Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey

Bought at Boocup, Kerry Parkside Mall, Pudong, Shanghai, China

Title: Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey
Date: 2019
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Scott Beatty, Scott Young, Greg Rucka, Anderson Gabrych
Artist: Yvel Guichet, Aaron Sowd, Phil Winslade, Rick Burchett, Pablo Raimondi, Walden Wong, Brian Stelfreeze, Al Barrionuevo, Bit
Colorist: Tom McCraw, Hi-Fi, Brad Anderson
Editor:Alewx Galer

This is a collection of reprints, featuring characters associated with the Birds of Prey (and in particular, characters featured in the movie version of Birds of Prey) in solo action.

Harley (from Detective Comics #831, published in 2007) takes on the new version of the Ventriloquist and Scarface, and more importantly takes on the Arkham Asylum parole board (with Bruce Wayne as one of the members deciding her fate).

Black Canary, guided by Oracle, teams up with Lois Lane to break up an illegal sweatshop and it's psionic-powered foreman (From Showcase '96 #3, published in 1996).

Huntress teams up with Nightwing to investigate the mafia murder of an undercover cop (from Nightwing/Huntress #2, published in 1998).

Renee Montoya deals with harassment from a previous case where the perpetrator walked (from Gotham Central #6, published in 2003).

Cassandra Cain faces off against her father, assassin David Cain, during the epic No Man's Land event (from  Batman #567, published in 1999).

Last up, Catwoman takes on Black Mask and Sylvia Sinclair, who have taken Selina's friend Holly and Selina's sister Maggie hostage (From Catwoman #16, published in 2003.

The opening Harley Quinn story and the Lance/Lane team-up were both good, especially the interaction between Lois and Dinah, which was loads of fun in spite of a pretty generic plot.

From there, the book seemed to run out of one-shot stories and just gave us pieces of longer storylines that felt unsatisfying, and in some cases, didn't even focus enough on the featured character. There was a lot more Nightwing than Huntress in the segment from their team-up, and the Gotham Central storyline had a lot of subplots going on, and not much in the way of develop or resolution for Renee Montoya.

In spite me not being a big fan of Cassandta Cain, her origin story from No Man's Land had visually powerful moments. But again, it's a piece of a massive long-term storyline.

The Catwoman story with Black Mask felt more complete than it really had the right to thanks to a lot of recapping in the narration.

Overall, the result of this collection of fragments is a collection that has some great individual moments and some beautiful artwork, but feels thrown together, and is not as effective as it could be at introducing readers to the lineup of characters for the Birds of Prey film.

Rating: 5/10

DC Nation Super Sampler: Beware The Batman #1

From Free Comic Book Day 2013.

Title: DC Nation Super Sampler: Beware The Batman #1
Issue: #1
Date: July, 2013
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Mitch Watson, Scott Beatty, J. Torres
Artist: Luciano Vecchio, Todd Nauck, Larry Stucker
Colorist: Heroic Age
Letterer: Wes Abbott, Phil Balsman
Cover: Dave Bullock
Editor: Alex Antone, Sarah Gaydos, Jeanine Schaefer, Tom Palmer Jr.

This is DC's all-ages offering for Free Comic Book Day 2013. The main story here is a fairly typical Batman tale, with the Batman taking on a gang led by a villain named Tobias Whale, who looks like Marvel's Kingpin and talks with the same random scattering of nautical terms as the Penguin in the 1966 Adam West Batman film.

The Batman takes on some thugs, they get the better of him for a brief time, then he uses his various skills and devices to turn the tables, with Alfred and the Bat-Sub(!) lending a hand to (literally) torpedo Whale's weapon-smuggling plot. At the end, a new threat is revealed, which turns out to be a new look for a familiar villain.

Luciano Vecchio gave this a very nice look, and the pacing and action were good. The dialogue could have been better, and there was nothing particularly groundbreaking plot-wise, but it served its purpose as a good introduction to Batman action and the Beware the Batman series.

The backup story was a Teen Titans Go! reprint featuring the team doing battle with a villain with a stage magician gimmick and real magical powers. The action was a bit confusing, and the villain's plot seemed a bit uninteresting. He could do all of this nifty stuff and chose to use it to rob a bank. Robin gets hit with a spell that makes him speak in Zatanna-speak (but without her powers; he just says everything backwards), and a fair amount of the story is just jokes around nobody being able to understand Robin. One interesting gimmick that I had never seen before: A maze and a connect-the-dots puzzle incorporated into the artwork. Clever.

There were a couple of other short backup features: A character profile of Cyclops, and a two-page introduction spread featuring the characters of Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld. I don't know much about this character, but I did like her origin as an introverted video game designer. Might have to give this version of Amethyst a look sometime.

Rating: 6/10