Long-time Batman group writer Chuck Dixon penned the original Birds of Prey adventure, which appeared in the 1996 over-sized one-shot special Black Canary/Oracle: Birds of Prey #1 and was drawn by Gary Frank and John Dell. On the other hand, I've also heard that editor Jordan B. Gorfinkel came up with the idea (Wikipedia doesn't offer any clarity; the entry for "Birds of Prey (team)" credits Dixon as the creator, while Gorfinkel's entry says he created the team.)
At any rate, Dixon was certainly integral in creating the team and setting the template for the many other writers to follow him, as he wrote all of the team's original late-90s adventures in one-shots Birds of Prey: Revolution and Birds of Prey: Wolves and miniseries Birds of Prey: Manhunt.
At its inception, Birds of Prey seemed to be a way to give both Black Canary Dinah Lance and Oracle Barbara Gordon something to do in the DC Universe other than playing occasional supporting characters in Green Arrow and Batman comics, with Canary going on missions planned and coordinated by Oracle, who would feed her intel remotely through an earpiece.
At the outset, Canary had never actually met Oracle, nor even knew her actual identity. Other female characters would occasionally join Canary on these missions, like The Huntress and Catwoman in Manhunt (Or, in the case of a Showcase '96 short written by Gorfinkel, Lois Lane).
Dixon was also the initial writer of the eventual ongoing monthly series, writing the first 46 issues for a variety of artists, including Greg Land, Butch Guice and Rick Leonardi. Dixon was followed on the book's 10-year, 127-issue run by a pair of talented, if perhaps unlikely, writers, in the form of Strangers in Paradise's Terry Moore and Love and Rockets' Gilbert Hernandez.
And then Gail Simone took over with 2003's issue #56, initially working with pencil artist Ed Benes, and she stuck around for four years. (Writers Tony Bedard and Sean McKeever would follow her, keeping the title going another year and a half before it faced cancellation.)
Though that was hardly the last we would see of the Birds of Prey, Simone's run was probably the high point of the team's history. She added first The Huntress and then, later, Lady Blackhawk to what became a core line-up, although that line-up would quite frequently feature guest-stars, almost all of them female superheroes, who would come and go.
And that eventually became the default premise of the book, for all the iterations that followed: A team of female superheroes, led by Canary, Gordon or both.
While no other ongoing lasted nearly as long as the original—and, let's be honest, at a certain point DC and Marvel stopped even allowing books to run that long, preferring to relaunch books with new #1s every time the writer changed—the concept was popular enough that it never really went away, either.
It was relaunched in 2010 by the returning Simone and Benes (and canceled at issue #15, both creators having left by then), and again as part of the New 52 in 2011 (lasting 35 issues) and in 2016 as Batgirl & The Birds of Prey (22 issues).
The comics also inspired a 2002 TV series (which, despite veering pretty far from the source material, was pretty fun, and my friend Meredith and I certainly enjoyed watching it for ComicsAlliance), and a 2020 film that had a lot to recommend it (despite some extremely questionable choices, especially regarding the use of a character named "Cassandra Cain", and the fact that it was a stealth Harley Quinn film).
After a weird film-inspired 2020 Black Label miniseries entitled Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti and a weirder still Black Label one-shot by Brian Azzarello, Emanuela Luppacchino and Ray McCarthy (the apparent results of what was originally announced as an ongoing), DC was ready to relaunch the team yet again in 2023, this time with writer Kelly Thompson and artist Leonardo Romero.
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I've long enjoyed the work of blogger-turned-novelist-turned-comics writer Kelly Thompson, ever since I used to regularly read her 1979semifinalist blog back in the Golden Age of Comics Blogging (I just looked, and I can't find her old blogging online anymore, though; I assume it's all been taken down. I guess you just had to be there!).
I haven't read everything she's written since going pro, but I've read a lot of it, and I haven't read any of it that I didn't like.
