HARLEY QUINN X ELVIRA #4 – New Comic Review

Harley Quinn X Elvira #4, by Dynamite Comics on 1/28/26, finds our chaotic duo marooned in a Transylvania castle where the food is mysterious, the vampire wives are murderous, and the plot veers wildly between slapstick and nonsense without landing either one cleanly. 

Credits:

• Writer: Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti
• Artist: Amanda Conner, Juan Samu
• Colorist: Amanda Conner, Walter Pereyra
• Letterer: Dave Lanphear
• Cover Artist: Amanda Conner (cover A)
• Publisher: Dynamite Comics
• Release Date: January 28, 2026
• Comic Rating: Teen
• Cover Price: $4.99
• Page Count: 22
• Format: Single Issue

Covers:

Analysis of HARLEY QUINN X ELVIRA #4:

First Impressions:

Reading this comic left me genuinely frustrated, which is worse than if it had simply been bad. The premise works on paper, the art has moments of competence, and the characters carry enough personality to make something entertaining possible. What emerged instead feels scattered, tonally confused, and desperate for laughs that never land with any real impact.

Recap:

In issue three, Harley and Elvira infiltrated mobster Boffa Fungoo’s Long Island headquarters in an ice cream truck, negotiated with him about hiring assassins, and fled when talks collapsed. Power Girl appeared, dealt with the Bad Samaritan by launching him into space, and arranged for both women to hide in a castle in Transylvania owned by a mysterious Count. The issue ended with a mad scientist named Suzie Shellman creating a creature called “Frankensid” from a grandfather’s remains.

Plot Analysis (SPOILERS):

The issue opens with Harley discovering everyone has evacuated the Hall of Justice to deal with a space alien in Central Park. She rushes to Central Park alongside Nathan, where Power Girl and Elvira are trapped by a tentacled creature. Harley arrives, accidentally destroys the alien by colliding with it, and briefly celebrates before she wakes up from what was a dream. The narrative abruptly shifts to a recap sequence explaining the series premise via a narrator explaining how Harley got sick, missed Halloween, planned a replacement party, recruited Elvira, and ended up broke enough to take a shady job that forced them to flee the country.

The narrator explains that Power Girl flew both women to a castle in Transylvania owned by Elvira’s mysterious friend, and they feasted before passing out. The story then transitions to the castle proper, where Harley and Elvira wake up with hangovers after a mummy’s unwrapping released ancient vapors that knocked everyone unconscious. They encounter Tad, a werewolf character from Elvira’s past who has lost his job and his girlfriend to various disasters unrelated to the main plot.

The bulk of the issue follows Harley and Elvira in the castle as they encounter the Count’s three vampire brides, who immediately resent the newcomers. The Count admits he has not been faithful and that the brides just performed a blood ritual specifically to kill Harley and Elvira. The women try to escape but run into the vampire brides on the castle roof, where they attempt to fight back before discovering the brides have horse-ripping strength and possess standard vampire powers.

A cyborg with a brain in a glass dome head arrives, revealed to be Frankensid from the Long Island subplot combined with a character named Sid from earlier issues. Frankensid chases Harley and Elvira with the intent to kill them. A mysterious man in a glowing portal appears at the very last moment saying “Come with me if you want to live,” seemingly offering rescue as the issue ends on a cliffhanger.

Story

The pacing is the comic’s most significant failure. The first three pages contain a complete action sequence that resolves itself, yet this serves as setup for a six-page expository recap that explains series continuity. This is backwards structurally. A reader picking up issue four should care about what happens in issue four, not be force-fed an explanation of issues one through three. The narrator’s voice is aggressively casual, using phrases like “You slackers who missed the first few issues” and “because obviously” to address readers directly, which breaks immersion rather than building comfort.

Dialogue depends almost entirely on crude innuendo, cheap pop culture references, and exaggerated expressions rather than character-specific wit. When Harley jokes about kissing “everyone’s mother with that mouth,” it reads as a forced callback that doesn’t emerge from the character or situation. The exchange between Harley and Elvira about the castle’s pool and moat lands no better. Character banter should feel earned through interaction, but instead it feels like the writers are checking boxes on a comedy checklist without understanding why any particular joke belongs to these particular characters in this particular moment.

The structure wobbles between multiple plotlines without weaving them together. The alien attack, the castle introduction, the vampire wives subplot, and Frankensid’s arrival should feel connected, but instead they feel like scenes from different comics that accidentally got bound together. The romantic subplot between the Count and his three brides arrives out of nowhere, demanding investment in a conflict the reader has zero context for. By the time Frankensid appears, it feels less like a major threat and more like the writers remembered they forgot to include him.

Art

Amanda Conner’s work on pages one and two shows solid technical proficiency, with dynamic action poses and clean layouts during the alien attack. Once Juan Samu takes over, the art becomes muddled, particularly during sequences that require visual clarity. The castle scenes are cluttered with too much detail competing for attention rather than guiding the eye. The vampire brides look visually distinct, which is the only thing preventing scenes from becoming completely unclear, but the action sequences still struggle to convey momentum or spatial awareness.

