The team has formed and they’re ready for their first mission, assuming they survive the prep work.  Your Major Spoilers review of Birds of Prey #2 awaits!

BIRDS OF PREY #2

Writer: Kelly Thompson
Artist: Leonardo Romero
Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Ben Abernathy
Publisher: DC Comics
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: October 3rd, 2023

Previously on Birds of Prey: Black Canary has reformed the Birds of Prey as her daughter Sin has been taken to the home of The Amazons, there a presence waits for her, which in turn could bring about the island’s complete destruction.

THINGS GET MAGICAL

Birds of Prey #2 opens in Bhutan with Sin enjoying a nice campfire and a hot dog.  Things then shift to Black Canary and the team as she tries to explain what their first mission is.  Zealot has objections, but Dinah is able to bring her back on board.  The team goes over some of the logistics and Harley says she has an idea.  The team then splits up to take care of a few things before the mission.  Dinah meets up with John Constantine and follows him into The Seam, a sort of black magic marketplace.  Elsewhere Zealot discovers that Harley is following her.  They talk and then they too end up in The Seam.  Things go south for Black Canary and John and they end up in a fight with a group of golems.  The rest of the Birds of Prey arrive as it turns out that Batgirl’s and Big Barda’s errands took them to The Seam as well.  They do battle together and then prepare themselves for Harley’s big idea.

A BIT AIMLESS

The big problem with Birds of Prey #2 is that it sets itself up to be the “prep chapter”, the bit before the big mission or heist where the team has to overcome a bunch of obstacles, just to get the chance to take on the big thing, but there’s just not enough of it.  Most of this issue feels like its dedicated to discussing the moral issues around killing Amazons even though at no point was that ever mentioned as something that was part of the plan.  Then things focus primarily on Black Canary and when the fight scene comes at the end the rest of the team just happens to show up.  They try and explain it away why they all showed up, but it’s pretty unconvincing and feels just too convenient and honestly, a bit lazy.  That all being said, that’s really not what you come to a team-up book featuring Big Barda, Harley Quinn, and Black Canary for.  You come for the character interaction and in that category, this issue is on point.  Harley doesn’t feel too over the top, but still the type of irreverent you’d hope for, Big Barda’s lack of pop culture knowledge and social cues plays off of Harley well and Canary is great as the straight-laced one that is trying to keep it all together.  Cassandra Cain even gets a nice moment that’s a nice homage to her early depictions.  The one character that just feels out of place here is Zealot but time will tell on that one. This issue came off as if it was trying to accomplish two things: reinforce the dynamics between the characters and fill in the space between issues 1 and 3.  It managed to do one of those things successfully.

SOMEONE’S PLAYING WITH THE SETTINGS

Visually, Birds of Prey #2 is absolutely wonderful.  The retro stylings in both the linework and colors paired with the funky panel shapes and sequencing give this a fun look that feels like a mixture of homages to both 60s mod fashion and early James Bond opening sequences.  There was one issue though with the coloring and that was the saturation.  Parts of this book feel washed out.  I read this digitally so my first thought was that this was something to do with the screen I was reading on.  So I checked it out on a different device and it was the same.  It’s unclear if this was intentional or not, but either way, it made certain pages feel off compared to the rest of the issue.

BOTTOM LINE: NOT DESTINED TO BE A STANDOUT

Birds of Prey as a series has already received a good amount of buzz and there’s already signs that this will go on to be a good run.  This issue though, while functional in terms of what it does for the bigger story arc, feels weak.  Most of the characters get some good moments, but pacing issues and some convenient story beats pull this one down.  3 out of 5 stars.

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Birds of Prey #2

63%

63%

Just Gotta Get Through It

Birds of Prey #2 is fine when it’s just the teammates interacting with each other. But a lot of weirdness happens just to get the plot moving.

• Writing

  4
• Art

  9
• Coloring

  6
• User Ratings (0 Votes)
  0