Drew Geraci

The second volume of Birds of Prey collects the series' last two one-shots ("Wolves" and "Batgirl"), and then the first six issues of the ongoing series-- so popular had been the one-shots, that DC decided they could sustain an ongoing. Old Friends, New Enemies is perhaps more consistent and settled than Black Canary/Oracle/Huntress, but also less striking and less fun: fewer highs and fewer lows.

The good news is that the stories here don't feel curtailed. In part, that's because Dixon can show more write every story across multiple issues if it's that complex, but even the one-shots are more curtailed, as though he's finally gotten to grips with the format. The first of those, "Wolves," runs two largely parallel stories: Dinah meets up with her ex-husband(!), while Barbara almost gets mugged, almost gets hit by a car, almost goes on a date, and almost gets mugged. The common theme between the two plots is men, who are "wolves" who devour women. I don't know that we needed to give Dinah a one-year marriage in college except to give this story some extra emotional investment, but her plot is not too great: it basically hits all the beats any TV show does when a cast member's former lover shows up "in trouble." (I think Babylon 5 did this plot every other week its first two seasons.)

The Barbara story is more interesting, though. I am pretty sure that this is the first time we've seen here outside of her headquarters (what is that place with the clock on it, anyway? no one in this book ever says? and does she live there?) in the Birds of Prey series, and she's a little angry-- but then she's having a bad day. She gets to go on a date, which is quite sweet, and gives us a facet of her we've been deprived of in the series thus far. Of course, it all goes south, and then we get to see Dinah fight off a group of robbers while in a wheelchair while in her home. It maybe pushes the bounds of credulity a little, but probably no more so than that Dinah could do all the things she does; anyone who used to be Batgirl has to be the best of the best, after all. I'm curious to see how often Birds of Prey will end up going to the wheelchair-bound-Barbara-in-danger well by the end of the series, but I liked it here; it's a big change from the stories in the first volume. Dick Giordano's art is usually good, but I've seen better from him: there's the occasional bad angle, and both male characters look creepy and plastic-faced.

"Batgirl" features Black Canary teamed up with... Batgirl!? Why does Barbara have longer hair when she's an physically-active crimefighter? How is that safe? Anyway, it's not real, as you might imagine, and the villain looks so ridiculous that you can't even blame her on the '90s; she's just terrible.

We then launch into the ongoing with a three-part story: "Long Time Gone"/"One of Those Days"/"Hounded." Like a lot of the stories in the first volume, this one feature hijinks in a Third-World country. Is that the Birds of Prey's thing? The plot (which confused me) ultimately isn't the point here, though: the extra space and assurance of future stories mean that Dixon starts working in a lot of nice little touches: Dinah's technophobia, Barbara's ex-fiancé, Robin hanging out with Oracle and helping, Barabara's Internet romance. It's things like this that keep me interested and invested; actually, I was surprised how much I liked the ex-fiancé.

(On the other hand, there's constant cutting to a subplot about the Air Force finding someone using their computer-- implied to be Oracle-- and a guy with a big head who I may have been supposed to recognize but no one ever explains who he was. Also someone has been spying on Dinah, and then you find out it was just Batman. Not cool, dude.)

"Return of the Ravens" sees Dinah randomly bump into a group of terrorists called the Ravens, who include Cheshire, who was at some point (not sure if that's before or after this) the mother of Green Arrow's ward Arsenal's child. It's faintly ridiculous-- there's a dinosaur involved-- but in the way that superhero comics can be ridiculous, and I liked the banter between the three villains. It does have the worst map of the United States that I've ever seen, though.

"Batgirl," the "Long Time Gone" trilogy, and "Return of the Ravens" are all drawn by Greg Land and Drew Geraci. This is my first experience reading a Greg Land comic, I think, though I'm well familiar with his work from his Internet infamy. This comparatively early stuff isn't as bad as what he does now, it seems. There are definitely times where the characters looked posed and cheesecakey, but there's worse out there, and it often results in very nice art.

The real shame about Old Friends, New Enemies is not the book itself, but the fact it collects issue #1-6 of the ongoing... and the next collection of Birds of Prey doesn't pick up until issue #56. That's fifty uncollected issues, and I bet something important happens in there. Boo on you, DC. Where's my Birds of Prey Omnibus?

