4.0 out of 5 stars
Birds on the road, May 12, 2011
This review is from: Birds of Prey: The Battle Within (Paperback)
After some unrelated events in a Batman crossover the Birds of Prey have lost their base and are no longer welcome in Gotham City so they hit the road in their new custom jet.
The first half of the book follows Oracle, Black Canary and Huntress as they take on three superheroes who've crossed the line and started killing. The first Black Alice is a goth witch, then Harvest hunts killers in the midwest, finally Bronze Age heroine Thorn battles crime in Metropolis.
Then in the second half Huntress moves to take over the Gotham mobs while Black Canary shuts down a Singapore drug ring. Meanwhile Oracle is infected with a techno virus.
As usual Gail Simone delivers sharp dialogue and a mix of down-to-Earth spy stories with super heroics.
The art, mostly by Joe Bennett and Ed Benes is a step up from earlier volumes. There less of the stiff plastic faces and cheese cake, everyone looks a lot more human. Thorn gets a rather unfortunate stripper costume but that's about the worst of it.
The one thing I didn't like was the move towards more superhero stuff. I think the Birds of Prey work best when they're grounded with real-world threats. Giving them a plane with force fields and a cloaking device or having Oracle possessed by Brainiac turns the book into a mess. For example Oracle has been confined to a wheelchair ever since the Joker shot her. It's a realistic down to Earth problem. But once we're reminded that she's friend with half the superheroes on Earth we start asking obvious questions like why can't Raven/Zatanna/Dr Fate/whoever cure her magically. Or why can't Cyborg/Steel/Dr Midnight/whoever cure her with their technology? And why are we worried about a group of 12 martial artist brothers when the Birds have Superman on speed dial?
All this can be handwaved away as the price of a shared universe but I think it was a mistake to draw our attention to it.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Comic Series That Is Highly Underrated, September 15, 2010
This review is from: Birds of Prey: The Battle Within (Paperback)
I am a new reader of the Birds of Prey, only recently discovering this great series. I have read the entire series except for Old Friends; New Enemies, Oracle: The Cure and this one. Gail Simone has a feel for characterization I haven't seen since the heyday of Chris Claremont's run on the X-Men. Ed Benes' artwork is fantastic (see his work on Justice League) as always. I had to get this book in order to fill in the blanks with what's happening in the new series. Gail Simone has a superior feel for these characters, as she gives us THE Definitive version of Black Canary, Huntress and Oracle (Barbara Gordon-the Original Batgirl). I can guarantee that once you start this series, YOU WILL BE HOOKED!
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4.0 out of 5 stars
An extra dimension of personality, July 9, 2010
This review is from: Birds of Prey: The Battle Within (Paperback)
Team leader and computer whiz Barbara Gordon fights a fierce internal battle in this graphic novel by Gail Simone. In an effort to police their own heroic community, the Birds visit three towns where vigilantes appear to be exercising excessive force against criminal elements. Lori (Black Alice) is a young girl whose family has been devastated by drugs, and who possesses magical abilities that enable her to exact a terrible vengeance on the purveyors of such. The Birds attempt to show her the error of her ways, but find themselves seriously out-powered. The next vignette falls more into the horror vein; when Harvest is called by those desiring vengeance against murderers, she delivers in particularly brutal fashion. Can the Birds stop the killing, or will Harvest judge them guilty as well? Next stop is a visit to Rose Thorn, a woman struggling with a split personality. Thorn is using brutal violence against a local criminal organization, but hasn't yet killed. Can the Birds stop her before it's too late to redeem her? In a truly unexpected twist, a member of the team discovers she's being manipulated by Oracle's leadership, and walks off the job.
In the final adventure Black Canary and Wildcat go undercover to Singapore, where they hope to bamboozle a major drug trafficker, only to find themselves up against a dangerous group of assassins, the Twelve Brothers in Silk. Our heroes will need plenty of luck to get out of this one. Meanwhile, the Huntress pursues her own agenda, taking on her late father's mantle as mob boss, while Oracle falls victim to a dangerous infection, which she decides to confront directly. Fortunately, the Birds have lots of famous friends in their Rolodex; they'll need all the help they can get.
Quite a number of different artists contributed to this collection, none more notable than Ed Benes, who has an amazing talent for drawing beautiful, sexy women. Yes, he's been roundly criticized for overdoing the butt shots and the chest shots, and also because his female characters all tend to look alike, but I think this a natural consequence of his quest for perfection. Certainly Benes' cheesecake is better than Joe Bennett's, for example.
Finally a word about Gail Simone: characterization. Simone's plotting and action are about on par with longtime Birds' writer Chuck Dixon, but when it comes to casual interaction and dialogue, Simone can make us believe that we're seeing the adventures of real people and not just one-dimensional cutouts. If that's not really what you're looking for in comics, then this might not be your thing, but to my mind, it's the extra dimension of personality that elevates her work above standard fare.
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