A three-person team's trying to catch Harley Quinn for theme park tycoon Jack Happi, and figure a fake ceremony awarding Quinn's old psychiatry professor, Dr. Markus, the 'infamous Wertham Award' is the perfect trap. Too bad Harley's watching in the rafters as they set up and Markus practices his speech, which says his work revolves around the idea people only ignore society's rules when they commit a crime, or when they're in love.
Cue flashback! Student Harley, inviting Markus to her dorm room to pitch him on that very idea to convince him to get her into the graduate program, despite her lousy grades. Markus, in a weak attempt to maintain professional decorum, recommends an independent experiment, supervised by him, of course. Harley's already got an idea: What's the worst thing a person can do and still be loved? But who would agree to be the subject?
How about her boyfriend, Guy? He barges in, frantically looking for his paper on Chaos Theory, wondering if his professor will accept losing the paper is connected to the Joker escaping. In an effort to remember, Guy grabs his own special "think drink", right as Harley hands him the paper. Setting aside the drink, he kisses her and rushes out, minus the paper, as Harley notes he'd do anything for her.
In the present, Bo Donner and Dr. Carrie Chispazo spotted Quinn and tracked her to an equipment room. They've got her now! Or not. They get trapped between two sets of double doors, as part of some goofy attempt by Harley to create a romance between them. She's seen them arguing and thinks they're clearly into each other, indicating Harley spends too much time on early-2000s DC's equivalent to Archive of Our Own. The third guy was patrolling the exterior and is locked out, leaving Harley free to learn why Markus would help lure her out. Answer? The doc wanted to know what happened with Harley's experiment.
Flashback! Guy comes in, remarking the city should bow to the Joker's demands to pay him a smile tax so he doesn't poison the water supply. Plus, Joker smiles more than anyone, and he won't pay the tax, so they can bust him on tax evasion. Hey, the Timmverse cartoon established the Joker does not want to tangle with the IRS.
As Guy takes a swig of his drink, Harley's sitting on the couch, depressed that she ran a red light. Guy blows it off, until Harley admits she was fleeing the cops. In a car she stole after trying to blackmail Markus into letting her in the program by claiming he tried to rape her. Except Markus had a tape recorder and a gun and threatened to call the cops. She lunged for the gun - which she still has - and it went off. And Guy's off, hopefully to another state.
There's a couple of pages about how two of the guys in Harley's crew - which she calls the Quintets, though they can't keep more than 4 alive - are plotting to get her killed, but whatever. Harley's got Markus flailing on a balance beam before she finishes the story.
Flashback! Quinn finds Guy at the same gym. He killed a homeless guy, thinking it was Markus. He sticks the gun under his chin, asking her to pull the trigger. Her hands are on the gun as she pleads with him, but somebody pulled that trigger, and Markus wants to know who. Because he saw the aftermath, Harley back in her dorm room, crying and laughing about how everything's chaos, that Guy and the Joker both understood this. She recorded that initial conversation with Markus, with her asking why he wanted to meet in her dorm room, so he's got to get her an internship at Arkham so she can meet the Joker, or else. In the last panel we see of the Joker, Woods shifts his appearance towards the later, simplified Bruce Timm look, which in this series was shorthand for Harley divorcing herself from reality.
We never do find out who actually pulled the trigger.
In the process of the flashback, Harley remembers Markus poured the rest of Guy's drink down the drain, and in the present confronts him about that. Markus pulls out his pen, claiming it's loaded with Joker Venom. The last of a sample he acquired illegally, some of which he put in Guy's drink, thinking the euphoric effects would counteract the stress Quinn's test would place on him. Again, not sure why, as that's way too many variables in that experiment, but it means the whole thing is only sort of Harley's fault!
Markus smashes the pen on her head, but Quinn's immune to Joker Venom. Markus, who cut his hand in the process, is not. He's dead, Harley's gone, but Chispazo thinks she's got a bead on a way to use herself and Bo to trap Harley. Assuming the backstabbing in Quinn's gang doesn't get her first. . .
{5th longbox, 60th comic. Harley Quinn (vol. 1) #8, by Karl Kesel (writer), Pete Woods (penciler), Mark Lipka (inker), Alex Sinclair (colorist), Ken Lopez (letterer)}
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