Best Shots review - Future State: Harley Quinn #1 novel and immensely engaging

Future State: Harley Quinn #!
(Image credit: Simone DiMeo/Tamra Bonvillain/Troy Peteri (DC))

Harley Quinn's mind is the weapon in Future State: Harley Quinn #1. Written with a verbose charm by Stephanie Phillips and given a gleaming, futuristically abstract look by artists Simone DiMeo and Tamra Bonvillain, Future State: Harley Quinn #1 finds Harley struggling in a world that has moved on.

Future State: Harley Quinn #1 credits

Written by Stephanie Phillips
Drawn by Simone DiMeo
Colored by Tamra Bonvillain
Lettered by Troy Peteri
Published by DC
'Rama Rating: 8 out of 10

Gotham City has outlawed masks and the Magistrate's 'peace-keeping' forces are everywhere, rounding up the last remaining outlaws in Gotham. Harley just happens to be one of those outlaws and now under the strict care of Dr. Jonathan Crane, she is offered a choice. Help Crane and the Magistrate collect the last of Gotham's rogues and her confinement will be made as comfortable as possible.

But while that setup sounds very Suicide Squad, writer Stephanie Phillips finds a novel, immensely engaging in-road to the story. Leaning into Harley's past expertise as a psychiatrist and student of human behavior, Phillips casts her fun-loving, slightly spacey Hannibal Lecter analog. Positioning her as the expert in the field of costumed villainy, she provides Crane and his forces incisive psyche profiles to lure them into elaborate traps in exchange for things like better socks and her old costume. Though it's a little disappointing seeing her largely inactive in the story for now, Phillips' charged, slightly flighty voice she finds for Harley and her stony foils in Crane and a marauding Black Mask keep up the title's bubbly energy in fun ways throughout. 

(Image credit: Derrick Chew (DC))

Artists Simone DiMeo and Tamra Bonvillain also impress here with fractaled page layouts and highly contrasted colors. While most of the action is confined to the interiors of Harley's new prison, DiMeo and Bonvillain provide each page with plenty of visual charm and eye-catching details. Details like Harley's first profile of one Professor Pyg. As she delivers the profile, we start to see the interior of her mind, flitting in and out of the 'action' in her mind space like a ghost. It is a striking sequence, one the art team then doubles down on with a showy single page layout of Harley in the background hunched in her cell, but the action of Crane's dialogue (an introduction to Firefly) is inlaid over the page in an X-pattern, providing the scene a slick theatricality.   

And with that theatricality and the easy charm of the script Future State: Harley Quinn #1 stands as a fun slice of cyber-punk centered around a cult-favorite character. While the inactivity of Harley after the opening might leave some readers cold, the focus on Harley's mind, the futuristic trappings and tone, and the consistently cool page layouts make a very strong case for Future State: Harley Quinn being at least someone's favorite Future State effort. By being a lot more Mindhunter and a lot less 'Daddy's Little Monster,' Future State: Harley Quinn #1 reminds readers that Harley Quinn is much more than the sum of her parts.   

Read Newsarama's interview with writer Stephanie Phillips on this darker, more independent version of Harley Quinn in Future State.

Freelance writer

Justin Partridge is a freelance journalist who can be found at GamesRadar+ and Newsarama writing reviews about the best comic books out there. He's also known to put his encyclopedic knowledge of the industry to work by exploring some of the biggest events in comic book history. 

Latest in Comics
Daredevil: Born Again
Marvel may have just sneakily confirmed one of the biggest Daredevil: Born Again fan theories
New Champions #4
Meet Gold Tiger, the young Wakandan hero whose origin will be revealed in New Champions #4
Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.
DC June 2025 solicitations: 10 must-have comics to pre-order this month
Batman and the Jason Todd Robin leap into action.
Sweet Tooth creator Jeff Lemire revisits the early days of Batman's second Robin, Jason Todd
Marvel Rivals: Ignite #1
Marvel Rivals goes manga in a new comic from Peach Momoko and three other Japanese artists that reveals several new in-game costumes
Fantastic Four #30
Thanks to Doctor Doom, Ben Grimm is no longer the Thing and his kids don't even recognize him in Fantastic Four #30
Latest in Features
Asssassin's Creed Shadows kusarigama
My favorite weapon in Assassin's Creed Shadows is also the most misunderstood
Imai Sokyu leads the tea ceremony in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Assassin's Creed Shadows' tea ceremony quest is one of the game's best moments, but I wish Ubisoft would give us even higher stakes
Bloodborne
10 years on, Bloodborne remains an unmatchable feat of atmosphere thanks to the mind-boggling oppressive scale of Yharnam
Cropped key art for Revenge of the Savage Planet showing two player characters running away from lots of green goo, flanked by various googly-eyed wildlife
Revenge of the Savage Planet is a refreshingly colorful and light-hearted co-op throwback to the carefree action platformers of the noughties
Yasuke looks at a shrine in the water in Assassin's Creed Shadows On The Radar
"We don't want to force one terabyte of data on the players": Assassin's Creed Shadows' tech director on the clever tricks Ubisoft uses to "go beyond" current-gen
Kill Team: Blood and Zeal box on a wooden surface
Kill Team: Blood and Zeal pre-orders just went live, and I wish other Warhammer games were this weird