Pick of the Brown Bag
October 3, 2023
by
Ray Tate
Hello, my name is Ray Tate. I am the creator, writer and host of the Pick of the Brown Bag. Simply put. This is a review blog about comic books. However, you'll get more than a thumbs up or thumbs down from me. I also delve into the history and the currency of the subjects. So dig into my look at Kelly Thompson's and Leonardo Romero's newest DC title Birds of Prey.
The story actually begins years ago with the arrival of Supergirl.
Action Comics #252 (1959)
Batgirl and Supergirl became best friends.
From Superman Family #171 (1975)
Nowadays, Batgirl and Supergirl don't really know each other. They're merely friendly acquaintances.
Batgirl Annual #1 (2017)
Barbara Gordon's eyes are blue. They're blue, baby. Blue.
The schism is largely due to the original Supergirl's death in The Crisis on Infinite Earths.
If ever you wanted proof that Supergirl is more powerful than Superman...there you go.
After the Crisis, a new universe Big Banged. Supergirl returned as a clone of Superman's Smallville sweetheart Lana Lang. No, no. That's honestly true. It's comic books.
Every version of Supergirl hence has been a variation on that clone, dubbed Matrix, created by John Byrne.
Matrix exemplifies Byrne's status as a world-building architect and the surprising longevity of comic book characters. You expect to learn Batman and Superman existed for about eighty-five years. It's surprising that a comparatively younger creation like Matrix made twenty.
Later, somebody decided...It had to be somebody on high...Screw it. Let's reintroduce Superman's cousin.
That still didn't stop constant reinvention.
Without the stability of Supergirl's character history or any written consistency, Batgirl's historical friendship with Supergirl fell by the wayside.
"We'll still be together in the animated series."
Without a Supergirl in her life, Batgirl instead established a friendship with the Black Canary, whom in the previous multiverse she didn't know at all. It's comic books.
Writer Chuck Dixon and artist Gary Frank brought the two crimefighters together about twenty years ago.
I'm not sure you can argue Dixon and Frank created the Birds of Prey. Dinah Lance alias the Black Canary existed since the 1940s.
Flash Comics #86 (1947)
Barbara Gordon alias Batgirl since the 1960s.
None the less, thanks to Dixon and future Birds of Prey scribe Gail Simone, Batgirl and the Canary have been inseparably bonded ever since.
Indeed, Batgirl and Black Canary are currently best friends, a friendship that survived multiple DC Universe reboots.
So what happens when an "unknown" party asks Dinah to reform the Birds of Prey without the 1960s Batgirl?
We're about to find out.
One of the more interesting things about Birds of Prey is how Thompson and Romero depict the weight of betrayal the Black Canary feels she's dishing out to Barbara.
How she desperately wants to inform Barbara but is forbidden to do so. That exclusion is somewhat but not completely explained. In any case, events force the Canary into a difficult place.
The creative team lift the weight somewhat when Dinah asks Cassandra Cain to join the new Birds of Prey.
It used to be very problematic for me to accept Cassandra Cain as an actual character. That's partly due to my own prejudice. I loathed all of the superfluous substitute Batgirls foisted into the comic book world. The Powers That Were at DC could have simply healed Barbara's spine. It's comic books.
Regardless of her Batgirl status, introducing Cassandra Cain as an illiterate mute doesn't really speak highly toward women. Pun not intended. So, I had even more reason to ignore her.
I won't reiterate my vitriol against the character. Click on the link and see the succinct.
My feelings toward Cassandra Cain began to thaw when Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner presented what she could be.
That this new version of Cassandra Cain didn't exist at the expense of Barbara's continued mobility also factored into my reconsideration of Cassandra Cain. I started to enjoy her team-up with the Spoiler under Barbara Gordon's new comic book Batgirls.
Cassandra Cain started to get some artistic respect. Before she most often looked like a leathery bat-shaped sex toy.
Artists such as Birds of Prey's Jordie Bellaire are starting to use contrasting colors against her "all-black" costume.
There was really no excuse for her looking like somebody's pen had leaked. After all, Cassandra Cain arrived after this gentlemen.
As you can see Romero follows suit with emphasis on shadow and light. Colorist Jordie Bellaire takes advantage of the casting to give the costume some welcome grays and blues.
I still prefer Connor's and Palmiotti's abandonment of the outfit, but at least the artists of today illustrate her better than those of yesterday. They simply made her look like an oil smudge.
Connor and Palmiotti in the Birds of Prey mini-series adhered to Cassandra Cain being mute, but thankfully eschewed the illiteracy. Thompson sticks with the literate but reticently vocal Cassandra Cain from Becky Cloonan's Batgirls.
And has no issue making fun of the taciturn bat.
Black Canary sends Cassie to recruit the muscle for the team.
Created by Jack Kirby, Big Barda is a New God from the planet Apokolips. She was one of Granny Goodness' Female Furies before siding and falling in love with Scott Free known as Mister Miracle.
Allow me to translate that paragraph for casual readers. One of the all time great creators of comic book worlds gave us Big Barda. Big Barda worked as a shock trooper for an evil flunky of a legendary Big Bad until siding and falling in love with an alien escape artist. She also always talked liked a stranger in a strange land. Kudos to Kelly Thompson for replicating her speech pattern and amusing patter. The "small bat" kills me.
