Jonathan GlapionBesprekingen

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This is the best of the Birds of Prey books so far. It still jumps all over the place, but this time it should be.


Black Canary, Batgirl - you are really surprised that Starling sold you out? Really? When Black canary meets her, Starling is working for the Penguin. And we know that she has this long history as a spook with ties to Amanda Waller. And you're still surprised?


Nice to see Condor getting some love. Same goes for Strix. DC (and Marvel et al) need more new characters instead of just rehashing the same dozen or two every couple of years.

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

Let's step back and talk about the Birds of Prey. The original incarnation of the Birds of Prey, in the post-Crisis/pre-Flashpoint continuity, was in a large part based on history. Barbara "Oracle" Gordon, Dinah "Black Canary" Laurel Lance, and (eventually) Helena "Huntress" Bertinelli were all characters with long histories in the DC Universe. Barbara had been Batgirl, was shot and paralyzed, resurfaced as Oracle, and had relationships with characters like Batman and Nightwing. Dinah was the daughter of a superhero from the 1940s, a former member of the Justice League, and had been involved in a long-term relationship with Oliver "Green Arrow" Queen that had recently ended. Helena was a more recent character, but had still built up a history as a character on the fringes of the Batman world, which included a brief sexual encounter with Nightwing. The team first came into existence in Black Canary/Oracle: Birds of Prey #1, from 1996, but Black Canary first met Oracle and Huntress in Black Canary vol. 2 #10, from 1993. These characters had history with each other, which shaped their personalities, interactions, and stories.

The post-Flashpoint version of the team has none of this. Now, I don't deny that a reboot may have been necessary, but it definitely impacted the Birds of Prey negatively. Over thirty issues of their adventures later, and I don't have a feel for these characters beyond single lines: Dinah is mopey and lacks confidence, Batgirl is similarly always on the edge of a breakdown, Strix is silent, and Condor is just kind of there. Why do these characters hang out with each other? What's their purpose? I don't have a feeling for why Dinah and Barbara might be friends in this new universe, for example. The lack of history is part of the problem, but not all of it: thirty issues is plenty of time to have built up a new history, but this book hasn't done that. At least, not a compelling one. Birds of Prey is a book without a reason to exist, as far as I can tell, a grim, dull action comic book about dreary one-note characters that occasionally has to tie in with storylines going on in Batman or Detective Comics.

New writer Christy Marx attempts to deal with some of the issues I've raised above in this, the book's final volume. The book opens with another flashback tale, this one to "Six Year Ago," laying out the backstory that Black Canary dearly lacks in the New 52 universe. I already talked about this in my review of Team 7: Fight Fire with Fire, but I don't really care for this version of Dinah. It's nice to have some of this stuff spelled out, but more because it ticks off continuity boxes than because it actually informs my understanding of the character of Dinah Lance nee Drake. Like, now we know how she got martial arts training and was recruited by Lynch as a government agent, which is good. It's still not, I maintain, as interesting or generative as her old backstory, but I guess that's water under the bridge at this point. (At least, until Rebirth comes along.)

Marx also sets up a new status quo and mission for the Birds. Throughout this volume, they're based on a giant barge in Gotham harbor owned by "Mother Eve," an ancient immortal. This transition is not handled very well. Mother Eve tests the Birds to make sure they're good, in both this volume and the previous one-- but why do they trust her. She's fighting Ra's al Ghul (who everyone calls "al Ghul" like it's his surname), who is evil, but that doesn't make her good! Indeed, an ancient immortal who uses her descendants in a millennia-long war but refuses to share the secrets of her immortality seems a little morally suspect to me, but the Birds accept her with nary a thought and essentially become soldiers in her army, giving up their autonomy. So this book has a stable premise now, but it's one I don't care for: what is Mother Eve trying to achieve other than her own survival? It makes our main characters someone else's tools in a very unappealing way.

Aside from that, there's more tie-ins with storylines in other books ("Zero Year," "Gothtopia," and "Future's End" all pull the narrative in various directions) and more handwringing over uninteresting melodrama. Will Kurt Lance ever remember who Dinah is? I still don't care about this guy. This book establishes that he never loved Dinah much anyway and only got married because he thought they were going on a suicide mission, which 1) would be a more effective rug-pulling moment if we'd actually seen anything substantive about their relationship in Team 7, and 2) I'm pretty sure doesn't actually fit with the timing of their marriage in Team 7. I could be wrong though, because most of Team 7 failed to imprint in my memory. Also the book tries to explain away how Kurt could be killed in battle in Team 7 but Dinah was wanted for murder in the Swierczynski-penned Birds of Prey stories, and it very nearly convinces with its retcon, though if the entire black-ops community was after Dinah because she "destroyed an island" and was "a new power, out of control, too dangerous to be running around loose," as Amanda Waller claims, it seems a little odd 1) they took around three or five years ago to come after her, 2) everyone said they were after her for murdering Kurt, and 3) they just gave up after a couple tries and let her run amok with this terrible power anyway.

Also Condor continues to be a focal character; I liked him better when he was a somewhat dopey guy I wasn't supposed to take seriously, and not a dramatic lead who is supposedly in love with Dinah but fantasizes about killing her ex-husband.

