The List #31 Part 1

Joker’s Asylum II: Harley Quinn #1
Writer: James Patrick
Artist: Joe Quinones
Here's the basic idea of the story: Harley breaks out of Arkham because it's Valentine's Day and she needs her puddin'. When she arrives at Joker's hideout, it turns out he's been taken by Falcone. From there it's her running from place to place to find Joker, and in the end it turns out Batman caught up to him and put him in Arkham. He says if Harley goes with him back to Arkham she can have dinner with him, so she happily accepts.

This appearance is yet another batch of Harley "cute-isms" without any of the clever quality that came with her animated appearances. What's worse is yet again we're lead to believe that the only reason is Harley's a nut is Joker and past that she's fine. Not only does this go against previously established flashbacks (or at least seems to me), but it holds no appeal. The thing about Harley Quinn is she's this bouncy blonde girl who looks and acts innocent and cheerful, but the violent acts she commits tell us that she's not. It's simply an act, and I like it better when it's just an act because I don't care about some victim of The Joker who runs around being cute all the time when he's not involved. Anyway, at the very least this issue we get to see Harley get her violence on in the name of finding Mistah J.

Now that's a Harley Quinn I want to read.

New Mutants #14
Writer: Zeb Wells
Artists: Ibraim Roberson, Lan Medina, and Nathan Fox
First thing I'd like to call attention to is that there's a couple of artists on board for this issue, one of them being assigned to the scenes taking place in Legion's head. I have to say Thank Frost because Roberson's blandness is irritating me. I don't know what it is with him, but there's just something very mundane about how it all looks.

This issue opens with Cyclops telling the non-X-Men Utopia mutants to join in the fight and that today they are all X-Men. Geez, handing out that status out to anyone these days aintcha, Cyke? Next we have Sunspot, Boom Boom, Avalanche, and Husk fighting Nimrods with Husk running around like a helpless idiot. Yeah, being able to shred her skin to basically be a Colossus of whatever substance is such an unfortunate power.... Anyway, during this time Sunspot has a moment of self awareness:

If you've read the first run of New Mutants, then you know that someone is ALWAYS saying that fucking line. Seriously, it's right next to, "Ah'm only invulnerable when Ah'm blastin'!"

A late development we see here with the Nimrods is that they're adapting to the mutant combatants' powers, which is demonstrated by Colossus' arm getting serious fucked up. Luckily, the X-Men have a solution to this, but first....

This arrogant asshole.

In the future X-Force is all RAWR BATTLE TIME! and Cypher is off doing the whole deus ex machina thing by speaking binary to a machine with a guy in it so that the machine boots him out. Soon enough it'll be established that Cypher can cure the Legacy virus by "speaking its language". Seriously, this character sucks at "dark" and "badass", let's see him go back to something he's actually good at doing. I'll give you a hint: it involves a casket. Anyway, X-Force discovers it has to take down two Master Molds in the end of their side story.

Moving back to the present, Xavier recruits Legion, and he's sent into the fight. His multiple personalities, all armed with different powers, are useful against the Nimrods as whenever one gets adapted to he just switches out to another one. Also notice what the Nimrods say when they detect Legion and Xavier coming:

Notice a plural on that?

No! Because it is A-OK for powerful mutants like Xavier and Emma Frost to be powerful without being OMEGA. Especially since, as it's been explained to me, Omega level means A. You're pretty near-immortal B. Your powers can do about anything C. You're so powerful that it makes it impossible to believe that any fights are a real struggle, nixing the man vs. man conflict and screwing up the story. Over-powered character aren't fun, they're annoying because it turns into The Sentry or Exodus where they're always taken out first to make the rest of the fight believeable. Even though no one should be able to take them out in the first place. Omega level should basically be a Jean-only category because she is essentially the mutant God.

Back on Utopia, that Cockroach Morlock, Scalphunter, Sack, and Random group together to go join the big battle when Toad interrupts them and tells them to back out of it. Sack gets pissy with Toad, and they're interrupted by a Nimrod zapping off Toad's index finger and Sack's head. Which would shock me more except...I totally thought he was dead already. Like I thought he died in X-Men The 198 or during the Leper Queen arc in X-Force but that was Fever Pitch, but whatever, there's too many characters with visible skeletons to keep track of. And to make things more intense, the approaching Nimrod crushes Sack's disembodied head.

And finally, as Utopia itself is getting attacked, Magneto gets up out of bed and decides to switch between his two modes that he's had since his return: Going from old and frail all of a sudden mode to youthful and powerful mode. And with that, expect to see him vigorously fight off the Nimrods in an "epic" battle next issue and in the middle of it, suddenly revert to completely useless. Such is the existence of Magneto post-Uncanny X-Men #500.

Conclusion: This issue was pretty decent despite Roberson's bland art. But I'm ready for this crossover to be done, it has been drawn out way too long. That's it for this issue; I leave you with Sack's disembodied head as a souvenir for all the good times we've had this chapter.