Harleyquin1-0After yesterdays release of the spectacular Harley Quinn #0 from Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner, and a collection of some of comic’s top artists, today we get our first good look at the series actual first issue. As I pointed out in a review earlier this week, the zero issue played more as an art book and goofy glance at the personality of ex-doctor Harleen Quinzel, with a large amount of breaking the fourth wall. The end of the zero issue promised the on-going series wouldn’t be doing this, but from the artwork below we can see that some parts of the zero issue will crossover, such as Harley’s pet beaver stuffed animal. The on-going artist for the series, whose work we saw briefly in the zero issue, is Chad Hardin. Besides this week’s Harley Quinn #0, Hardin has recently worked on Stan Lee’s The Traveler from Boom Studios and the various Dragon Age comics from Dark Horse. DC fans might be more familiar with Hardin’s work on Justice League of America #7.3, which focused on the villain Shadow Thief, giving the character a new look and gender for the New 52 universe.

Hardin joins up with Palmiotti and Conner who will stay on the book as writers, hoping to give Harley Quinn a much richer back story and motivation for her insanity. Sadly, Amanda Conner will not be doing interior art on the book alongside Hardin, but she will provide stunning covers to the comic. The original origin of Harley Quinn was simply crafted by Paul Dini in the Batman animated series from the 90′s, and has since been rarely expanded upon as creators chose to move forward with the character, often leaving her simply as the Joker or Poison Ivy’s crazy and cute side-kick. Once the Batman Arkham games and New 52 came around Harley faced several redesigns, making her more independent and sexualized. Now the married writing team of Palmiotti and Conner want to explain this personality with a more indepth history and new cast of supporting characters that will fill out the on-going comic’s cast. According to Palmiotti, the team hopes to accomplish for Harley what they did previously on their Power Girl on-going series, “[building] on her background, motivations and her home and supporting cast”. The new series will find her trying to live a “normal-ish” life, or at least normal for a psychopathic harlequin-themed criminal, amongst less superhero-like figures. Hardin’s artwork will fill most of the early solicited issues, but French comic artist, Stéphane Roux, will fill in for some of the pages in issue #2. Now take a look below to see some of Hardin’s art from this winter’s Harley Quinn #1 and don’t forget to pick up the first issue when it hits stores next month, on Wednesday December 18th.