It’s time for the “Kelly Thompson Section” of my reviews, as Ms. Thompson continued her Image series with Ms. McClaren, plus the second volume of her DC book came out. Let’s take a look!
Birds of Prey volume 2: Worlds Without End (January) by Kelly Thompson (writer), Javier Pina (artist), David López (artist), Jonathan Case (artist), Gavin Guidry (artist), Robbi Rodriguez (artist), Sophie Campbell (artist), Jordie Bellaire (colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer), and Jessica Berbey (collection editor). $19.99, 144 pgs, DC.
This continues to be a weird series, and it’s hard to really articulate anything really wrong about it, but it doesn’t feel exactly right, either. Like, I get that if you’re a super-person in the DCU or Marvel U., strange things are going to happen and you occasionally have to go along for the ride, but it seems like Barbara and the Birds aren’t being terribly proactive about things, they’re just kind of falling into dire things that feel … contrived, a bit? I mean, it’s a superhero book – of course things are contrived, but usually bad guys attack the good guys and the good guys have to defend themselves, or the good guys have an agenda and they try to enact that agenda. Babs is trying to help Mia figure out her time traveling, and it just so happens that she needs the expertise of Mari McCabe, who just so happens to have a problem that the Birds can help out with that may or may not have to do with their own problem, and it just so happens that the minute they clean that up, Babs gets sucked (sort of) through a portal and the other Birds go get her, which leads to a dimension-spanning adventure in which a woman is trying to stop her sister from … becoming God, basically? It feels kind of random (I know it’s not, as the book is plotted out, after all) and disjointed, and while individual bits are fun and very well done, it just feels all over the place. I trust Thompson, so I assume she has a grand plan, but so far, it’s just kind of scattered, and it’s hard to really get into it, at least for me (your mileage, as always, may vary). Thompson, as she usually does, really nails the personalities of the characters, and her dialogue is terrific (I really do not love the new, touchy-feely, friendly DCU John Constantine, but that’s not Thompson’s fault), so the book is interesting to read, and the two main plots certainly aren’t bad, just … kind of there. It feels the tiniest bit like an excuse for the Birds to fight dinosaurs and then rabbits (yep), and that’s a bit frustrating.
Leonardo Romero’s departure from the book means we get some cobbled-together issues, but the artists are good, so except for some tone shifts in the art, it’s pretty good. When they shift to different dimensions, we get different artists, so at least there’s some internal consistency, and Campbell, for one, has a lot of fun with the manga-fied dimension with the attack rabbits. The coloring remains very odd. Bellaire is excellent, of course, but I’m still very curious about some of her choices. The first trade looked occasionally “off-register,” which is a choice some colorists make (in Batman ’66 back in the day, it was done to make the book look like a relic from the 1960s), but I can’t quite figure it out here. The coloring seems to blur the line work a bit in the first two issues of this trade, and it’s clear it’s a choice, as in other parts of the book, the coloring does nothing to dampen the crispness of the lines. It’s an odd effect, and I don’t love it. I just wonder why it was done.
Still, this is a pretty good series so far. Yes, I think it could be better, but it’s fun to read, mainly because Thompson has such a good handle on the characters. I’ll see what’s what in the third trade!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Black Cloak #7-11 (August-January) by Kelly Thompson (writer), Meredith McClaren (artist/colorist), and Becca Carey (letterer). $19.95, 110 pgs, Image.
Five years have passed in Kiros, “the last city in the known world” (if this series continues, at some point Kelly has to address this, right?), and our hero, Phaedra Essex, is still paying for her role in burning the city in the first arc. She’s no longer a “black cloak,” but her former partner, Pax, seeks her out because he has a weird case that might involve a serial killer, and Essex is still a detective, so he intrigues her enough that she wants to investigate. As usual, it’s a good story, with things getting more and more bizarre and dangerous and sinister, and Thompson does her usual excellent job with the characters, as everyone (and there are quite a few characters) feel like real people with real lives and real problems. They disagree, they argue, but they know when they have to back each other up and get the job done. This is quasi-science fiction/fantasy, sure, but it’s a detective comic, and Thompson has shown that she’s quite good at writing those. As usual, McClaren’s astonishing artwork is beautiful, intricate, cute at times, majestic at others, and fully realized – Kiros really looks like a real place, with odd neighborhoods, weird alleys, exquisite mansions, and dark corners where danger lurks. I really hope Kelly can write this sucker for as long as she wants, because it’s just a keen comic. Nothing wrong with that!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
All right, those were quick and fun! I’d like to write more, of course, but as I noted, apparently there’s a word limit on posts these days. We can’t write long posts and we can’t upload images – so much fun! I hope y’all have a nice day!
Birds of Prey has been pretty solid overall. Shame Romero left the book so soon, his Barda was top notch.