Sirens: Love Hurts #2 // Review
Dinah is shopping for wedding dresses with Dick and Babs. Dick and Babs are having a lot of fun with it, but Dinah feels miserable. Her fiancee’s parents have given her strict rules: noting strapless. Nothing shorter than tea length. Wonder with whether or not they make white fishnets is the least of Dinah’s worries, though. Dick and Babs are crime fighters and there are a number of women in the next room who are criminals...who she’s working with. Dinah is tangled in much more than wedding plans in Sirens: Love Hurts #2. Writer Tini Howard continues a fun, well-constructed romantic comedy crime thriller with artist Babs Tarr and color artist Miquel Muerto.
There’s a lead in the serial killer’s murders. That’s why Selina, Harley and Ivy are in the next room. That and Selina’s getting married too, so she’s shopping for a dress as well. The leads that they’ve got send them straight to Calendar Man. And since the murders seem to match his M.O., it would appear to be the case that they know exactly what to do to stop him. Of course...this is only the second issue of the series, so it couldn’t possibly be that easy, could it?
Howard is working with a very clever plot structure that fuses traditional romantic farce with street-level superhero crime drama. As this particular issue focusses-in on Dinah, Howard’s characterization of her comes across with striking clarity. Her distinctive sense of style and fashion are a kind of a fun addition to the edges of the mystery. It’s also fun seeing a pre-mayoral Poison Ivy taking charge of the investigation from her end amidst the instability of Harley, which in this case actually helps her crack a major clue in crime scene photos. Fun stuff.
Under Tarr’s pen, everyone on the page looks ridiculously, cartoonishly beautiful. That’s actually not a bad thing. It’s kind of refreshing in a superhero crime rama that also has a romantic comedy vibe about it. Tarr’s also really, really good at delivering romantic passion to the page. Intimate moments between Harley and Ivy and Catwoman and Batman end-up being tastefully brought to the page with a passionate tenderness that’s a great deal of fun. The manga-inspired tilts around the edges of the action ends-up being a bit distracting in places, but this is a remarkably warm issue visually. A good portion of that warmth is generated by Muerto’s colors. The whole things still feels distinctly like Gotham City...but it’s a bit more welcoming a Gotham City than often makes the page.
Howard’s distinct fusion of different genres fits well on the comic book page in a way that it wouldn’t in just about any other format. Tarr does such a good job of riffing on the basic dialogue and concepts in Howard’s script that the two fuse together in a way that writer and author rarely manage unless they’re actually the same person. It’s a deeply enjoyable second issue that suggests a great deal of potential for the rest of the series. Howard and Tarr are a great match.
