Birds of Prey has been around for quite a while.  I guess it takes its name from the term Bird, as in ‘pretty girl’ of Prey.  Meaning the team is Gotham chicks that fight crime as a team.  In the past this has been supervised by Barbara Gordon when she was still in the wheel chair.  It was nice to acknowledge this fact with the scene between Black Canary and her.

They opened the book with a good pace.  They introduced characters individually and let the audience get to know each one. The writer does have a weird fixation with flashback.  On one page alone there were three timelines.  It jumps from present, to two weeks ago, one week ago, four days ago, 15 minutes ago, then back to the present.  That is a lot to keep track of in 20 pages.

Art works okay, but is never outstanding.  And I think the artist needs to stop inking himself.  Some panels look like he dumped who bottles on it.  So dark and so thick.

There are some mysteries to follow, and the characters are interesting.  C   —  Don

I found this new Birds of Prey book to be fair to middling at best. There was nothing seriously wrong with it – the art is fine, characters are introduced well enough, etc., but it just didn’t grab me like so many other books have. As a long-time reader of Birds of Prey, from Chuck Dixon’s original minis all the way through Gail Simone’s run and up to the end of the “old” DCU, I don’t see anything here that quite matches anything I’ve seen before nor do I see a “bold new direction,” either of which might have hooked me more than this issue did. There are new characters (Starling – I guess it helps to have a bird-related name if you want on the team) and new adjustments made to old ones (Black Canary is wanted for a murder she didn’t commit, and Barbara Gordon is walking around now, which is at least noticed and commented on by other characters, even if no further details are revealed).

For a new reader, the introduction works well, but for me there is little here that I haven’t seen before.

C —- Ed