Birds of Prey #13 review

Oh man it feels good to be back! There’s been a long hiatus going on for me and while I was only reviewing this series I still felt like there was a burden being placed on me that was hard to stomach. I want to address it directly because it seems like those trying to make it work in the background are getting no answers. Basically, DC has stopped sending us advanced review copies. This makes our jobs as critics incredibly stressful because we have to wait till the day of release to read, reread and annotate the comic, then write, edit and format every single one of our reviews. Despite our reviews being an essential part of how many people interact with DC comics they’ve been incredibly uncooperative and are refusing to even explain why these advanced review copies are getting taken out of our hands. So what can we do? How can I keep forcing myself to work on these reviews and ensuring their high quality if I have to crank them out like I’m getting ready for a first date after months of dry spell depression? If you’re reading this and have any way of helping us please do!

Rant over. Back to our regularly scheduled program!

It was honestly a pleasure to follow Kelly Thompson’s latest Birds of Prey arc: Worlds Without End. I talked a while back about how I felt like Thompson’s writing style was much better suited for longer arcs and that the one or two shot stories I’ve witnessed felt seriously lacking. So happy to be proven right about this as Thompson delivers her best story arc yet with five fantastic parts!

One of my main problems with Thompson’s writing so far has been the consistently sarcastic Marvel-esque tone of her characters who basically exist to be punchline delivery machines with little to no emotional weight for their actions. I can see that Thompson has really worked on the tone of her writing though. The buildup to this final issue has had its fair share of laughs but not without characters taking the stakes and emotional beats of the story seriously. I particularly love the way that Cassandra has evolved throughout the entire series and has gone from little bat to little bat with a big heart. Cassandra taking the time to sit with Cela and reminisce about the past was genuinely touching. Vixen and Black Canary also get a moment to elevate each other while staying in line with their characters. The cast of characters are actually living within the pages in a way that’s just impossible when everything is coated with obnoxious layers of sarcasm.

With this arc being five issues long, Thompson takes the time to present the internal logic of the portals in a way that lets us stomach the information without feeling like I’m cramming for the Birds of Prey exam. And the internal logic holds really well! It allows for some fun alternative art styles, some tragic sister on sister crimes and the Birds of Prey are even able to show the reader more about themselves. The fact that the portals adopt the thoughts of the first person to run through them is great and I love that our heroines are able to work around this rule in a way that’s consistent to what we’ve learnt just by following this epic adventure!

The other side of the portal though… kind of lame. Feels very much like a waste of time honestly with little to no consequence and just setting up a cheap thrill/cliffhanger in the previous issue. It’s honestly crazy to me that we keep returning to these people just sitting around in the real world without anything to show for it. I learned nothing from these characters that I didn’t know already and even if there were some funny lines it was just so intensely underdeveloped that I kind of zapped it right out of my memory. This whole subplot could’ve been cut and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference. Instead we could’ve had more panels to explore the villain in a way that is more complex.

Because yeah, the villain is too one dimensional in my opinion. I wouldn’t mind that if I wasn’t shown that there could’ve been so much more! Why bring up the fact that the Birds of Prey murdered their mom if it means absolutely nothing to the villain by the end? I like how Cela gets moments to reflect on the craziness of working with her mom’s murderers but even then it’s a drop in the bucket. Maia is even worse though. She’s just evil and killing her sisters and we get no question about that or emotional exploration other than: Maia bad. Superhero comics can have these kinds of villains, of course. But why bother try to complicate things if you don’t want to deal with the mess?

Also, as usual, the internal monologue could use some work. Like it’s been very consistent with Black Canary’s character and she’s been talking like this the whole time but there’s something that’s just not clicking with me. There’s only one time I enjoyed it and it was when she repeats then reflects on the word “perhaps”. That actually feels consistent to her character while also being an internal monologue that makes sense to not say out loud. The way our minds circle around certain things and make us think about it intensely in a way that would be almost embarrassing to ponder out loud (but great for a reader to look at), THAT’S internal monologue at it’s best (in my opinion).

Gavin Guidry as an artist shapes the world beautifully and I’m especially in love with how dynamic the shapeshifting villain makes the action scenes look. The way that characters extend and grow and take up space as their bodies lengthen into snake like proportions is so cool! The art and writing really work together in this issue and you can see it most clearly when Maia is being attacked in the spirit world. The significance of having the soul sisters fight alongside the birds of prey is matched by the layering of having Vixen in the back, the soul sisters in between and Birds of Prey in front. You have a really resonant image of women fighting for each other, reaching through barriers (in this case a literal portal as a barrier to the soul sisters) and being able to have the righteous fight alongside those who have been wronged. The fact that Cassandra is announcing that the sisters would like a word is the cherry on top as she was the one to let Cela open up and see more than pain in her past, to remember the good times with her sisters and now those sisters are back to say their piece! An absolute slay!

My god, the colors by Jordie Bellaire are gorgeous! He is returning to a similar aesthetic in this issue where the spirit world is full of crisp yet soft colors that mesh into a background vibrant with vaporwave visuals. I love the dashes of white mixed into the green of Megaera’s seaweed self as they wrap themself around Maia. This white/green mixture is only perceivable when the comic brings you closer to the seaweed. So the closer you are to the action the more detailed and varied the colors become which makes you want to stop and admire and really take in the full impact of every fight! Small details that have a big effect!

Clayton Cowles absolutely killing it on the lettering! OMG the “BOOM” of Big Barda is devastating! The letters are chewed up and spiky and make that punch HURT. But then Barda comes back with a “KRAK” that literally splits the letters into layers and you just know that Maia felt that blow in waves. You can tell Cowles is giving his absolute all in this issue and I’m so here for it! There’s just so many different attacks that have unique lettering as well as multiple characters getting their own aesthetic for speech bubbles. Speech bubbles which, by the way, in this issue, are always exceptionally well placed. The legibility of this issue is smooth like butter without a single ounce of clutter.

I’m so happy to see this series thrive! The longer story arc really works with Thompson’s narrative style and her dialogue finally had heartfelt touches that were desperately needed. While the story could’ve shaved it’s b-plot to dive deeper into Maia’s ethical position (maybe having the time traveler on the other side of the portal who’s literally doing nothing figure out what the Birds of Prey did to get mixed into this nonsense?), I still really enjoyed reading and especially watching this adventure develop! Thompson has combined art and writing in powerfully purposeful ways with a whole roster of artists back to back to back. That’s no small feat, so kudos! Skip the mini two-parter setup that came out before and I bet you won’t be disappointed by these five issues!

Score: 7/10