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

Men of War #1

DC comics returns to the old tradition of war comics with this series from the "New 52".

Title: Men of War
Issue: 1
Date: November 2011
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Ivan Brandon, Jonathan Vankin
Penciler: Tom Derenick, Phil Winslade
Inker: Tom Derenick
Colorist: Matt Wilson, Thomas Chu
Letterer: Rob Leigh
Editor: Kate Stewart, Joey Cavalieri
Cover: Viktor Kalvachev

DC's new war comic features (Corporal at the start of the story, sergeant by the time we're done) Joseph Rock, grandson of the classic Sergeant Rock character. He spends about three pages trading military cliches with his commanding officers as they dance around the issue of how Rock is a good soldier, but keeps disobeying orders, but in a way that always seems to work out in the end. The brass sees leadership potential in Rock, but Rock is content as a grunt. After the discussion fails to reach any kind of meaningful conclusion, we head into the thick of the action.

And not just any action. This is warfare in the superheroic age. The actual superheroes function as artillery. They're destructive, come out of nowhere, are not all that accurately targeted, and cause a ton of collateral damage.

Rock gets himself a battlefield promotion (the hard way), but not a whole lot of plot actually happens.

But wait, there's more. When I bought this comic, I didn't notice the $3.99 price tag until I brought it up to the register. I was a bit surprised that a title that doesn't feature a "hot" character got the higher price point. Apparently we are paying the extra buck for a backup story.

So, the backup story is "Navy Seals: Human Shields". The main thing that struck me was how wordy the dialogue was. I just have a very hard time believing that real soldiers in combat talk this much. And to add to the wordiness we get little translations of military terminology like "rocket propelled grenade" (and here I was thinking they meant Dungeons & Dragons) and "rules of engagement".

The main characters are a Navy Seal odd couple. One of them is a pretty straightforward gung-ho marine type. The other guy is a former Peace Corps volunteer who realized that "If you want to do good, it helps to have an assault rifle." You know, like Gandhi and Jesus used to carry. It doesn't help that the writers don't actually include any real details of the character's Peace Corps service, which might have at least made for some interesting background.

The story itself is clearly trying to highlight the moral ambiguities of war with a scared-looking insurgent girl nervously clutching a Kalashnikov. Of course the real threat is a Bin-Laden looking dude who jumps out to ambush the seals just as they decline to shoot the girl. Stereotyping much?

When this book was originally advertised, there was a mention that the new Sergeant Rock would be a Blackwater-style mercenary, so I'm glad that (so far, at least) there was no sign of that particular plot element. I liked the idea of showing warfare in the age of the superhero, and the point-of-view of the grunt on the ground while a Superman-level character wreaks havoc was impressive.

Unfortunately, the backup story was absolutely horrible. I admire the real-life Navy Seals, but these guys just needed to shut up.

There are a lot of important stories to be told about our armed forces serving in the current wars. They need a comic that does a better job of representing them.

Rating: 5/10