So, I’ve saved the worst for last.

Oh, sure, there are plenty more DC “Villains Month” books that we could talk about, but I counted up earlier today and between this site and Geeky Universe I’ve reviewed an even 10 of these things, and that’s enough for me. After this, I’m out.

Anyhoo, in recent weeks, in case you haven’t been following the comics industry scuttlebutt, DC has come under fire for having an open submission contest for new artists. What’s so wrong with that, you ask? Why, nothing — it’s great to find new “talent” to replace the already poorly-compensated average comic book penciller, I suppose. You don’t like drawing Justice League for 80 bucks a page, no health insurance or pension, and little to no royalties per copy sold? Fine. We’ll find some new kid to take your job who’ll work for 60 bucks a page and won’t complain. It’s the American way, right?

So what’s this got to do with Harley Quinn #1, or Detective Comics #23.2, as the official record-keepers would have it? Well, the “sample page” DC wanted their next generation of potential suck — err, freelance non-contract employees to submit was a scene depicting super-villain Harley Quinn, best known as the Joker’s on-again/off-again girlfriend, sitting naked in a bathtub and slicing her wrists open. Sex n’ suicide — again, the American way, right?

As insanely offensive at worst, tone deaf at best as the theme for this “new talent contest” was, however, it ain’t squat compared to what Harley does in this book. This whole “villains month” fiasco has already given us a mass shooting in a hospital in the pages of Desaad #1 and a workplace mass-murder/ suicide in the pages of Solomon Grundy #1, both of which would lead one to suspect that none of the suits at DC have been following the news for the past, I dunno, decade or so, but here, writer Matt Kindt (who was also responsible for the aforementioned Solomon Grundy, and who’s capable of soooooo much better,  as his work on Dark Horse’s Mind Mgmt. series shows) has the psychotic villainess, in between flashback sequences to her pre-evil nutcase days as a psychiatrist at Gotham City’s infamous Arkham Asylum, engineer a senseless mass slaughter of innocent poor children by giving away booby-tapped video game systems at a local orphanage.  When she flicks a switch, the Nintendos or Segas or X-Boxes or whatever all go “boom!” and the kids all get killed.

And after that, she’s recruited by Deadshot to rejoin the Suicide Squad, a team of hard-luck “anti-heroes” who work for the government. You know, the very same government that should be locking her ass away in prison for life for just having killied hundreds of children for no reason whatsoever.

Artist Neil Googe does a decent enough job illustrating this senseless and thoroughly tasteless tale of depravity, but that’s just trying to stitch a silk purse out of a sow’s ear when your subject matter is this out-and-out vile. I don’t blame him for the overall tone of the book, but shit, I honestly wouldn’t care how badly I needed to eat, I’d have refused this assignment if I were in his shoes.

But hey, who knows, right? DC’s playing pretty fast and loose with continuity these days, maybe we’ll find out this whole sorry spectacle was just a delirious fever-dream that naked Harley was having while she killed herself in her tub.