That includes 2015's Jem and the Holograms (with Sophie Campbell, one of my favorite artists), 2016's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Pink and Hawkeye, 2017's Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi—Captain Phasma, 2018's Jessica Jones and the first volume of West Coast Avengers and 2019's Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, as well as some anthologies she's contributed to, 2016's Lumberjanes: Don't Axe, Don't Tale 2016 Special and 2019's Amazing Spider-Man: Full Circle (Looking at her credits online, I see there's actually an awful lot of stuff of hers that I've never read, much of it published by Marvel. As you guys can probably tell, I've always preferred DC to Marvel, and I have an especially hard time generating interest in comics featuring the X-Men or Captain Marvel Carol Danvers).
Considering her facility with writing great comics starring compelling female characters (characters as disparate as Jem and Sabrina and Jessica Jones and the Pink Ranger) and her years writing various superhero and genre comics for publishers throughout the mainstream market, she seemed like a slam-dunk choice for a new Birds of Prey comic, and I was excited when she was first announced as its writer, although I had at least one big reservation, which we'll get to in a moment.
I'm much less familiar with the work of artist Leonardo Romero, whose name I did not recognize. Consulting his credits though, it appears he has experience at both big superhero publishers, as well as for some other genre comics publishers, and I have in fact at least read a little of his work, in the pages of Batman '66, Wonder Woman: Black and Gold and Thompson's own Hawkeye, even if I couldn't connect my memories of reading those books to the name.
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Like I said, I had a few reservations upon the solicitation of that first issue, which was released with the above image of Romero's, an image that ultimately became the cover for the first issue of the series and, later, the first trade collection.
These reservations all had to do with the line-up.
First, someone seemed to be missing. There was no indication that Barbara Gordon was involved. That, of course, seemed odd, but then, maybe she just didn't make the cover; if her role was going to be as Oracle rather than as a Batgirl, then it would make sense not to have her leaping into action alongside the rest of the team.
Second, Jack Kirby's Barda seemed like an...unusual choice. I've always liked the character, of course, even though she usually appears as a supporting character in Mister Miracle or New Gods comics, rather than a protagonist or a hero in her own right*. She had of course been a Justice Leaguer, later in Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell's JLA run (when she and Orion joined the already power-heavy line-up in preparation for the coming of Mageddon, a relatively rare case in which we saw Barda without her superhero husband), and she had obviously teamed up with the Birds before, as one of Oracle's many occasional operatives during the original Simone run.
Still, in her origins and her powers, she's a pretty cosmic character, more suited to straight superhero adventures than the more street-level and espionage style stories that the Birds are most associated with (Although, to be fair, at a certain point in their runs, both Dixon and Simone did stray pretty far into standard superhero fare; in fact, in one of her later stories, Simone even featured resurrection of a dead Justice Leaguer).
Third, while I was of course happy to see Batgirl Cassandra Cain, one of my favorite DC characters, I was a little unsure about her presence here...at least at this particular time. Don't get me wrong, I think the character is perfect for the team (and, for a while, I thought she and her fellow Gotham City teen vigilante Spoiler should have been official junior members, working with and learning from Canary and Huntress). But given where we last saw her, fighting alongside and living with Stephanie Brown and Barbara Gordon in the short-lived series Batgirl, it seemed...well, I hate to say "odd" again, but I will...odd that she would join a Birds line-up without Steph or Barbara. (Hey, now that I think of it, I'm not sure I ever read the final Batgirls collection...maybe they all broke up and went their separate ways in the end of that volume? I suppose I should look into that...)
All of those were really just questions I had about Thompson's new line-up, questions I assumed would be answered in the book itself (And, to be perfectly fair, they all were...immediately. By the time the first issue ended, which, reading the trade, meant by the time I finished the first chapter, I understood why all of the characters, including wild card Harley Quinn, were on the team, and was sold on Thompson's logic in justifying their use...which, even if it was in reality "Because Harley will boost sales," got a compelling in-story reason nonetheless.)
But then there was that other character on the cover: Zealot.
