Well, this looks like wacky good fun.

That's what I thought, anyway, when I first laid eyes on Multiversity: Harley Screws Up the DCU. Harley Quinn gets a time machine and manages to mess up the universe, and now she has to fix it.

Well, it's a great concept. The execution here is, to say the least, poor.

Artistically speaking, it's probably the first time that the character of Harley Quinn has managed to look unattractive. I mean, really. So there's a mark against it.

But the story is kind of dumb, too. I mean, it has the nut of a great idea, but as written it's just a bunch of manic dialogue, stupid jokes and silly glitches in time. Harley, without intent or even remembering any of it afterwards, manages to land on Krypton and blow up baby Kal-El before he can be rocketed to Earth. She also goes to Themyscira and steps on the clay baby Diana before her mother can bring her to life. She accidentally saves Bruce Wayne's parents' lives, thus negating the existence of Batman. She electrocutes Barry Allen. She seduces Aquaman's father, hence Aquaman is never conceived. And that sort of thing.

So, in the alternate timeline she creates, there are no heroes to stop Starro from landing on Earth and starfishing everyone on the planet. And Harley, with no memory of what she did the first time around, has to travel back in time again, this time in the company of alternate-reality Harley, to fix it all.

Her solutions are silly. Not clever-funny silly, just kind of ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong, I like Harley Quinn, and I like the goofy, riotous things various writers have done with her in comics, movies and animated series. But this book let me down, which is a shame because the potential was there for a really great story.

It just isn't good.