Batgirl and the Birds of Prey: Rebirth #1

Second of the five recent comics I picked up at Newbury Comics in Braintree MA during my quick trip back to the US.

Title: Batgirl and the Birds of Prey: Rebirth
Issue: #1
Date: September, 2016
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Julie Benson, Shawna Benson
Artist: Claire Roe
Colorist: Allen Passalaqua
Letterer: Steve Wands
Editor: Dave Wielgosz, Chris Conroy
Cover:Yanick Paquette, Nathan Fairbairn

I had mixed feelings on the amount of time this issue devoted to origin-recapping. It's part of DC's "Rebirth", so it wasn't unexpected, and there were some insights that I thought were pretty good. But in the end, yet another retelling of the events of The Killing Joke felt unwelcome and I enjoyed this story more once I was past that part.

The story itself has Batgirl, having been operating for a while now in her return to the Batgirl identity (since the New 52), discovering that someone else has taken over the identity of Oracle, and is providing the information that Oracle used to deal in to the bad guys.

Black Canary gets recruited for the case, and Huntress soon returns, although for the moment she's not exactly acting as one of the good guys. There was also a lot of references to plot points that I wasn't familiar with as far as Huntress goes, but there was also enough direction to the main plot here that I didn't have a problem putting the backstory aside and just going with the flow.

The revelations at the end did a nice job of setting the stage for some big plot points to follow.

The book has a nice look to it, and it makes a good effort to incorporate a lot of the continuity and flavor that has been put into Batgirl over the last few years.

Rating: 6.5/10

Birds of Prey #2

Back to the New 52! Here's another of the issue #2's.

Title: Birds of Prey
Issue: 2
Date: December 2011
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Duane Swierczynski
Artist: Jesus Saiz
Colorist: Allen Passalaqua
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
Editor: Janelle Asselin
Cover: Jesus Saiz, Nei Ruffino

We open with Katana killing a bunch of guys with, well, her katana. She mentions that she's heading for Gotham City.

Meanwhile, Canary and Starling learn what the rest of us have suspected for the last few years: That TSA screening is essentially useless. Kaboom follows. Investigation follows that. Katana joins the team and they are attempting to track down a mystery compound found at the scene of the bombing. Except they call it a mystery "element".

Hey, DC, if you need a chemistry teacher on the writing staff, I'm available. Just sayin.

Things proceed pretty quickly to the brawl portion of the story. Nice looking fight scene, but it's just the girls taking down a bunch of jobbers in stealthsuits. Haven't had your vegetables today? How about this nice helping of squash?

And speaking of vegetables, here's the new surprise addition to the team, which would be shocking except for the fact that she was on the cover of the first issue. Welcome to the side of good, Poison Ivy.

This issue was fun in a relatively harmless way. There isn't much depth to the characters other than Canary. Sparrow is the goofy reckless loose cannon and Katana is the scary psycho who talks to her dead husband's spirit (inhabiting her sword!). The villains are generic. But character devel0pment can happen with time, and the story is providing a fun ride in the meantime.

Rating: 7/10