Created by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi for their 1992 Image Comics series WildC.A.T.s: Covert Action Teams**, she and the rest of Lee's "WildStorm Universe" characters became the intellectual property of DC Comics when he sold them to the publisher in 1999.
For a long time, the various WildStorm characters seemed to occupy their own little discrete fictional universe, separated from the DCU, but during 2011's ill-considered New 52 line-wide reboot, we saw a concerted effort to insert the WildStorm characters into the DCU proper. This led to books like a 30-issue Stormwatch in which Martian Manhunter was on a line-up with redesigned members of The Authority and a nine-issue Team 7 which included Black Canary along with characters from Gen 13 and WildC.A.T.s.
For the most part, the DCU seemed to reject these attempts to graft WildStorm characters into it like a body rejecting transplanted organs, and, of course, whether it was market pressure, creators' dislike of the new status quo or the utter revilement of the DC fanbase, the New 52 status quo itself was done away with, writer Scott Snyder devoting two event crossover series (2017's Dark Nights: Metal and 2020's Dark Nights: Death Metal) and a 39-issue run on a Justice League comic that basically amounted to an epic, years-long undoing of the New 52.
Still, a few WildStorm characters seemed to fit in better than others, and a few even stuck around after Death Metal. The ones I've always had the hardest time avoiding were Superman and Batman analogues Apollo and Midniter, and Grifter, who appeared in some Batman comics after the de-reboot.
And, of course, here's Zealot, apparently a new member of the Birds of Prey.
I've read a few comics featuring the character, most memorably Morrison and Val Semeiks' 1997 one-shot JLA/WildC.A.T.s, and surely she must have appeared during the Alan Moore-written issues of WildC.A.T.s, which I read from library-borrowed trades in the years before I started EDILW, although I'll be damned if I can remember much of anything about those comics (There was a punk rock cyborg with a purple mohawk and tank top, right?). Basically, all I knew about Zealot was that she had white hair and a sword. (And that both she and Wonder Woman have seen Tom and Jerry, as is revealed in the aforementioned crossover.)
I've read a few comics featuring the character, most memorably Morrison and Val Semeiks' 1997 one-shot JLA/WildC.A.T.s, and surely she must have appeared during the Alan Moore-written issues of WildC.A.T.s, which I read from library-borrowed trades in the years before I started EDILW, although I'll be damned if I can remember much of anything about those comics (There was a punk rock cyborg with a purple mohawk and tank top, right?). Basically, all I knew about Zealot was that she had white hair and a sword. (And that both she and Wonder Woman have seen Tom and Jerry, as is revealed in the aforementioned crossover.)
Anyway, that was basically just a four-paragraph way of saying, "Ugh, a WildStorm character."
I guess DC has officially owned them for over 25 years now, but they still feel...weird and wrong to me, especially in DC team books like Birds of Prey. (I wonder, did older DC Comics fans feel this way about, say, The Marvel Family or Charlton characters like Blue Beetle and The Question officially joining the mainstream DCU after Crisis on Infinite Earths...? Did they still feel that way 25 years later?)
As you can see by the fact that I am just now writing about a run that started in the calendar year 2023, it took me a while to get around to Thompson and company's Birds of Prey. Sure, that was, in large part, because I have switched from comic book-comics to trades, but I have a feeling knowing that Zealot was in this comic made me drag my feet a bit in finally picking it up.
I am assuming that was probably just me, though.
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Birds of Prey Vol. 1: Megadeath Kelly Thompson and Leonardo Romero hit the ground running in the first issue of their new Birds of Prey series. Indeed, within the very first panel—depicting a shirtless Oliver Queen in a bed talking to Dinah Lance, who sits on the edge of the bed with her hands folded, looking somewhat worried—they have already begun to establish the building of a new Birds of Prey team.
I mentioned how thoroughly Thompson answered questions regarding the new lineup in the first issue above, and it is quite a remarkable first issue, as they use those first 25 pages to introduce the full six-characters who would make up the new version of them team, thoroughly enough that even if a reader wasn't already terribly familiar with them they would be almost immediately, as well as establishing a rationale for Black Canary needing a team, the criteria of its make up (and why Barbara Gordon can't be on it), their incredibly dangerous, fairly crazy-sounding mission and an in-story excuse for Dinah to take such an enormous risk and work with such an unusual team in the first place.
