Birds of Prey #25 // Review
Barda and Batgirl are working out. At a quarry. The guys there are really appreciative of all the work that the two super-humans are doing for them. They’re getting something out of it as well: they’re getting a little bit of exercise and an opportunity to let off a little steam. And they’ve got a lot of that to work off given all that’s happened lately. It’s going to be a stressful 32 pages for a fun group of heroes in Birds of Prey #25. Writer Kelly Thompson is joined by artists Cliff Richards and Sami Basri in an issue colored by Adriano Lucas.
Barda and Batgirl join the rest of the team at a restaurant somewhere in Gotham. They’re joined by someone who none of them trusts: a villain named Inque. Inque is a shapeshifter who has done some pretty awful things. She has much to answer for in this respect, but she’s come across information that could aid the Birds of Prey in saving a whole lot of lives. The Birds know that they can’t trust her, but they also know that she might have some reason to be telling them the truth. Some they might have to believe her even if they don’t trust her. Lives ARE in danger.
Thompson firmly establishes the conflict early on in the issue. The specific dynamics of a group of here was working with someone who sell recently had been so vicious to them is actually kind of cool. So often it takes so long for a hero to find themselves working with a villain that they somehow managed to reform in some way. This is much more dangerous. This is much more of a volatile sort of a thing. And it's difficult to tell who can trust who. So it's a lot of fun getting into that.
The art styles between the artist at the beginning of the issue and the artist at the end of the issue are complementary enough that they actually work together really well. There's a lot of energy going on that feels like it's moving in a very dynamic direction. The tension continues to grow, even though a lot of the subtlety of human emotion isn't exactly shown in the artwork. It's all a matter of the mood and the atmosphere. And the artist do a really good job of delivering the intensity of the atmosphere in a way that amplify the drama.
Exaggerated, though it may be, the latest issue of Birds of Prey has more than enough energy around the edges to really pull into the reader and maintain a clever dynamic throughout the issue. There's a lot going on that ends up being very interesting. And it ends up, making its mark with a great degree of efficiency. There's a lot going on that seems to be developing a great deal of intention and intensity. Things have gotten very complicated over the course of the two year timeframe that this series has been running. And it's really cool that someone like Thompson is writing something as well as she is with this particular series.
