The Birds of Prey have literally been caught with their pants down.
Centering wholly around a lingerie fashion show, Birds of Prey #8 feels a bit like an action-packed sitcom bottle episode: the circumstances don’t quite define the narrative, but the novelty nicely contains the events and tone – it is high energy, tongue-in-cheek, and its punch-up stands alone in the book’s larger time-travel mystery.
DC Comics
Kelly Thompson has streamlined this sort of whimsical badassery, highlighting bombastic versions of the BoP cast. While there have been emotional stakes percolating over the last seven issues, the book has delighted just as much in punch-ups and gags – it’s just as eager to watch Cassandra Cane and Big Barda play laser tag as it is to push its narrative forward.
A lot of the appeal of the book lies in its visuals, however – Birds of Prey has one of the most idiosyncratic looks of the Dawn of DC slate. Some of that lies in the series’ first artist, Leonardo Romero, whose pages were a cartooning dream, and in the seeming revolving cast now slated to illustrate the book (here wonderfully handled by Javier Pinta and David Lopez), but the most of the defining visual characteristics come from master colorist Jordie Bellaire.
DC Comics
Bellaire has created a supersaturated look for the book, equal parts naturalistic and neon; it’s a visual language that exaggerates and celebrates the instability of comic book printing’s past. Action sequences are made to look misaligned, as if printing plates have slipped between colors. Things are made gritty despite the smoothness of the pencils.
DC Comics
At one point, the Hawkeye approach to covering nudity is applied to Big Barda, a classic Silver Age depiction of her face pasted over the bits that woudn’t get past the now-defunct Comics Code; looking proudly Kirby-esque, that face is colored as a reprint of New Gods would appear, with bold, flat tones.
This colorful consistency, paired with Thompson’s distinctive narrative voice, coheres the series as a whole, creating a book unique to DC’s current lineup. Both Girl Boss and Cheesecake, Birds of Prey balances the badass with the hilarious, and it looks gorgeous while doing it.
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