It's a remarkably effective and efficient first issue, and one that not only doesn't waste any time, but also has room for multiple well-orchestrated and executed action scenes, and some really fun grace notes, like a two-page spread in which multiple drawings of Canary and Batgirl Cassandra Cain are shown taking on a small army of ninjas, or, even better, a four-page sequence in which Cassandra tells the others a story about a past fight with Harley Quinn, one that evokes both 2002's DC First: Batgirl/Joker #1 and the 1993 film Batman: Mask of The Phantasm (Both on purpose, I presume).
It's a remarkably effective and efficient first issue, and one that not only doesn't waste any time, but also has room for multiple well-orchestrated and executed action scenes, and some really fun grace notes, like a two-page spread in which multiple drawings of Canary and Batgirl Cassandra Cain are shown taking on a small army of ninjas, or, even better, a four-page sequence in which Cassandra tells the others a story about a past fight with Harley Quinn, one that evokes both 2002's DC First: Batgirl/Joker #1 and the 1993 film Batman: Mask of The Phantasm (Both on purpose, I presume).
This is all according to half-new time-travelling character from the future named Meridian, who is apparently Gotham Academy's grown-up Maps Mizoguchi. (Maps also tells Canary she can't bring Barbara, or she'll die and, if you're wondering why they don't just ask Wonder Woman to release Sin, Thompson has an answer for that, too: If Wondy refuses for any reason, Canary and her team will have lost the element of surprise necessary to invade a remote island full of formidable warriors.)
The review of Megadeath that recently ran at Collected Editions already effectively pointed out the problems with this set-up.
First, there's the fact that the time-traveler warning of peril to a hero's family (and being the driving force behind a new series) was so recently used in Green Arrow Vol. 1: Reunion (featuring Black Canary!).
And then there's the fact that we haven't seen or heard anything of Sin, a character introduced during Simone's original BOP series, in a while...2007, during the Tony Bedard-written Black Canary miniseries that essentially wrote the character off, if I am remembering correctly (And not only is that close to 20 years ago, it was on the other side of that weird gaping continuity gulf of the New 52, which makes it difficult to be confident which events prior to, say, Death Metal are actually canonical).
Those elements aside—and I didn't have any trouble putting them aside, given how well they end up setting up the story—it's damn good comics. This first six-issue arc, which fills the entirety of the first trade, scans a bit like a superhero comic/heist movie mash-up. There's the recruiting a team of misfit, mismatched specialists, the plotting and planning, the gathering materials and making preparations and then the heist itself which, naturally, has dramatic complications that challenge our heroes in unexpected ways.
Given that the plan involves sneaking onto Themyscira, one of those complications is, of course, Wonder Woman herself, and we get to see not only Barda try to go one-on-one with her (as is depicted on one of the covers), but also Cassandra, who surprisingly attacks her in a very Batmanly way, using trickery and a utility belt full of gadgets and weapons (I had, back when I still thought I might grow up to write comics myself, previously imagined a Cassandra/Wonder Woman fight that went quite differently than this, making this one an awful lot of fun to read).
Given that the plan involves sneaking onto Themyscira, one of those complications is, of course, Wonder Woman herself, and we get to see not only Barda try to go one-on-one with her (as is depicted on one of the covers), but also Cassandra, who surprisingly attacks her in a very Batmanly way, using trickery and a utility belt full of gadgets and weapons (I had, back when I still thought I might grow up to write comics myself, previously imagined a Cassandra/Wonder Woman fight that went quite differently than this, making this one an awful lot of fun to read).
For all the sneaking around and fighting, things eventually go pretty much as the heroes would want them to, with Wonder Woman ultimately taking the side of the Birds, Sin being rescued and the threat of her being possessed by the Fury of Greek myth Megaera adverted...sort of. (Don't read the later sections of this post if you don't want that plot point to be spoiled later.)
