Part of my massive Barbara Gordon Re-read which I had a glorious amazing time with. Birds of Prey, under the hands of Gail Simone, was a gorgeous thing and It made me super happy to have all my amazing women back together doing amazing things! ( )

Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds by Gail Simone, Ed Benes, Alex Lei, and Rob Lea

enjoy this book. ( )

So, the Birds in this case, Huntress, Oracle, and Black Canary, take on a surprisingly smart guy named Savant, a guy who has a problem remembering when stuff happened. (At one point he says yesterday when it happened many years ago). There's a lot of twists and turns that make the story line interesting as well.

But , really, the best part of the TPB was just how right Gail Simone got the balance between the girly stuff and the fighting/warrior stuff.

That and the chemistry between the Birds, their give and take, was great. Black Canary and Oracle were the best, but the verbal sparring between Huntress and the rest of them was good too.

I also liked the art. It wasn't great, but didn't try to be super arty either. ( )

The cover of this one made me feel a little skeevy when I picked it up from the library-- only one button, Oracle? a "belly window," Huntress?-- but this is the start of Gail Simone's celebrated run on Birds of Prey. For most of the story, Black Canary is captured and seemingly under threat of torture, an interesting contrast to what happened to her at the beginning of Mike Grell's Green Arrow run in The Longbow Hunters. That torture removed her sonic cry, destroyed her ability to have children, and caused her to largely abandon her crime-fighting career. And, of course, she was utterly dependent on Green Arrow to rescue her. (Though what's not often mentioned is that in the prelude to The Black Arrow Saga a couple years later, Green Arrow was just as badly tortured, and rescued by Black Canary in an amazing example of sheer ass-kicking.) The torture her serves as a rebirth of sorts for Black Canary: she remasters her sonic cry, and she's rescued not by her boyfriend, but by her new best friends, Oracle and the Huntress, working together as they've never done before-- not to mention Canary's own quick thinking. It's an effective way to signal the beginning of a new era.

Otherwise, this is a serviceable but unremarkable superhero story, involving captures, double-bluffs, escapes, and lots of fighting. The best part of it is Simone's grasp of the characters; she ably picks up the ball from Chuck Dixon and carries on the development of Dinah and Barbara, adding Helena into the mix as well. There are a lot of great moments: Helena saving a baby, Dinah having to cope with a wheelchair of her own, Barbara's battle of wits with Savant.

If only Ed Benes didn't feel compelled to show off all the female characters' butts and boobs at every opportunity. Are you fifteen, dude? What is this supposed to be in aid of? I also miss the Black Canary costume introduced at the beginning of Dixon's run; I'm not sure where it went in the gap between Old Friends, New Enemies and this story. Benes also draws Dinah a little too young; especially with that haircut, she looks like she's 20 years old, when in fact she's a few years older than Barbara. On the other hand, I think he gets Barbara down perfectly, and he's pretty adept with facial expressions, which is important when you have a largely immobile character!

Birds of Prey: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

Three women (Oracle, Black Canary, and Huntress) band together to fight the baddies... and do a fine job of it. Who needs Batman (or Robin... aka Nightwing, here) for that matter? I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the series. ( )