Comic Reviews

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My word, never thought anyone would use this, but I only have to say that I just finished reading Justice League #11, and I have to say; the ending was rather freaking depressing.

Birds of Prey started out really strong, it did have a major lack of Oracle since Babs got back on her feet, and the new character Starling was in a strange way replacing Oracle's position yet, being on the field along with Black Canary, Katana, and Poison Ivy. It was a very awkward dynamic, it just seemed like another team of heroes but a strict "girls only" sign on their club house. Still, it being fresh, the writing was great, the suspense was crazy, every issue was intense coupled with beautiful art by Jesus Saiz. It remained to be my top series from the New 52, and the drastic changes don't seem to get in the way of writer Duane Sweirczyski from telling a great story. Not until they switched artists to Travel Foreman has a significantly grittier style of art than Saiz. Where Saiz has smooth clean lines and sharp contrast in shadows in his inks, Foreman seems to splash his inks on the paper with chicken scratch pens. Where Jesus has perfect proportions, Travel construed vision on the human body makes the Birds look deformed mutants.


Having trouble with why Travel Foreman's Batgirl looks so weird? At first you may say it's because her eye is too big, but that's not the real problem. Compare the drawing above with the one below.


Jesus Saiz's profile shot of Batgirl has a profile eye, Travel's eye is a front facing eye.








And so this brings us to issue #0, this is supposed to be an origin story of how Black Canary and Batgirl first meet. Now my first problem above all is that it takes place one year ago. Only one year. In Batgirl's series it states she was in a wheelchair for three years, which is ridiculous, but at any rate, in the first issue of Bird of Prey, Dinah says to Babs that "It's good to see you're walking again." If Dinah only knew Babs for one year then she had to have been in a wheel chair, that or Babs was in a wheelchair for a few months. How do you break a continuity in an already broken continuity?

Now Birds of Prey switched artists again, it seems like they plan to switch every 6 issues, I suppose this could either be a good thing or an annoying thing, if I get a good artist I won't want them to leave, but if they premier a bad artist I would only h e to wait another 6 issues before they switch again. In this case, I can't wait for the artist to switch again. Romano Molenaar takes Travel Foreman's place, where at least Travel's art had the birds in some interesting poses, Romano makes everyone look stiff. It also looks like he has a problem with faces and hair, the line art is messy, and the only time anyone looks good is when they're far away.


Yep… that's Amanda Waller.


C'mon... At least make it look like you're screaming. It looks like she's just looking up with her mouth open.

That's a canary cry.


There's no words to describe how bad this page is. Everyone looks stiff, Starling looks like a man with boobs, and it took me about a minute to realize that Starling was slapping Black Canary's ass.

The dialog is weak, it makes the story hard to understand but in the end it's really simple and overused. Two heroes get caught up and fight each other for a bit then join forces because they're on the same side all along. There's a scene where, new character, Starling has Batgirl at gunpoint, when she lowers her guard, Batgirl then disarms her then announces that she could have disarmed her at any time. Why would she announce it? Especially after Starling lowers her guard? It made Batgirl look like an asshole and an idiot. The writing in the previous issue was intense, everything felt realistic, but for some reason the writer seems to just not care about this issue at all.

Overall, from what Birds of Prey use to be to now, the score would decimate it, but since the New 52 started to now, I'd give Birds of Prey issue Ø, 1 star out of 5. At least the cover is nice.