While the focus is obviously and appropriately on the ladies, several male allies also make notable appearances, giving the book a slightly more expansive feel, and further anchoring it in the DCU.
This obviously includes the previously mentioned Oliver Queen, who is tasked with attacking Wonder Woman in Washington, D.C. and holding her off as long as possible (And he fares about as well as you might expect a guy with a bow and some trick arrows to fare against Wonder Woman, in what turns out to be a great six-page action sequence).
And then there's John Constantine—who Romero actually draws to resemble Sting, as his creators Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben intended—who helps Canary procure some magical supplies for her mission.
And a brief surprise appearance by one of Harley's Suicide Squad colleagues, who proves integral to her plan of arriving on the island undetected. (Oh, and Grifter Cole Cash makes a brief appearance; I guess he and Zealot are an item? No cameo from Scott Free though; Barda gets recruited in the middle of a brawl, rather than at home.)
It's actually kind of hard to over praise Romero's work on this book. It's really that good.
If you look back at BOP history, some of the many artists to have drawn the books have had the unfortunate tendency to draw all of the characters the exact same, veritable clones of one another, distinguishable by their hair color and costumes (I'm thinking of one particular artist here, who had a couple of runs on the title).
If you look back at BOP history, some of the many artists to have drawn the books have had the unfortunate tendency to draw all of the characters the exact same, veritable clones of one another, distinguishable by their hair color and costumes (I'm thinking of one particular artist here, who had a couple of runs on the title).
Romero doesn't do that. The characters not only have a variety of body types—a task perhaps helped along by the fact that there is such a natural variety to the characters, from the giant Big Barda to the petite Cassandra Cain, who the former charmingly refers to as "Small Bat" throughout—but easily distinguishable designs, including their faces, expressions, postures and attitudes.
He also manages the neat trick of drawing the characters in a style that looks realistic, but without being staid and boring; his work still looks very drawn and very comic book-y. I was repeatedly reminded of the work of the great Javier Rodriguez throughout.
I've already mentioned the quality of the action scenes, something that modern American comics are usually, well, fairly trash at depicting, but are here quite strong, with actual image-driven storytelling and fight choreography, rather than the more standard drawing of heroes posing while their foes are drawn in freefall (We'll actually see a fight of that style in the next volume, drawn by different artists).
And Thompson certainly gives Romero a lot of fun stuff to draw, including some fun costume designs. I mean, these are some really fun designs to begin with, like Kirby's Barda (who appears in both her full armor as well as her bikini costume) and the Batman x Spider-Man design of the Cassandra Cain Batgirl that artist Damion Scott perfected (I really like how Romero draws this Batgirl's ears here, by the way, set as they are on the side of her head and extending at an angle, evoking the first appearance version of Batman). But there's also a very short sequence in which the Birds all adopt aquatic gear, and rather than generic matching scuba suits like the one Canary dons, they all get what look like personalized, toy-ready costumes of their own.
And Thompson certainly gives Romero a lot of fun stuff to draw, including some fun costume designs. I mean, these are some really fun designs to begin with, like Kirby's Barda (who appears in both her full armor as well as her bikini costume) and the Batman x Spider-Man design of the Cassandra Cain Batgirl that artist Damion Scott perfected (I really like how Romero draws this Batgirl's ears here, by the way, set as they are on the side of her head and extending at an angle, evoking the first appearance version of Batman). But there's also a very short sequence in which the Birds all adopt aquatic gear, and rather than generic matching scuba suits like the one Canary dons, they all get what look like personalized, toy-ready costumes of their own.
Unfortunately, Romero doesn't draw the whole story arc. The fill-in artist, Arist Deyn, comes in at a rather inconvenient time, drawing the fifth issue of a six-issue arc, and, worse, has a style that couldn't be more incongruous with that of Romero's.
Remember what I said about some Birds artists drawing the characters more or less identically? Well, that's what Deyn does. Not only do they all have the same slim body type (Barda is just a bit taller than the others), but they all have the exact same face, with a big forehead and large, glossy eyes that give them all a doll-like look.
