By Gail Simone (writer), Guillem March (artist), Nei Ruffino (colors), Travis Lanham (letters)
The Story: Canary, Dove and Blackhawk work–rather unsuccessfully–to fight off Mortis, who has been hired by Calculator to find and destroy Oracle. Elsewhere, Barbara and (Bruce’s) Batman work to put a plan into motion…a plan that quickly begins to fall apart as Mortis’ powers may prove to be too much for the Birds to handle.
What’s Good: The first issue of this arc left me feeling a little iffy, but this one has pretty much laid all those doubts to rest. A great issue that balances its (very!) large cast extremely well, and delivers on both exposition and action, all while keeping the main plot moving forward at a steady pace. That is an incredible feat of authorial prowess. On top of everything else, Simone manages to end the issue with a genuine cliffhanger. Most comics try to end on a high note of course, but very rarely is the reader left with the feeling real, genuine danger that is captured here.
To harp on the writing a little further, I absolutely love Simone’s take on Batman. Even in his own book, Batman (the REAL one–Bruce Wayne’s Batman) has become very…talkative, and open, and cosmopolitan, and just generally about as far from the lone, brooding Dark Knight as he could possibly get. Although he’s still not quite the Batman I know and love, I have a feeling that Simone’s version of Bruce’s Bat is as close as I’m going to get to my favorite version of Batman in the foreseeable future.
What’s Not So Good: In and of itself, the art in this issue is decent enough–the visuals are strong, and the action scenes have a strong sense of motion and storytelling. Still, I am getting a little tired of the whole ‘musical artist’ game that’s been going on with this series. Simone has been rock solid on the story side of the house from the start; it would be nice to finally get the same sort of consistency on the visual side of things as well. Finding the right artist for the long haul would do wonders for this book, and really help move it to the next level.
Conclusion: This may be my single favorite issue of Birds of Prey to date. If the arc keeps going at this pace, we’re going to be in for one hell of a ride.
Grade: B
-Soldierhawk
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Conclusion