DC Turns the Justice League Dark Into the Scooby-Doo Gang

DC’s Year of the Villain is in full swing and this week’s Harley Quinn #64, is one wild ride with a couple of DC’s most memorable villains. This issue also includes a look at the Justice League Dark done up like some classic Hanna-Barbera characters. Lex Luthor is still offering various villains an offer that they can’t refuse. Other characters may have been ready do whatever Luthor asks of them for a reward, Harley Quinn doesn’t exactly get down like that. She’s not going to give into Luthor’s plot that easily, but Apex Lex is nothing if not persistent.

Spoilers for this week’s Harley Quinn #64 below.

In this issue, fans who are up to speed know, Harley is dealing with a “villain” that she can’t just smash with a giant mallet. Her mother is dying of cancer and that’s not something that Harley can do much about. In an effort to pass time while supporting her comatose mother, Harley reads from an in-universe Harley Quinn comic book. Inside Harley’s comic, Lex approaches her and offers a crazy tech-filled costume built on “Gorilla City technology, fueled by Yellow Lantern power and a drop of Lobo’s blood.” It even has wi-fi.

After she passes on that, Luthor chases her through a variety of scenarios. The funniest one involves her sneaking up on the Justice League Dark as they fill in the roles of Mystery Incorporated. Detective Chimp as an unwilling Scooby-Doo is an immediate highlight. The gang is all there looking into the mysterious Ghost of Captain Cutler, who rises from the deep in the exact same fashion as he did in Scooby-Doo: Where Are You? The palette swap should clue readers in on the fact that the omnipresent supervillain might be behind whatever caper Justice League Dark is investigating.

Lex is so determined that he spends the issue chasing Harley through basically all of the other major issue of DC Comics right now — she pops up in Event Leviathan and bounds into City of Bane. The spoof of the DC Universe service will also garner some laughs. Near the end of the issue, Lex offers her the one thing that she would truly want when he offers to do away with her mother’s cancer.

Harley falls headlong into a bit of an existential crisis after that offer. The comic she’s reading ends on a cliffhanger, but the actual issue itself has an air of finality. Throughout the issue, Harley has only seemed partly plugged into the real world as she retreats into the comic in her hands. Death’s physical manifestation comes for Harley’s mother because, as Death says, “but no one can escape death.” A somber note to end on, but sometimes that’s life, even in comic books.