Birds of Prey #4

Title: Birds of Prey
Issue: 4
Date: February 2012
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Duane Swierczynski
Artist: Jesus Saiz
Colorist: June Chung
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
Editor: Bobbie Chase, Katie Kubert
Cover: David Finch, Richard Friend, Sonia Oback

Great opening as Canary tries to sacrifice herself to save innocent lives, and Sparrow comes up with an alternative plan in an awesome splash page shot. We jump forward and then flash back and get the conclusion of last issue's train battle in fast-paced recap form narrated by Sparrow, which includes just the right touch of humor.

I think I'm starting to "get" Sparrow. She's definitely the most entertaining character in this issue.

From there, Batgirl gets added to the team makes a guest appearance. Okay, that was a bit of a bait-and-switch, and there really isn't much explanation given for Barbara's arrival at this juncture except for the need for "extra muscle". This just seems like an excuse to put her on the cover.

Also, they decide to split up the party. That NEVER works! (Actually, they get away with it here; it's just an excuse to show the team members crawling around in ventilation shafts and such).

Weirdly, the bad guys' lair uses the exact same gimmick that the Court of Owls uses over in Batman: hidden spaces between the floors of buildings secretly built into the original design. It was so similar that I kept waiting to see if it's an actual crossover. If it isn't, then it's a pretty blatant failure at the brand editing level to be running essentially the same idea in two unrelated books (especially since this particular detail was pretty crucial to the plot in Batman). If this does turn out to be a crossover with Batman, then I'm all for it.

The infiltration appears to lead to a dead end at first, but of course things are not as they seem, and the ending cliffhanger is actually pretty clever.

This was the best issue so far in this series, in spite of some (hopefully; we'll see) minor flaws.

Rating: 7.5/10