don't romance your patient is a watch word to live by.
As far as gender and sexuality goes, this is a pretty CIS binary heterosexual romance. Not terribly surprising, since this is a classic pairing as it were. As I said already, I'm not a particular fan of either Harley Quinn or pairing her with the joker. I do tend to think it's more then a little toxic and not IRL goals. That said, I think it's widely enough discussed at this point that I don't need to spend any amount of time really digging into it and raining on people's parades. We all have at least problematic ship.
Visually, neither the Joker or Harley is ever very particularly sexualized. We see Harleen a couple of times in her underwear/pajamas, but its never in those f' me dear reader poses I've previously discussed.
Race is not really discussed at all. Class is perhaps touched on slightly but only in the way that any depiction of Gotham is this hyper exaggerated bad take on crime. Which particularly when you have a super wealthy vigilanty bouncing around your city relatively unscathed, is definitely about class.
To conclude, while I'm happy to have read it, and it is beautiful. Something about this comic just didn't spark with me so I'll be rating it three out of five stars. A perfectly good rating from me in general and "I liked it" according to Goodreads.