Part of an ongoing series revisiting graphic novels and collected editions from days gone by....

Although I no longer read comics with the frequency or enthusiasm of earlier years, I do still dabble. Harley Quinn, a one-off Joker sidekick from an animated series who became a fan favorite and developed a following all her own, isn't a character I have followed closely ... although I will confess Margot Robbie's portrayal of the character in several recent movies has whetted my appetite just a bit.

The opening pages of Hot in the City, a collection of the first several issues of an ongoing series starting in 2013, are derivative of every She-Hulk and Deadpool comic in which a self-aware character breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the readers. In this case, Harley Quinn knows she's appearing in a comic book and chats with the writers and artists as she auditions them for style and content. It's silly, unnecessary, and an overused trope that gets boring quickly. There is no plot, and the pretense of a sentient protagonist interacting with her illustrators is not half as amusing as the writers (Amanda Connor and Jimmy Palmiotti) think it is.

The actual story, once it begins, is a mixed bag. For one thing, there's a talking taxidermied beaver that's never explained. (Perhaps it's a holdover schtick from an earlier series?) Harley, now with Chad Hardin as the regular artist, is sometimes drawn as attractive, sometimes very much not. Either is fine, but it would be nice for more consistency.

There's an inheritance out of the blue of a building on Coney Island, in Brooklyn, New York, along with some freak show tenants/employees and a murder museum. There's some hyper-violent roller ball. Oh, there are some bounty hunters out for Harley's blood, although who put the contract on her life is a mystery. Harley gets a job as a psychiatrist to pay her bills, wearing a blond wig and copious amounts of concealer to hide her pallid complexion, and she takes her clients issues very seriously, and sometimes to violent extremes. Sometimes, she learns, it would help to read the case files first.

One client in particular turns out to be a spy hunter from long ago, a half-cyborg survivor of the Cold War who wants to finish what he started decades before. Soon, Harley finds herself battling an array of colorful former Soviet spies, most of whom were content to live out their retirements quietly.

In keeping with the overall style and theme of Harley Quinn comics, there is plenty of cheesecake and innuendo. For instance, in one scene Harley invites Poison Ivy to meet her beaver ... referring, of course, to her stuffed companion. Or, later, Ivy tells Harley in her apartment that she has a lead on the person who ordered the hit on her, and on the next page Ivy is explaining her news on a beach in a swimsuit.

This is not deep content. It's not great comic-book literature. It is what Harley fans expect it to be -- amusing, cute, irreverent, sexy, violent and quirky. At the end of the book, you can at least say you were entertained.