Fighting in a void
Review: Harley Quinn vs Zatanna #1
DC Comics All Fight Month
Feb 2026 date - purchased December 2025
Review: Dec 26 2025
"Whaddyuh know... The Justice Jerks are puttin' our lives on the line to save tha universe... again."
Harley Quinn says this on page two of Harley Quinn vs. Zatanna #1, and while I know what’s going to happen (Harley is going to battle Zatanna), how the "Justice Jerks" are involved isn't explained at all. At first, reading this comic book was disorienting, presumably because I have not read any of the other issues in DC's "KO" series. Little attention is paid in this story toward informing the reader of what's going on outside of the punching, slapping, sometimes magical fight-fest crashing across 28-pages.
But, wait a second, near the beginning of this issue there’s a two-page spread with big block typesetting that tells us, “Darkseid is coming, and the universe will be destroyed. The only hope for survival is…” This two page spread with big mechanical looking fonts looks like an ad, so I skipped it the first time around, not realizing it is a key to what's happening (I think DC would have been better served the average reader by having a "host" character lead us through the external stuff that's needed to understand a tale in a series like this, something that visually integrates into the story). These "ad" pages give us a brief mini-synopsis that fills in just enough detail to explain what all the combat is about. It reads like the description of a video game, but maybe that’s the point, since the story itself is a group of faux video-game sequences, visualized from a script by Leah Williams and organized into three rounds.
"Zatanna. To advance to the the next level , you must engage in a contest of hand-to-hand combat. Best two out of three wins."
What we get isn’t so much a whole story as a snippet of one, filled with dialogue. There are smart-ass wisecracks galore (of course, this being a Harley Quinn tale), and the dialogue-driven narrative contains brief contemplations about confidence (or false confidence), sacrifice and the "morally grey area" (as Harley puts it) of failed anger-management. What might have been a five- or six-page battle royale in an older superhero comic is a 28 page slugfest (and talkfest) here. In these three episodes of fighting, Harley wins "round one" by [spoilers] impaling Zatanna with the handle of her giant mallet (a gruesomeness only implied, thankfully); Zatanna wins the second round by punching Harley in the face, and importantly, without using magic (a crutch for which Harley has been relentlessly taunting her); and then in round three Zatanna goes half crazy and uses the "omega force" ...
The highly stylized artwork is a hybrid manga-superhero style. Only these two characters populate panel after panel so we better like just looking at lots of Z and Harley. We mostly lack backgrounds as we go along and instead get color combinations and effects as substitutions for visual content to fill out panels. There is a remarkable and unique aspect to the comic book medium in that so much information can be communicated efficiently and quickly in a single panel showing the physical layout of a scene (or, as they say in the sequential arts, an "establishing shot"), but in Harley Quinn vs Zatanna the two characters, typically, may as well be floating in the vacuum of space.
What's going on with that left eyeball (above)? The socket is moved over too far! I see this in manga a lot, it's a weird anti-anatomical move.
Nice coloring, though.
"The omega energy... I can feel its corrosive influence, like a mocking tar flooding my veins"
Not much is said about this "omega energy" except it seems a person is drawing on the dark side of the force sheer cruelty or rage. In the story, Harley says "like mean energy flowin' through me... makes me feel powerful. Like a big pharma exec or a mall cop or somethin'... or even the most powerful creature of them all, a teenage mean girl..."
In our panel backgrounds we get visual detritus suggesting the personality of the two characters, which seems like the beginning of a good idea to bring together the characters into a recognizable visual world that plays a part in the story, but it's too bare across these 28 pages. The characters don't effectively address what's going on in their surreal surroundings, which logically seems pretty odd that they don't notice or comment, but instead just keep yakking at each other about each other inbetween the violence.
As far as the force the omega force* goes, you've apparently have to read other DC Comics to actually know what's going on in relation to this lethal 'omega' force or the dream-like surroundings the characters are fighting within.
Though we really only see Harley and Zatanna, there is a squid-looking thing in the beginning: is it a pet or monster? Does it have a name? Is this character influencing the story? No idea. There's also a spherical blush-colored object that emits a rush of energy (or liquid?) on a few panels, and this might be a metaphorical symbol for hormonal rage, or just adrenaline surges, or a cortisol reaction? It isn't explained, it just appears, squirts, and then it's gone.
The character drawing by Adolfo is fine and there's certainly real talent displayed in rendering expressions which is a big plus in a story based entirely on dialogue being shouted back and forth while fighting. I appreciate the character work put into communicating human expression with the two stars of the tale. Some of the fighting sequences have Harley Quinn operating in a sadistic and psychopathic manner, which means it is well within the usual way DC Comics' glamorizes this heroine, and Zatanna's anguish and mascara-streaked face also creates moments in the story that somehow shifts the tale, temporarily, out of a stream of relentless violence into something a bit more complex.
Since there's few backgrounds, we just look at Zatanna and Harley Quinn a lot. There are some wardrobe changes** which reduces the samenessness, and the action sequences are trying hard to communicate that this is slam-bang action right out of the primitive heart of superhero comics, and that's done well. For a story with this much dialogue, we're somehow given too small a ration of detail. Because of the "dream" environment (if that really is what it is) there isn't much establishing of a tactile world, which makes the tale fell like it is lacking something important. Maybe the point is supposed to be the surreal visual effect, but it sure would be nice to have that point placed within some context. Sometimes it looks like they're fighting within a maze but it could just as well be within the inside of the pinhead of a needle, the physics of this "world" isn't addressed at all.
In summary, my complaint is simple. I think the writer (and DC Comics' editors) presume we'll do the rest of the work to make this story "real" and do something to imaginatively substantiate all that is missing in this $4.99 comic book.
Footnotes:
* Star Wars "The Force" is a concept that came out after Jack Kirby had already used the term "Omega Energy" in earlier 1970s comics. After Star Wars, "Omega Energy" started to be referred to as "Omega Force" in the comics. There's some broad differences between the two concepts, but as an energy that can be drawn right out of thin air they sure are similar.
** Wardrobe changes: Mirka Andolfo puts in some nice funny panel art of Harley Quinn literally doing costume changes that takes up a page. Mixing together the ultra-violence of the story with sight gags is a way to reduce takignt eh violence seriously, that is, if we did the story would be a horrifying, sadistic bloodbath.
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Original Page December 26, 2025