10 Comic Book Issues Guaranteed To Make You Cry
9. Injustice: Gods Among Us #5
We know! We were as surprised as anyone! But yes, Injustice: Gods Among Us, a tie in comic to a Mortal Kombat-based DC video game, ultimately turned out to be a series filled with some incredible writing, bad ass moments, and the full scale of emotion.
And perhaps none more so than Injustice: Gods Among Us #5. In this issue, Harley Quinn escapes the police, having been arrested for assisting the Joker in detonating a nuclear bomb in Metropolis and tricking Superman into killing Lois Lane and their unborn child. When the Man of Steel then murdered the Joker in an act of revenge and declared his plans for a totalitarian takeover to stop crime on the Earth, Green Arrow intercepts Quinn in an effort to protect her from execution.
What starts in this issue is one of the most unlikely friendships in comics, as Harley Quinn and Green Arrow bizarrely begin to form a relationship beyond good guy and bad girl. The issue is a highlight for some incredibly comedic moments too, masterfully delivered by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo.
However, the issue also wears it's heart on its sleeve: in a moment of pure fragility and openness, Harley Quinn talks about her relationship with the Joker, and how she knows it wasn't right and was even hurting her, but it was hers.
It's a powerful, and deeply honest rendition of a complicated topic that manages to deal with it respectfully and in such a way that makes the relationship and the character totally relatable.
In the issue, Quinn manages to make every reader laugh out loud and then take their hearts out and smash them with an over-sized comedy mallet. It's that good.