A change in the art in the middle of an arc is always annoying, and Deyn's work, while fine on its own (Googling the artist later, I quite liked a lot of what I saw), it is incredibly jarring to read here (Deyn also handles the coloring on that particular issue, further distancing the imagery in this chapter from that of the rest of the story, which is colored by Jordie Bellaire; you probably can't tell from my scans from the book, though).
The denouement of the final issue, for which Romero returns to draw, pretty deftly moves the characters on to a new threat, one that manages to justify the team's continued existence....at least in some form. As Canary and Cassandra discuss the new threat that Meridian/Maps has shared with them, the last panel has Canary declaring "We're going to need a new team."
I was heartened to hear that. A small core team with Canary and Cassandra (and, as we'd find out in the next volume, Barda and Sin) and rotating guest characters is not only in keeping with earlier iterations of the book, and not only means we will get to see more characters get a story arc or so in the spotlight, but it also means I don't have to keep reading about Zealot (although she does make appearances in the next volume) or Harley Quinn, who is fine in this book, but is definitely a character I've had my fill of over the last decade or so.
Megadeath is pretty much a perfect trade paperback, telling one single, complete story in such a way that is perfectly acceptable to long-time fans of the team or individual characters while also proving accessible to newer readers (And I do hope Thompson brought some of the fans of her Marvel work to Birds of Prey for the first time). Simultaneously, as all good serial narratives should, it teases the next story in a way that is compelling enough to make one want to keep reading.
The good news for me then is, because I waited so incredibly long to actually sit down to read this first collection, the second one was already available, and I could read it immediately.
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It's easy to diagnose the problem—Leonardo Romero stops drawing interiors, retreating to covers only, and instead of the previous volume's two artists, this time we get six —but not necessarily the source, as it is all behind-the-scenes.
Obviously, comics work best when there is a solid, stable creative team working together throughout the run, and while it's become increasingly rare for any super-comic from any publisher to produce comics with a consistent writer/artist team for very long anymore—and I should note that that may be considered a good thing, if it means publishers and fans are no longer pressuring artists to work themselves to death to meet monthly deadlines—there are better, smarter ways to handle fill-ins (I think Mark Waid and Dan Mora's run on Batman/Superman: World's Finest did a pretty good job of this, with Waid crafting story arcs for Mora to draw, then writing a done-in-one single issue for a guest artist to draw and give Mora a break, before launching a new arc for Mora).
Anyway, whatever went on with Birds of Prey personnel behind the scenes, that's all on DC. All I can say, as a reader, is that it's disappointing and annoying to get a truly great creative team on (most) of a story arc, only for that team to change in the very next arc.
Romero's main replacement seems to be the top-credited Javier Pina, who draws the entirety of the first of this collection's seven issues, and then parts of three other issues.
I didn't personally care for Pina's work as much as I did Romero's (The downside of Romero's art on the first arc being so great? They set a very high bar for every one that follows him). There's nothing wrong with it, though.
It's very realistic, far more so than Romero's slightly more cartooned work, although Pina does have a habit of dropping photos into the panels as backgrounds, a practice that has always annoyed me. At least with Jordie Bellaire still on colors, the art is somewhat in keeping with the tone of most of the first volume. (I think Gavin Guidry, who draws the entirety of the final issue and portions of a few others, bears a style closer to Romero's, and might make for the best replacement of any of the artists whose work appears here.)
The title story arc at least has a premise that seems to incorporate the game of artist musical chairs (There are actually two story arcs in this volume, a two-part "Undercover Animals" and a five-part "Worlds Without End", although they blend into one another in such a way that they read as one story.)
The title story arc at least has a premise that seems to incorporate the game of artist musical chairs (There are actually two story arcs in this volume, a two-part "Undercover Animals" and a five-part "Worlds Without End", although they blend into one another in such a way that they read as one story.)
