In this Urban comics title, Harleen, the author revisits the origins of Harley Quinn. After being bullied at university, Harleen Quinzel finally realizes her dream: to study the causes of insanity at Arkham Asylum. But the confrontation with the Joker will totally change his career prospects.
Who rubs it, drowns in it
Following her research on soldiers who have had bouts of murderous madness, Quinzel is convinced that sociopathic behaviors come from a malformation of the areas of empathy in the brain. However, the latter has difficulty being understood by financiers because of its lack of confidence. Harleen believes she is coming to fame when she is spotted and then financed by Wayne Industries. She finally arrives full of goodwill in the prison hospital of Arkham to help the worst criminals of Gotham. More than a scientific research on the methods of care of psychopaths, we read an investigation into the origin of madness. Le Dr.Quinzel arrives on the same day as the Joker. As an expert psychiatrist, she is supposed to bring him to his senses, but the opposite is true. Falling in love, Harley is irresistibly drawn to him. Although the criminal is mesmerizing, it can be deadly if you hang out too closely. In the street, his madness fascinates part of the audience and the crowd demands more blood. The arrogant Joker manipulates all previous psychiatrists with his lies, but Quinzel thinks he's smarter.
Alone for a couple…
Very rare in major comic book publishers, Stjepan Šejić is the only one at the helm of this project. We find his digital drawing that multiplies the vivid lines on the bodies while being precise on the faces. The beautiful colorization makes each skin texture very carnal. In an interview placed at the beginning of the volume, the Croatian artist chose to focus on the relationship between Harley Quinn and the Joker which is for him an inevitably tragic romance. Before entering Arkham, Dr. Quinzel meets the Joker during a robbery while leaving a bar and it's love at first sight… While he threatens her with a gun. Harleen is also a work on psychology and its limits. Quinzel is, from the beginning, disturbed by dreams where she reverses good and evil. Desperate for her patients, she sees Batman as the evil that threatens the weak Joker. She pushes the hero away to heal the criminal. 
Harley, a complex anti-heroine
This personage is, initially, a simple hysterical sidekick in the Batman television series. After Mad Love, a splendid story about relational violence, she emancipates herself to become a character in her own right. Totally unpredictable, she became very popular by her joyful madness to the point of being the main heroine of the movie Birds of Prey. In Harleen, Harley recounts this moment from her past to show that a morbid love affair with the Joker has destroyed her life. Harleen shows how good sinks into madness by following in parallel Harvey Dent, soon double-faced and Harley Quinn. However, being also the author of a feminist work on BDSM, Sunstone, Šejić does not make Harley a victim. The progressive author shows that it is the prudish society that pushes Harley to exclusion because the students do not accept that she fell in love with a teacher in college. In addition, Gotham would drive people crazy by killing their empathy because the line between good and evil is blurred and fluctuating. In its streets, one crosses the love of violence. His asylum is the meeting place with this madness. Harleen, which was originally commissioned by DC Comics, turned out to be very personal. Too often caricatured as a funny madwoman, Stjepan Šejić decides to take this heroine seriously. It shows how Harleen Quinzel became Harley Quinn by succumbing to the charm of a fearsome mephisto: the Joker. This work allows neophytes to discover the Batman universe because Harley meets the prosecutor Dent, Dr. Hugo Strange and, through his interviews, the main enemies of Batman : Poison Ivy, the Sphinx…
