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Harley Quinn is making April Fools Day 2025 one to remember with a not-so-sweet-smelling DC comic book special

After releasing the best-selling comic of 2024, DC is putting out what's going to be the smelliest comic of 2025

Published on Fri Dec 20 2024

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It’s still early, but we feel pretty confident we can predict what the strangest-smelling comic of 2025 is going to be already. Hidden in DC’s solicitations for March 2025 is something called — and I promise this is not a gag on our behalf — Harley Quinn Fartactular: Silent Butt Deadly #1.

Here’s DC’s official description of the comic. Again, I want to remind you: this is actually DC’s official description of the comic: “I’ve been holding in all my very worst bits of bubble guts for the last 32 years, and it’s all been leading up to this epic expulsion! Your nose will never be the same! You’ll gag, you’ll cry, you’ll feel things you ain’t never felt before! This fine publication is a celebration of all things passed, pre-scent, and toot-ure. Sequential art’s place in the annals of history is about to change with the release of the Harley Quinn Fartacular: Silent Butt Deadly, a comic that promises to have the highest concentration of gas per page (GPP) ever committed to print. Emphasis on committed, because everyone who worked on this comic is getting thrown into Dr. Fartley’s Home for No-Good Gassy Gals."

This isn’t the first Harley Quinn comic to test your olfactory senses: back in 2014, DC released Harley Quinn Annual #1, a rub-and-smell comic advertised as having “scents of leather, suntan lotion, and pizza, plus one unnamed scent of a ‘mysterious compound.’” (Psst: it was weed.) Please note the use of "rub-and-smell" instead of the more popular "Scratch and Sniff," which is very intentional; that latter term is owned intellectual property, like Choose Your Own Adventure, so we'll stay away from that thank you very much. (The Fartacular is also rub-and-smell. Best be warned.)

Quite why Harley has become the poster-child for comics that make you think about smelling stuff, we can only imagine, but we’re fascinated by the unexpected coincidence. If it happens one more time — perhaps in 2036, if we’re keeping to the timing we apparently have — does that make it a trend?

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In case you think we’ve all succumbed to the vapors, I want to point out that this one-off issue comes from a creative team that is anything but stinky — Popverse favorite Joanne Starer (Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville) writes, with art from the underrated-and-marvelous Ted Brandt & Ro Stein, with variant covers from Amanda Conner and Ben Caldwell (you can see them all in the gallery above) — and the book ships March 26, making it pretty much an ideal comic for anyone looking for a seasonal April Fools treat.

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Graeme McMillan: Popverse Editor Graeme McMillan (he/him) has been writing about comics, culture, and comics culture on the internet for close to two decades at this point, which is terrifying to admit. He completely understands if you have problems understanding his accent.