At the end of this book, the Birds of Prey break up in a completely unconvincing way, with a totally over-the-top outburst from Batgirl that comes out of nowhere: "It's too late. I'm done. Done with the Birds of Prey and done with you. I'm going back to my own life. Don't call me, don't contact me. I won't answer." All the characters go off in their separate ways. Barbara and Dinah, I know, get retooled as better characters in the Burnside-era Batgirl comic. It's difficult for me to imagine caring about what happens to the rest of the characters in this book. This summer saw the beginning of a new take on Birds of Prey, Batgirl and the Birds of Prey. From what I know of its premise, I have some reservations, but it has to be better than this.

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

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

This volume of Birds of Prey sees a new writer and the beginnings of a new direction, opening with a story about yet another team member leaving. This is the third volume in a row to feature a departure of an original team member; the lack of a stable dynamic is getting annoying. What's even more annoying is that it's completely terrible: Ev Starling, who has been a mainstay of this version of the team since Day One (her and Dinah were the original members), turns out to be a criminal working for Mr. Freeze. Like, lol, what? The last volume had hinted at some kind of conflict between Starling and Dinah-- but based on Starling secretly working for the government, not a criminal! It comes out of nowhere, removes the most fun presence on the team (at this point, Batgirl is pretty dour, Dinah is way too much into self-doubt, and Strix is silent), and is completely out of character.

This is followed by a story where another ex-Talon (apparently the star of another DC book, one called Talon) shows up to fight Strix. I wish I had ever read Court of Owls or even gave a shit about Talons, because Birds of Prey is super-invested in them for some reason. This story isn't complete within Birds of Prey, but continues into an issue of Talon, which is included here. Kudos to DC for including that issue, but they really should have just included the first eight pages, because the rest of it is the most boring nonsense about our angsty hero going to Santa Prisca to fight Bane while his wife rots in a Court of Owls prison. Blah blah blah, who cares.

Other things I don't care about: Black Canary and Condor are apparently into each other now. There has been some flirtation previously, but all of a sudden it's a big kiss and drama, and it's too much and too overplayed. And it weakens Dinah's character, because now she's mooning over two men, and all her moaning about Kurt (who died three or five years ago!) was bad enough. But of course this is all just set-up for the melodrama to come, because it turns out that 1) Condor used to work for Basilisk, the terrorist organization the Birds have been fighting and 2) Basilisk has Kurt Lance! Nope, I still don't care. Perhaps if Team 7 had done a better job of selling the Kurt/Dinah relationship, and if I cared at all about the Dinah/Condor relationship, but neither of these things really moves me, and so neither does a story built entirely upon them.

I was kind of regretting having read Team 7, but The Cruelest Cut draws on it a fair amount, so I guess my suffering wasn't without purpose. Well, sort of. This book does contain a flashback to Dinah meeting Kurt for the first time-- which has them meeting when Dinah and Amanda Waller were transferred to Team 7 together. Which totally contradicts what actually happened in Team 7, where Dinah and Kurt had a well-established relationship when Lynch recruited them to Team 7, and then they're the ones who bring Waller in! Like seriously, if you're going to reference another book, then maybe actually read it? Then, at the end of this book, the bad guy behind Basilisk is revealed as Regulus, who is Kaizen Gamorra, the big bad from Team 7, merged with Dean Higgins, a member of Team 7 I do not even remember despite having read the book a month ago. This book doesn't do a whole lot to explain the backstory of Gamorra, so I guess it's helpful to read Team 7, but it's not that helpful since I still didn't follow a lot of what was said.

I guess what I'm saying is that there's not a lot to care about in Birds of Prey these days.

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The decision, during Infinite Crisis and 52, to take two of DC's best nonsuperhuman characters, Gotham cops Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen, and transform them into superheroes of sorts is one I have sort of a mixed reaction to. I did really like the Question coaching Renee to move beyond her anger and eventually step into her place, and I felt that Allen as the Spectre had some potential as well. Revelations brings back both characters, along with Kate Kane as Batwoman (also introduced in 52), showing what they get up to involving the Crime Bible during the Final Crisis. What the story does is confirm that really, these characters should have stayed as they were in Gotham Central. Rucka and Tan do their best, but this is generic comic-mystical gubbins; Montoya and Allen were much better served as ordinary cops navigating an extraordinary world than they are being extraordinary characters. There are flashes of interest in Revelations, but much of it seems to be Rucka doing damage control (Allen's son was killed in a previous Spectre series not written by Rucka, and Rucka brings him back here), and too much of it focuses on the potentially-interesting-but-usually-not Religion of Crime.

Gotham Central: « Previous in sequence
DC Comics Crises: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

Many of DC's superheroes are pulled into this storyline of a war between good and evil, fought between the spirit of the first murderer, Cain, and God's spirits of vengeance and mercy. Two of the major players in this book are police detectives from the Gotham Central storyline who now have superpowers. I found that unfortunate, since one of the reasons I really liked the Gotham Central storyline was that it focused on the heroic actions of people who didn't run around in tights or masks. That being said, this book was entertaining, although I wouldn't recommend it to deeply religious people who might take offense to the real liberties the writers have taken with Biblical and Apocryphal scripture.