Knight Terrors: Harley Quinn #1 uses a tie-in to truly show how much Harley has grown. The first nightmare might have been damaging years ago, with memories of her abuser and the prison she called home. But that is barely the same Harley Quinn we see now, and this one is not so easily brought to her knees by someone invading her dreams. Read Full Review

Running through things as quickly as Howard has it should be interesting to see where the second issue takes her. Shes been all over the place on a cosmic level and here she is inside of her own skull. Howard will pick up from this to issue, miniseries, and or launch Harley into further cosmic adventures in her own title. So shes got a long journey ahead of her. This is an interesting opening to that journey. Read Full Review

Knight Terrors - Harley Quinn #1 is a wild ride through the nightmares and fears of Harley Quinn. Tini Howard and the creative give readers a lot of bang for the buck in a well-written and beautifully illustrated. tie-in to the Knight Terrors event. This is a definite sleeper of a hit in the Knight Terrors event and one can only wonder what will happen in the next issue. Read Full Review

Knight Terrors: Harley Quin #1 is a must read for those following the entire series. Read Full Review

With inventive ideas, many different trials for Harley Quinn to combat, and fabulous art Knight Terrors: Harley Quinn is a great start to the two-parter. Howard is running on all cylinders with a keen sense of the character and what to explore, all while throwing in a nightmare twist. The balance of art and ideas make this a great read for comic book fans. Read Full Review

The visuals are nice and creepy thanks to Hayden Sherman, but this issue never really picks up a feeling of intensity or horror. Read Full Review

Knight Terrors: Harley Quinn #1 gives us glimpses into Harleys psyche and shows yet again why shes such a unique character. Its fun watching her dispatch everything Insomnia throws at her and her jaunts from Earth to Earth are equally fun. Read Full Review

Knight Terrors: Harley Quinn #1 is the tie-in that appears to have the least to do with anything related to Knight Terrors. It's boring, disconnected, and despite Sherman's interesting art, it's a total waste of time. Read Full Review

This is just a rough, rough issue and further cements that no one knows what they're doing with Harley. Read Full Review

All I can do is to tell you to avoid Harley Quinn comics like the plague. They aren't worth anything anymore. Read Full Review

I usually try to be as positive as I can with the books I read, and that may still be present a bit with what I'll say later in this review, but I just was not a huge fan of this. It pains me to say it, because I actually like Tini Howard and I know she's capable of good stories, but this was a miss for me. I don't even blame her either. I think her, along with a lot of DC writers right now, have been placed in a really weird position with the Knight Terrors event, in that they've been forced to pause their series for two months and either write a 2-issue tie-in or take a break and have someone else do it. While I do appreciate this different approach to the event then the other tie-ins I've read, I agree with what another user stated in their review, in that this took too long to get to the point (that being Harley feeling like she's not enough for the Justice League). The story was kind of all over the place and I wasn't really sure what the point was until it was outright stated in the end. It also doesn't help that Sherman's art was not the strongest. I would have given this a 5.0/10, but the backup really sealed the deal on this for me. I wasn't really sure what was happening throughout the story and I'm still not really sure what the whole point of it was. Along with the odd story, we had the art. While I can see Templesmith's art appealing to certain people, it just didn't sit right with me here and it was the most off-putting part of this entire book. All in all, there are certain ideas I like about this book, but the negative outweighs the positive, unfortunately. All I can do is hope that the next issue is able to bring this all together. The only reason I'm putting this on my Pull List here is because I read the current Harley Quinn series and this is the only content I'll have for that until September. more

KNIGHT TERRORS HARLEY QUINN #1 starts off presenting an interesting question — what happens when the main character takes control of their own nightmare? Other tie-ins have seen their leads aware that they’re in a nightmare, but we’ve yet to see anyone flip the script on Insomnia and dictate what’s happening on their own terms. This was especially interesting for Harley, who has had to face her own demons countless times over the years as writer after writer has forced her to face the mental abuse she’s faced at the hands of men in her lives. If only Tini Howard stopped there. Instead, we get Harley “embracing” her craziness in cringe-worthy scenes after she’s given an instruction manual to the DC multiverse and gets to play director.

After the first few pages where Harley is actually in a nightmare, none of this story is even remotely connected to the Knight Terrors story. We get Harley as a pirate and a vampire hunter as she tries to emulate being a “hero” without becoming a member of a larger group of heroes. Howard tries to tie things back to a nightmare story when the unknown voice that has been guiding Harley throughout her journey informs her that perhaps she actually could be worthy of working with the Justice League. If that was the point of this issue, it took far too long to get there and is also far too obvious for a character that has threaded the antihero needle for quite some time.

Matching the haphazardness of the plot, Hayden Sherman’s art is equally jumbled. I wasn’t quite sure what the visual approach was to part’s of the issue but it felt like the animation in Harley’s multiverse adventures was from a bootleg episode of old-school Scooby-Doo. Other art throughout the issue was fine, if boring. Nothing really stood out aside from a few pages of colors by Triona Farrell during Harley’s initial nightmare.

The backup story by Leah Williams, with art and colors by Ben Templesmith, is equally frustrating in it’s lack of entertainment. We see a future Harley traveling back in time to enlist a present-day Harley in an unknown mission. Not sure where Williams is going with this story, but Templesmith’s art is very off-putting to me. Present-day Harley’s facial design is downright bad.

The “Being Harley Quinn” episode (Season 1 Episode 4) of the Harley Quinn animated series on Max did a much better job presenting what could be going on inside Harley’s mind. That story was entertaining, it empowered Harley to overcome her demons without having to go to an extreme of her mental state, and it used dark humor without feeling out of touch. KNIGHT TERRORS HARLEY QUINN #1 did none of those things and stands as one of my least favorite event tie-ins to date.

Rating: 3/10 more