If Big Barda seems familiar to you, but you don't really count yourself a DC fan, you may have encountered her on Batman Beyond in the ranks of the future Justice League.
Though you may think the red outfit isn't accurate. It is. Barda wears the ensemble when relaxing.
I'm very surprised the Canary included Zealot on the team.
Impressive, isn't she? I'm mainly surprised because I keep forgetting that Zealot is part of the DC universe.
Zealot is an alien and originally part of the Wild C.A.T.S. A supergroup once published by Image Comics. The team's co-creator Jim Lee moved to DC to become part of the reconstruction for DC's New 52: the universal reboot that restored Barbara Gordon's spine and subsequently fixed everything else that was wrong in a supposedly optimistic superhero rife cosmos. That's right. The whole snafu begins and ends with leaving Babs crippled by the Joker's bullet. Fix that and you fix everything.
The last member of the team Harley Quinn ironically needs the smallest introduction.
Harley Quinn created for Batman the Animated Series by Paul Dini, Bruce Timm and voice artist Arleen Sorkin as the Joker's henchwench. She snowballed into an icon of feminism.
Harley Quinn became so powerful a pop culture figure that she became part of the DCU and to date reformed to become part of the Batman Family. The battle she and Cassie fight in the flashback of Birds of Prey is in fact a case of oneupmanship rather than hero vs villain.
The first issue of Birds of Prey impresses through the gathering. Thompson did her homework. When Cassie recruits Barda, she's in the midst of fighting the goons of an Apokoliptan nemesis. She employs Canary's sonic scream in a judicious moment, and a surprising associate of the Batman family makes an appearance. Leonardo Romero in turns makes this an exciting collection. Hopefully the graphics I included whetted your appetite for a double page spread of Canary and Cassie battling Ninjas as well as the expertly choreographed four page comedic fight between Cassie and Harley.
Though we find out the whys of Birds of Prey's reformation throughout the premiere. We don't get the details of it all until the second issue.
Dinah and the Birds of Prey intend to rescue Cynthia Lance (Sin) from the island of Themyscira. That's Paradise Island for casual readers. The home of Wonder Woman and the Amazons.
How? We don't know. I also do not know why Cynthia Lance is on Themyscira in the first place, how she got there, why the Amazons took her prisoner, etc. In fact, I don't know how Dinah happens to have an adopted sister. Fortunately, I don't need to know. Thompson provides an example of their bond in a flashback.
I'm willing to gloss over a sudden, adopted sister. Superheroes adopt kid sidekicks throughout all of comic book history.
Two female superheroes of the past, the 1940s Black Cat and the 1950s Batwoman, followed suit. So, there's precedent even if I discount males such as Robin and Bucky.
The bond seems initially genuine enough. We can thank Thompson's strong dialogue skills and Romero's ability to depict subtle emotions and intimacy. Even Bellaire's odd color scheme enhances the mood. If Sin lives through all of this, maybe we'll see the bond grow stronger.
Birds of Prey essentially is a heist. I love a heist. The team intends to get in, steal Sin and get out with no muss or no fuss.
Of course, with any heist things are going to go wrong, and I'm impressed that the Canary knows this. It shows she lives in a universe where heist movies play out.
I'm further impressed that Kelly Thompson acknowledges the events going on in Wonder Woman and has the cheek to use Tom King's story as a plot point. Speaking of Wonder Woman, Black Canary's former colleague on the now disbanded Justice League...
Ah. Well, that's not a particularly good answer. I really can't believe Wonder Woman would say no to the Black Canary. Wonder Woman served as defense council for her former Nazi enemy Paula Von Gunther in a court of law. I think she would be happy to defend Sin. Likely succeeding as she did with Von Gunther.
That being said. There's a time travel implication that I'm willing to admit takes a big sledge hammer to reason.
If history says Black Canary didn't ask Wonder Woman, in the same way that history says she didn't team up with Batgirl for this heist, then so be it. She's stuck again. It's either follow the breadcrumbs left by the time traveler or create a paradox that destroys the multiverse. Damn butterflies.
The rest of issue two generates a split in the narrative. On the flip side of the preparation for the heist, all of the Birds of Prey seem to require something at a magical emporium. This bizarre twist threw me for a loop. I also find it a little too convenient that everybody knows about this place.
Still, if you want to create the illusion of permanency, this is the way to do it. Zealot in Gotham City. You can't get more DC than that.
The trip to the bazaar also allows Thompson to recreate a Legends of Tomorrow feeling.
Though Constantine was more involved in...er...one way or the other with Sarah Lance, the White Canary, the Black Canary and John Constantine interaction is still valid.
The convergence of Birds of Prey needless to say ends in another two page battle. This time against stylish golems.
I'm afraid my scanner wasn't up to the task of capturing the full scope of the art, which remains stunning throughout. The second issue of Birds of Prey is however a little more disjointed than I'd like to see. It's a good issue but not a great issue like the premiere. On the plus side, the team gel, and Sin gets a good introduction. I have no idea whether or not this character existed before now. On the minus side, the side trip isn't explained enough. However, we may learn about its importance in a future issue. As to the means in which the Birds intend to infiltrate the island, which I'll not spoil here, I'm ambivalent. It's at once a little silly and a little sensible.
