Brady Kj recently found a Booster Gold cameo appearance in Harley Quinn #20. Naturally, I rushed out to my LCS to pick up a copy. Sure enough, Booster is on the first page as part of one of Harley Quinn's dreams.

I should have stopped reading there. Every character in these pages is, to put it lightly, a jerk. None are worse than the protagonist, Harley Quinn.

There are always problems adapting a villain into a story protagonist. Harley Quinn is implied to have a warped morality, but no morality is present in this issue other than her own. She murders a customer service representative in the busy Los Angeles airport, steals a police car as an officer watches, and pushes a company mascot in front of a bus on a crowded street. This isn't "cartoon violence," either; characters are shown clearly suffering from Harley's actions. Yet no one in Harley's world even attempts to stop her from committing these villainous acts. The only "heroes" present are prostitutes in costumes. Do heroes only exist in Harley's dreams?

Issue co-writer Jimmy Palmiotti liberally sprinkled the same sorts of violence throughout All-Star Western, and it worked there. Bounty hunter Jonah Hex lived in an Old West devoid of law and order. More importantly, despite his flaws Hex was an anti-hero devoted to bringing to justice the fiends who committed these types of atrocities.

By comparison, Harley Quinn is set in modern-day Los Angeles starring a mentally damaged villain. L.A. is not a lawless place located sometime in the distant and barbarous past. What good are Batman and Superman if they let a Harley Quinn run free to murder citizens of America's largest city? What's the point of using L.A. as a backdrop if there's no police or other public servant striving to enforce the rule of law?

I guess what I'm saying is that it damages the verisimilitude a shared comic book universe if inhabitants of that universe are allowed to kill, maim, and steal without recourse. I guess I'm also saying that murder isn't a very funny punchline. But what do I know?

Harley Quinn #20 sold more than 56,000 copies, more than any single issue of Booster Gold outside the "Blackest Night" crossover event. So the next time you question one of DC's decisions, remember that sex, violence, and death sell comics, not story or character. The market has spoken.

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DC just released its solicitations for November. While I don't normally read them (two things I hate: hype and spoilers), I did look through the list over at ComicList this time because I was looking for details on the upcoming Booster Gold collected trade. What I noticed was that 24 of the 96 separate comic books scheduled to ship in November has at least 1 variant incentive cover. That's exactly a quarter of all DC comics shipping during the month of November. That is a lot. In fact, it's probably too much.

What is this, the 1990s all over again? Did we learn nothing? Variant covers don't lure new fans to the already too-insulated specialty shops. And they aren't worth significantly extra cash in the long run. All they do is burden collectors and the shop owners who need to appease them to maintain their clientele. At this rate, there will soon come a Wednesday when the comic racks will look full but really only be a single issue of Batman between the two dozen variant covers.

Personally, I think that DC would be better served redirecting the money that they are paying artists for all of these extra covers into advertising these issues to the world-at-large. At least that way they could try increasing the market size instead of just creating shiny new lures for the already over-fished fans remaining in this shrinking pond.

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