Short Box: DC K.O. Harley Quinn vs. Zatanna
DC K.O. Harley Quinn vs. Zatanna
#1B
Frank Cho Variant
#1E
David Nakayama Variant
| Release: | Dec 17, 2025 |
| Cover: | Feb 2026 |
Creators
| Writer | Leah Williams |
| Artist | Mirka Andolfo |
| Cover Artist | Frank Cho, David Nakayama |
| Cover Colorist | Sabine Rich |
For anyone paying attention – so pretty much just me – the Short Box often tends to be the place where I write about comics I didn’t particularly care for.
That’s not always the case, but it is the case now.
I had very little interest in the K.O. event for multiple reasons. The overall plot – such as it is – isn’t great, even allowing for the fact that it only exists as an excuse for telling a story that is basically the equivalent of a 1v1 fighting video game.
Still, I picked up the first issue for the “blind bag” gimmick and then grabbed the second because I liked the acetate cover, but I hadn’t intended to pick up any of the tie-in one-shots except maybe the one that’s going to feature characters from other companies like Red Sonja and Homelander as combatants. (To more firmly establish its fighting game bona fides, it will even feature Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat.)
However, because I’d added Zatanna books to my pull list in the past, the A cover of this special was auto-added to my stack. I was going to just pass on it, but then decided that if I was going to get it, I might as well grab the variant covers that I liked.
And then I read it and, uh, hm.
It’s not terrible, and while Mirka Andolfo’s artistic style is not for me, it was certainly competent and seemed to fit Harley’s energy.
My biggest problem was with the characterization, as Zatanna came across as hopelessly naive, initially thinking that she and Harley were brought together to team up rather than fight each other, and then continually letting Harley get the drop on her, expecting a fair fight, and failing to take into account the stakes of the fight.
Oh, right. That. The fight.
Why are these heroes – and villains, who managed to sneak into the tournament despite the heroes’ best efforts to keep them out – fighting?
Well, see, in a few days, Darkseid is going to come back from the dead, more powerful than ever, and he’s going to win, and all the heroes are going to lose. That is, of course, unless someone can undergo the same trials that Darkseid once underwent to become King Omega. Then the winner can take on Darkseid and (potentially) win.
The trials involve a tournament, fought to the death. But it’s okay, because after becoming King Omega, the winner will be all-powerful and can bring everyone back to life. Hooray!
…look, it’s just an excuse for everyone to fight each other, all right?
Going into the tournament, some people wondered why Harley was there with the heroes. I wondered why she was there at all. Why anyone with power levels below Superman and Wonder Woman was there.
Of course, Harley was there for the same reason that the Joker is there: popularity.
The “who would win in a fight” debate is always tedious, and it’s even more tedious when it makes it into a story, because the answer is always, “whoever the writer decides will win,” and things like power levels and internal logic get thrown out the window.
Thus, you have Zatanna getting caught flat-footed by Harley, rendered incapable of speaking, losing the first round, and then deciding, after the reset that occurs before the second round, that she’s not going to just say, “Yelrah, pord daed.” It’s a matter of pride, and of resisting the dark allure of the Omega whatsit, and proving Harley’s taunts about how she lives in the shadow of others wrong.
And in the end when – spoiler – Zatanna does win, Harley reveals that she was just pushing Zatanna to do what needed to be done, because Harley knew she had no chance of winning the larger tournament*, whereas Zatanna does, and she’s glad she went up against Zatanna because at least she got taken out by a friend.
Which was news to me, but I guess everyone is Harley’s friend or something.
Again, it’s not terrible, but I’m just not into the overall idea, and most of the attempts at insights into Zatanna’s personality didn’t land for me because they don’t really match my understanding of who Zatanna is.
K.O. is the big thing going on at DC right now and it’s going to lead into the next big thing, so I figured I should take a look at some part of it here.
In summation, it’s the sort of thing you’ll like if you like this sort of thing.
*That’s what I said!
Born and raised in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon Maki developed an enduring love for comics at an early age.
