Robson Rocha (–2021)

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Vol. 4, Plain Sight, unfortunately leans into the things that didn't work for me in vol. 3. At the end of Girl of No Tomorrow, Cameron Chase was fired as the DEO director in National City, and her boss, Director Bones, takes direct control of the DEO's operations there. For reasons that I never really understood, Bones has some kind of vendetta against Supergirl. This means the setup of the first two volumes, where show more Supergirl works for the DEO is abandoned. Supergirl's adoptive parents are DEO agents; they quit. Who her parents are is scrubbed from the DEO records... somehow Bones can't figure this out, which doesn't really make any sense. What also doesn't make sense is that Kara continues to attend human high school despite the danger this puts both herself and her classmates in; for some reason, she also continues in her internship at Catco even though this means she spends much of her manufacturing anti-Supergirl content. Why does she need this internship so much?

This book does attempt to recapture the storytelling enginge set up in vol. 1 again, by including a subplot about Kara and Ben going—or not going—to nerd prom together, while a girl shows up who's a rival for Kara's affections. I felt, though, that this coordinated pretty awkwardly with the main plot of Supergirl continuing to battle bad guys sent by an increasingly and implausibly unhinged Director Bones. (Like, why would this guy be dumb enough to think, "oh someone from apokolips is definitely more trustworthy than supergirl"!?) Also it might have worked better if the rival character had ever appeared before! (Or maybe she did but was completely unmemorable? Either way, not well done.)

The book does have a standout issue, though; the penultimate one is a lot like the story in vol. 2 where Supergirl redeemed a villain, in that it's character-driven and mostly focuses on seeing Supergirl through another's eyes. In this case, though, it's not a villain, but a nonbinary kid who finds acceptance with Supergirl when they can't get it at home. Great art by Jamal Campbell, and I felt that we were tapping into what make Orlando's version of the character actually work for the first time in a long while. Too bad the rest of the book couldn't do this.

The last issue is very much an "oops we're being cancelled let's cram it all in and wrap it all up" one, unfortunately. Necessary from a storytelling perspective, I guess, but not interesting to read. Shame that this run started out strongly but fizzled out so badly. show less

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The second half of Steve Orlando's Supergirl run moves away from the strengths that characterized the first. One senses that this isn't his fault, that editorial is revamping the premise periodically because the book isn't selling the way that they hoped. I don't have any proof of this, but it doesn't make sense to me that a writer would set up a bunch of concepts in their first eleven issues clearly designed to create a show more "storytelling engine" and then largely ignore or abandon them in their final nine. And it's probably indicative that after the last issue by Orlando, this volume of Supergirl took a four-month break and came back with a totally new creative team and a premise that completely moved away from what Orlando set up here. Though it continued this run's issue numbering, the volume numbering of the trade paperbacks reset, so it was clearly conceptualized as totally distinct. (It doesn't sound appealing, so I am not going to read it, but my understanding is that it moves away from this run's YA vibe and also puts Supergirl on her own in outer space. As far as I know, recurring characters like Ben Rubel have never appeared again.)

The series's third volume, Girl of No Tomorrow, begins where the cliffhanger ending of volume two left off, with Cat Grant seemingly shooting Supergirl. This is quickly shown to be the actions of not Cat Grant but a shapeshifter, and the gun doesn't kill her; it makes her powers stronger but also causes them to fluctuate. To be honest, I didn't really get or enjoy this subplot at all. I think my-powers-are-out-of-control subplots are rarely interesting because they don't really map onto anything comprehensible and the fluctuations can feel very arbitrary and thus the hand of the writer is a bit too evident. (The exception, perhaps, is X-Men stories where they can serve as an allegory for puberty; see X2.) Lots of stuff seems to happen but not mean anything: Kara gets attacked by a bunch of different villains, including the Legion's Emerald Empress, which means each one attacks her, then goes away, repeat. There's no development. Kara's powers fluctuate at school, but the reactions to this don't ring true at all—why, when a character falls down a hole that spontaneously appears in a hallway floor is every one just like, "lol kara is such a nerd"?

There's also one of my least favorite superhero tropes: the "regular people" turn on the superhero. This feels like a a bad fit for the Supergirl aesthetic in general and a big swerve from the inspirational approach of the first two volumes in specific. On top of that, when you don't have POV characters who embody this approach, it's just randos in crowd scenes going, "yes i used to look up to you but now you suck!" which just feels arbitrary and random. (Cat Grant is the one actual character we get who doesn't like Supergirl, but I didn't follow her reasoning.)

The story doesn't so much end as stop (why all these bad guys were attacking Supergirl thinking she was a danger to the future is just not adequately explained), and there's a big status quo change at the end that doesn't pan out at all. Before that gets developed, though (which is more in the fourth volume), there's a one-issue story about Supergirl teaming up with the "New Super-Man" of China. This is fine but a bit short and facile. show less

I do not like that first page. I was like, oh no, fighting between Cat and Supergirl, not good. But, of course, then I got to the second page, and for about three quarters of the TPB I was like, 'phew, they're good'.

Someone is supercharging Supergirl, and generally trying to make her not trusted and the bad guy in National City. And it seems like it's very easy for them to do as well. So, she's trying to save people, not hurt them because of her out of control, and then bigger than ever show more powers, and at the same time get back their trust.

My favorite part of the book was when she went to see Super-Man and he introduced her to someone who could help her get control of her powers possibly by knowing her Qi. It was a very cool story. Of course, then the book went back to the real world and it was like, bummer... but still. She has an interesting story, and so far they're not just parroting the TV series, which is nice.

I received this book via Netgalley thanks to DC Entertainment. show less

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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 show more 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.

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