Canary and Meridian finally bring in Batgirl/Oracle Barbara Gordon and begin working their new case: A rogue time-traveler from the future is targeting the Birds, and Barbara in particular. They kinda sorta recruit Vixen, and with her help they set a trap for their mysterious antagonist, which leads to the very fun sequence in which the Birds act as scantily-clad models at a fashion show (At one point, Barda sheds her clothes to fight, so Kelly Thompson and Pina can repurpose a gag from the Matt Fraction/David Aja Hawkeye, where a classic image of the character's head is super-imposed over the art to censor nudity, looking a bit like a sticker applied to the page of the book).
During that fight—one notably not as strong as those in the first volume—a portal opens, and Barbara goes through it, the rest of the Birds going after her. What follows over the course of the next five issues is a sort of chase through different portals, each one resetting and "re-skinning" the characters and the pocket reality our heroines find themselves trapped in, their costumes and the setting changing dramatically, depending on which character enters the portal first and thus determining the style of the next "world."
So you can see how this scenario would be unusually compatible if one is working with a half-dozen different artists (Although I don't think the other artists involved necessarily all line neatly up, so that each one is given their own world to draw...if so, only one draws in such a style that it is too terribly dramatically distinguished from that of the others, but we'll get to that in a moment).
And so Black Canary, Big Barda, Vixen, the newly redesigned and empowered Sin, both Batgirls and a newcomer they meet in the pocket dimension find themselves being pursued by the monstrous, reality-altering villain who has been targeting them, from a nightmarish Gotham, to a more optimistic mid-century America, to a world of dinosaurs and a cartoon world, their costumes and/or appearances getting redesigned each time (The dinosaur world thus gives us a sort of Savage Land-ized version of the Birds, for example).
The most dramatic change comes in the penultimate chapter, when Sin tries to control the nature of the next world by thinking of cartoons when jumping through the portal. Here Thompson reunites with her original partner from Jem and The Holograms, EDILW favorite Sophie Campbell. Campbell draws the Birds as chibi versions of themselves, and they are adorable, especially Campbell's Cassandra.
(As fun as this chapter is, I do hope Campbell returns to the book at some point and draws it in her regular style; that's the style she draws the villain in during the four panels in which she appears, and, as Campbell has proven in her contributions to 2021's Batman Black and White #2 and Superman: Red and Blue #6, she can draw the hell out of DC superheroes).
Constantine, Zealot and a shirtless Cole Cash all return, the first two gathering with Merdian outside the mysterious portal that appeared at the fashion show and worrying about how to get the Birds out of it, and there's also a brief and unexpected appearance by Xanthe Zhou, from 2023's Lazarus Planet: Legends Reborn #1 (And there's an footnote pointing to her appearance with Cassandra in the 2023 Spirit World miniseries).
The story works, and certainly has plenty of fun moments in it, but, unlike that of the first volume, it doesn't seem as specific to the characters (despite a somewhat surprising link between the villain and a rather old Barbara Gordon foe), and the basic scenario is one that it's easy to imagine any other hero or team of heroes going through.
Once again, Thompson gives us a last-panel cliffhanger that, while as vague as can be, points to a next adventure, and left me wanting to find out what happens next.
Based on these first two volumes (and/or 13 issues), Thompson seems to have a great handle on the characters, and a pretty good idea how to keep them together as a team. She also manages to have a fairly light touch, with lots of organically funny moments that make the book truly fun to read.
Based on these first two volumes (and/or 13 issues), Thompson seems to have a great handle on the characters, and a pretty good idea how to keep them together as a team. She also manages to have a fairly light touch, with lots of organically funny moments that make the book truly fun to read.
Despite all of the chefs in the kitchen involved in this particular volume, this is still the best Birds of Prey comic we've gotten since Gail Simone was writing it, and among the better showcases for many of the characters featured (like Barda and Cassandra, for example).
I'm looking forward to volume 3...and hopefully many more volumes after that.
