Harley Quinn, The Sculptor, Judge Dredd: the month in comics

Why so serious? In a post-Dark Knight world, mainstream comics can often seem so hellbent on being dark and gritty they completely forget to be fun. There’s something life-affirming then about the fact that a Harley Quinn annual featuring a scratch-and-sniff gimmick was the 33rd best-selling comic book of 2014. If you’ve not met the Joker’s volatile on/off girlfriend – first introduced on Batman: The Animated Series in 1992 before transitioning to comics – Harley Quinn is like Miranda Richardson’s Queenie from Blackadder II but with a giant hammer and less impulse control. Last October’s annual was enhanced by the odours of pizza, suntan lotion, leather and something called “cannabisylocibe 7-A”, all for only two extra dollars a copy. Never ones to turn up their nose at a hit, DC has just published another special issue, but considering the pheromones on display, it’s probably a good thing that this one isn’t scratch and sniff. Harley Quinn Valentine’s Day Special #1 maintains the irreverent tone, though: smitten Harley rigs a charity auction so she can claim a date with billionaire bachelor Bruce Wayne, unaware that his only true love is justice. It’s part of an even bigger Harleypalooza taking place all month: Quinn guest-stars on 22 alternate covers across the DC line, sticking an elbow to Green Lantern during a roller derby, copping a feel of Superman’s bulging bicep, and attaching laser cannons to dolphins under Aquaman’s nose. It’s a suitably high-spirited salute to a character who was disastrously reimagined as a scowling, corset-wearing Juggalo-type during DC’s New 52 relaunch in 2011, but – under the recent guidance of writers Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti – has returned to something approaching her absurdist best.

February’s biggest graphic novel, literally, is The Sculptor by Scott McCloud, a 500-page beast of a book about an impoverished young artist called David Smith, eking out his days getting sozzled in NYC dive bars. When he’s offered the uncanny ability to create anything he can imagine with his bare hands, he grabs it, even though the Faustian trade-off is only having 200 days to live. An alluring combination of clean line-art and messy epiphanies about life and love, The Sculptor is impressive enough to have everyone’s favourite dreamweaver-in-chief Neil Gaiman praising it to the heavens. As well as being a gifted artist, McCloud is a veteran comics scholar and the author of influential 1993 primer Understanding Comics. He’s also not the only comics gamekeeper to turn poacher. Douglas Wolk spent three years reviewing every single issue of Judge Dredd for his own passion-project blog, and parlayed that expertise into the IDW mini-series Judge Dredd: Mega-City Two. In it, Dredd is sent on a justice exchange programme to what used to be California, and while it’s not exactly Inherent Vice, the future-policing is a little bit more laidback on the west coast. Wolk’s vision of sun-kissed, hippy-dippy dystopia is rendered in joke-packed detail by artist Ulises Farinas, and includes a hat-tip to Tupac’s California Love video.

Like a cross between Metal Mickey and Indiana Jones, Atomic Robo is a sentient robot-adventurer who, after being invented by Nikola Tesla in 1923, spends most of the 20th century battling weird-science threats to humankind. Robo’s serial adventures have been published in print by Red 5 since 2007, but creators Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener recently announced they are putting all nine existing volumes – more than 1,000 pages of heavy metal derring-do – online for free, with more instalments to come. As the comics industry struggles to work out how best to reconcile digital distribution methods with the physical sales market, it’s a bold move, in keeping with the spirit of the character. And it means a whole new audience can meet Atomic Robo’s amazing nemesis Dr Dinosaur, a talking lizard intent on wiping out all mammalkind.