Color work by Walter Pereyra is inconsistent. Some scenes, particularly the early alien attack and the castle’s grand hall, use color effectively to establish mood and atmosphere. The vampire brides’ scenes benefit from darker, richer tones that enhance the horror elements. However, other sequences feel washed out or rely too heavily on single-color backgrounds that make characters appear to float. The bath scenes in particular lack the visual interest that could make them either funny or atmospheric.

Composition frequently places characters in extreme close-ups when wide shots would serve the narrative better. The castle scenes especially suffer from this, making the space feel claustrophobic instead of mysterious. When characters run through corridors, the narrow framing makes it impossible to understand the layout or why they’re taking specific routes. For a comedic book, visual clarity matters because physical comedy depends on the reader understanding spatial relationships.

Characters

Harley operates without consistent motivation beyond “react to whatever happens next.” She jumps from excited about the alien fight to hungover in the castle to fleeing vampire brides without displaying any emotional progression or learning. Her banter with Elvira feels obligatory rather than reflecting genuine friendship or dynamic tension. When she agrees to leave the castle instead of causing more chaos, it’s presented as character growth, but the character hasn’t done anything to earn that change. It happens because the plot requires it.

Elvira receives even less development. She spends the early sections expressing discomfort and crude observations, then repeating the same beats later. Her connection to Tad is explained through exposition (“from many publishers ago”) rather than shown through interaction or emotion. She exists primarily as a reaction mechanism to Harley’s behavior rather than as a character with her own agency or goals. The comic doesn’t establish why these two women should be friends beyond circumstance.

The Count could be interesting, but his infidelity and his wives’ rage are presented as acceptable comedic material rather than character depth. He admits the brides just performed a murder ritual against Harley and Elvira, then essentially shrugs and says he warned them about the mummy, as though this balances the ledger. This reads as tone-deaf rather than funny. Supporting characters like the zombie butler, Tad, and the vampire brides lack sufficient screen time to develop beyond their archetypes, which might have worked in a tighter, more focused script but here feels like padding.

Originality & Concept Execution

The core concept of Harley and Elvira as a chaotic team remains theoretically strong, but this execution suffocates it under scattered subplots and unfocused comedic instincts. The jokes aren’t designed specifically for these characters; they’re generic “attractive woman makes crude observation” material that could work with any female duo. Placing them in a Transylvania castle with vampires, a zombie butler, and a cyborg villain should create inherent comedic potential through contrast, yet the writers don’t leverage the setting effectively.

The inclusion of Frankensid represents the comic’s biggest structural failure. He’s not introduced until the final pages, he’s not connected thematically to anything that came before, and his motivation—revenge from Staten Island incidents readers might not remember—lands without weight. This feels like writers abandoning the vampire bride subplot midway because they remembered another threat they wanted to include. A strong comic executes one concept with precision; this comic tries to execute four concepts with none.

Positives

The opening alien battle demonstrates that Conner and Samu can deliver kinetic action when given clear visual goals, and the page itself contains energy and humor that works. Power Girl’s appearance in the previous issue carried more personality than either lead in this installment, suggesting the writers understand how secondary characters can elevate a scene.

The Count’s character design is visually distinctive, and the castle setting offers rich comedic potential if handled correctly. Moments where the dialogue falls into Harley’s authentic voice, such as her exasperation about being undressed and the “mature reaction” joke, show the writers know these characters exist somewhere beneath the surface. The vampire bride concept itself is solid, even if the execution falters completely.

Negatives

The six-page expository recap in the middle of a four-issue run feels like the writers don’t trust readers to have followed the story, which drains momentum precisely when the issue needs to push forward. Frankensid’s arrival delivers no emotional payoff because he hasn’t been established as a credible threat; he’s just a cyborg appearing because the plot needs a cliffhanger. The objectification of characters like Power Girl becomes distracting rather than playful, reducing women to observations about their bodies rather than their competence.

The vampire brides are announced as murderous but are treated as comedic obstacles, which creates tonal whiplash. Dialogue relies so heavily on crude humor about bodies, mouths, and sexual situations that it becomes exhausting rather than entertaining, particularly when the same jokes repeat. The castle’s layout remains unclear throughout, making the escape sequence confusing rather than exciting. Most critically, the comic lacks any narrative momentum; it feels like scenes strung together rather than a coherent story with stakes, character arcs, and earned emotional beats.

Art Samples:

The Scorecard:

Writing Quality (Clarity & Pacing): [1/4]
Art Quality (Execution & Synergy): [2/4]
Value (Originality & Entertainment): [0/2]

Final Thoughts:

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HARLEY QUINN X ELVIRA #4 is a comic that mistakes loudness for humor and quantity of plots for complexity. You can feel the effort in Amanda Conner’s character designs and Juan Samu’s attempt to juggle multiple scenes, yet effort alone doesn’t justify spending five dollars on an issue that can’t decide what story it’s telling. The premise of Harley and Elvira as a chaotic team should work, but this execution proves the pairing needs writers who understand comedic timing, character dynamics, and how to construct a narrative that feels like it’s going somewhere rather than wandering aimlessly through a castle while multiple unrelated threats appear.

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