DCeased Harley Quinn

Imagination? Inventiveness? How dare they! Series 1 of the DC Essentials "DCeased" subline stuck pretty close to the comics, but straight away we see that Series 2 is willing to go right off the rails! Like we said in the Joker review, while he was busy getting infected by the Anti-Life virus, Harley was outside, receiving a pep-talk from Poison Ivy convincing her to finally break it off with him. She went inside, found Zombie Joker, and everything went downhill from there. But that doesn't mean she became a zombie, too: she fought him off, ran outside and, when she saw some poor rando getting munched on by the zombie horde, stole his shotgun, spun around, and cut "Mistah J" in half with a single blast to the stomach. Honestly, she found the whole thing very cathartic. Then, thanks to her own abilities and a bit of assistance from Ivy, she made it to Gotham's big central Robinson Park, where they set up a bit of a sanctuary for the uninfected. So this figure? Comes from nowhere. Honestly, it comes from DCD's desire to reuse whatever existing molds they already had around. Harley Quinn was release #13 in the DC Essentials line, and while a lot of the bodyparts were reused among figures, doing this figure in this style gave them an excuse to milk a little more out of the more unique ones. Harl wasn't wearing her old jester costume in DCeased, she dressed like her contemporary; but DC Essentials was mostly about iconic versions of the characters, so their Harley toy went back to the old look, and thus this zombie has to follow suit. There were several variant covers that showed a zombified Harley, but even those portrayed her in her modern style. So sculptor Paul Harding didn't have to worry about sticking close to any existing work, he just needed to make her look undead. She's got the same kinds of scrapes on her face as all the rest, plus a wild grin, wide eyes, and blood painted everywhere. The DCeased figures get set apart from their Essentials counterparts by the colors. Yes, there's blood and dirt painted on them, but also the base colors used to make them as generally darker than before. So Harley's costume isn't a bright, vibrant red, it's a more muted brick red - even from behind you'd be able to tell them apart. She doesn't get any painted rips in her costume, sadly, though the blood on her fingers and cuffs is nice. Maybe they didn't want to wade into the discussion over whether her skin should be pink or white below the neck? DC Essentials figures had plentiful articulation, so Harley gets swivel/hinge ankles, swivel shins, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, a balljointed chest, a hinged neck and balljointed head. That'll be enough for her to do acrobatic things in your display, though it's a shame she doesn't come with any accessories. The Anti-Life zombies aren't your typical mindless shambling ghouls, they retain the ability to think and use tools - it's even revealed eventually that they can communicate! So maybe the figure shouldn't have included a shotgun, since she obviously didn't go through that experience, but why not her big mallet or pop gun, like the last figure? DCeased Harley may not actually be from anything, but she's a decent action figure. And isn't getting a zombie Harley Quinn reason enough to get a zombie Harley Quinn? -- 06/08/22

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