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Looking ahead at the five issues that have been published since those collected in Worlds Without End, it looks like the next few issues will introduce Grace Choi and Onyx to the mix, as well as another new artist: Sam Basri, who has drawn plenty of comics for DC, including female-starring ones like Harley Quinn, Power Girl and Voodoo.
Finally, there's this, which is more of a note than a complaint or nitpick.
She also gets a green shock of hair.
Now, I am totally not the right person to be bringing this up all, being a middle-aged white guy (and a bald one at that!), but I guess I will anyway, since I don't know if anyone else has yet: It was my understanding that giving Asian female characters colored streaks of hair was something that real Asian women found to be a tired, annoying stereotype in pop culture.
I first heard this in regard to 2021's Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings. I had read that Meng'er Zhang, who played Shang-Chi's little sister Xialing in the movie, had said that her character was originally intended to have a streak of red in her hair in the film, but that she had asked that the element of the character design be removed, as the Asian-girl-with-a-streak-of-colored-hair had become a stereotype. I'm now not sure where I read it; it might have been this Axios article, as I used to read that site regularly-ish for a while, or it might have just been a headline I had seen somewhere on social media.
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Here's something I did not care for at all:
As you can see in the Deyn-drawn panel above, Kelly Thompson has Black Canary quote a line from Watchmen to Megaera.
Can't we all just agree to leave Alan Moore alone...?
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When Sin finally merges with Megaera, the immediate aftermath of which is pictured above, she gets an instant, magical makeover, the evil goddesses' vine-like threads forming a green, triangular pattern over her torso, and giving her matching boots and other accessories.
She also gets a green shock of hair.
Now, I am totally not the right person to be bringing this up all, being a middle-aged white guy (and a bald one at that!), but I guess I will anyway, since I don't know if anyone else has yet: It was my understanding that giving Asian female characters colored streaks of hair was something that real Asian women found to be a tired, annoying stereotype in pop culture.
I first heard this in regard to 2021's Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings. I had read that Meng'er Zhang, who played Shang-Chi's little sister Xialing in the movie, had said that her character was originally intended to have a streak of red in her hair in the film, but that she had asked that the element of the character design be removed, as the Asian-girl-with-a-streak-of-colored-hair had become a stereotype. I'm now not sure where I read it; it might have been this Axios article, as I used to read that site regularly-ish for a while, or it might have just been a headline I had seen somewhere on social media.
At any rate, so that you don't have to take my word for it, here's the Teen Vogue article that apparently struck a chord with Zhang, and here's a HuffPost piece on the same subject that was published a few years previous to that.
I confess to having been completely ignorant of the phenomenon until I read about Zhang calling it out, even though I have seen at least a couple of the sources of the stereotype that were cited (Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Big Hero 6 and the various X-Men films, for example).
In the case of Sin, I am fairly certain none of the creators gave her the green hair to signify any particular character traits or comment on the typical behavior of Asian women but were instead only using the change as a visual signifier of her transformation, her green-colored hair being a change along the same lines of her wardrobe changing and her gaining new powers. Not unlike, say, Jason Blood or Jim Corrigan, both of whom similarly merged with powerful supernatural entities, having white streaks in their hair.
(And, for what it's worth, Sin is only one of four characters of Asian descent in that first year of the series, and she is the only one of them with a streak of color in her hair; Cassandra and Maps both have all-black hair, as does the non-binary Xanthe Zhou. On the other hand, future issues of the series will apparently feature Grace Choi, an Asian American character who has dyed red hair.)
Anyway, now that my attention has been brought to the stereotype, I can't help but notice it whenever I see it. Maybe if it's brought to the attention of the creators or DC, they will gradually phase it out. Or not. After all, as I said, the book already has several Asian female (and/or non-binary) characters, and they have a somewhat admirable variety of backgrounds, powers, personalities...and hair styles.
*You guys did read Nogzi Ukazu's original graphic novel Barda, the very first time the character starred in her own comic, last year though, right? If not, here's my review of it. If you're a Barda fan, you definitely want to read it. It's great.
**To be honest, just typing out the name "WildC.A.T.s" irritates me.
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