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

DC Comics has been re-collecting the original Birds of Prey comics from the beginning. They're chunkier than the old collections, which means that Volume 1 of these new collections contained all the comics previously collected in Black Canary/Oracle/Huntress: Birds of Prey and some of those in Old Friends, New Enemies, while Volume 2 contains the balance of issues from Old Friends, plus a number of issues that have never show more been collected before at all, so that's were I'm starting in these new collections.

Birds of Prey as originally conceived is undeniably a fun concept: Black Canary and Oracle, both characters with somewhat rocky pasts, moving on with their lives and kicking butt. During this period of the book, they've never met in person (well, not since Barbara Gordon became Oracle); Oracle's identity is a secret from Dinah, and there's also an online relationship brewing between Barbara and the mysterious "Beeb." What we end up with here are a variety of exciting, action-based stories by Chuck Dixon (undeniably an expert at exciting, action-based stories, but Birds of Prey is probably him at his best) and Greg Land and Drew Geraci (who draw attractive women without being sleazy). I already reviewed the first couple stories in this book in my review of Old Friends, New Enemies, so here I'll focus on what was new to me, though suffice it to say that I found the story where Black Canary and the Ravens both end up on vacation in Minnesota and a dinosaur comes through a time portal to be immense fun.

First off, there's "S.I.M.O.N. Says Armageddon," focused entirely on the Ravens, who are kind of the evil Birds of Prey: Cheshire, Pistolera, Vicious, and Termina. The first two are preexisting characters; the latter two original to this book. This issue vaguely sets the stage for the Ravens encountering Black Canary in the next issue, but it's somewhat silly, and Nelson DeCastro's costumes for the Ravens are quite frankly terrible, as evidenced by the fact that when they reappear exactly one issue later, Greg Land has given each one a totally new and much better look.

The next new story is "The Villain," where Dinah has to protect a former dictator from assassins so that he can stand trial. It's a serviceable enough action piece, but the characterization here isn't quite interesting enough to make the point Dixon wants to make (the dictator might not be as bad a guy as Dinah thought) come across with any real meaning.

One of the book's real highlights is "On Wings," which tells a story of Barbara Gordon and her on-again off-again flame, Dick Grayson. This story is sweet-- or maybe bittersweet. Barbara and Dick go on what is essentially a date, with dinner and a night at the circus, and Dick really sweetly gives her the ability to fly again despite her paralysis on the circus trapezes. Their physical proximity and emotional intimacy intermix, but Barbara can't bring herself to go further; her damage from being shot by the Joker is more than just physical. She accuses Dick of pushing her, but I feel like she's sending off signals of wanting something more herself; it seems cruel to accept Dick's invitation when she knows he wants something she can never give. But if she didn't accept him, who would she have at all, given she keeps all her other friends and acquaintances even further away?

The last story here is a three-parter: "Girls Rules"/"The Wrong Guy"/"State of War," where an attempt by Dinah to extract a captive scientist ends up with her discovering a long-lost clone of Guy Gardner, former Green Lantern. I think this guy turned up in The Darkstars, but here he is for some reason. (Actually, the reason is that Chuck Dixon once wrote the inexplicable Guy Gardner ongoing.) Anyway, this story has its moments-- I liked the recurring gag about the Iron Brigade and the pompous way it would introduce itself, and here Barbara's communications with "Beeb" begin to heat up-- but at three issues, the thin premise outstays its welcome. And Guy isn't as funny as he should be, even if he's a fake Guy.

Overall, though, this is a fun, exciting set of adventures. Well-written attractive women on exciting adventures, and they're two of my favorite versions of my favorite characters in the whole DC universe. What else could I want?

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P.S. Can I just say that Birds of Prey, Volume 2 is a terrible title? There's one other DC book with that on the title page (Birds of Prey, Volume 2: Your Kiss Might Kill) and two others that go by that title on Amazon (Birds of Prey: Sensei & Student and Birds of Prey: The Death of Oracle). It's bad enough to have four books called "Birds of Prey, Volume 2," but to have the fourth one be the one with no clarifying subtitle seems an attempt at being deliberately obscure. show less

Mark Waid comes on to replace Grant Morrison and I think he does a fine job. His plots are a little less esoteric but no less interesting and we get a lot more character work.

Unsurprisingly, the stories here are still great. Perhaps surprising is how good Greg Land's art is. He takes a lot of heat these days for his stilted layouts, bad faces and swiped poses, but I like what he does in these issues. Good stuff.