Fight Night
Written By: Julie Benson, Shawna Benson
Art By: Roge Antonio, Allen Passalaqua, Deron Bennett
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: March 8, 2017
It's time to get into a whole new arc with our Birds of Prey now that they're all playing nice with one another and actually seem to consider each other friends. Yeah, it was a rough road to get here, but I'm hoping now that the team is actually a team that this is a series that I can finally get into. We've got our Birds and their new Oracle working hand in hand to stop crime in Gotham and for this issue we have ourselves a guest star in the form of Nightwing. So let's jump into this issue and see how Dick does back in Gotham since he's seeing DeFacer now and has had a thing with not only Batgirl in the past, but also Huntress. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
Our issue begins with Dick Grayson being led through the streets of Gotham by Oracle and Batgirl as he hunts down a villain from his city of Bludhaven known as Gemini. It seems that Gemini has gone and killed all her friends in Bludhaven and Dick has followed her back to his old city to find out why..... which is weird because from this it only seems like he wants an answer instead of dealing out some bad ass justice. Once Dick catches up with her though, he finds out that on top of her elongation powers, she now has the power to shape shift as well and gets the drop on our hero, forcing the Bird of Prey to act as backup. Yeah, they essentially get their asses kicked too, but they do manage to get the injured Nightwing out of there and Black Canary sends Gemini packing when she blows up Dick's motorcycle next to her. Throughout this fight, Gemini talked about her teacher Blackbird, who apparently told her to kill all her friends so she can ascend past her anchors in the world and reach new heights........... which actually seems to have worked, what with her new shape shifting powers, but because of Gemini being a blabbermouth, this fight came off really odd because of her giving up information that would lead our heroes to their next investigation.
After Dick is stitched up and we get past some weird talk about sexual tension which is more said than shown, we get into the mystery of what's going on with the new Oracle and what he's really about because Dick seems to be wary of him and so does the rest of the team during this issue because of how odd he's acting, but besides for him talking to himself about how he can do this and seeing him take a pill, we don't get much here. Once Oracle comes back online, he says that there's nothing on Blackbird on the net, but the best place to check is a meta-human fight club, where he hired out the Snake-Men when he was working with Fenice and that's where Black Canary comes out of nowhere saying how she has to go undercover to check it out and that she has to do it alone because she's the only meta-human among the team. It's very odd and comes out of nowhere and while it does make sense to a degree, it didn't seem setup in the rest of the issue to get us to this strange reaction.
In the end, we see Gemini make her way back to her teacher Blackbird, who is happy with the advancements she's made, but a little too happy because Blackbird steals Gemini's powers and leaves her as a simple human. While that's going on, Black Canary shows up at Roulette's fight club, where it doesn't appear that she's going undercover at all and since she was a world famous rock star previously, it's weird that no one recognizes her as she signs up for the next fight.
That's it for this issue of Batgirl and the Birds of Prey and while I found the inclusion of Nightwing interesting, it really only feels like he was brought on board to add to the drama since he's seeing DeFacer now and while it's briefly talked about, it doesn't really come off as any bit of contention that would lead to any drama in the first place. Yeah, the dialog and interactions are still a bit clunky in this book, especially since Gemini just told the heroes all about her teacher Blackbird and how Canary decided out of nowhere that she had to go undercover alone, but besides for all that, this isn't a terrible issue and I do look forward to see where it goes simply because I want to be a fan of this series. Thankfully, I really liked the art in this issue and I'm interested to see how the Birds work with Nightwing as this story progresses.
Bits and Pieces:
While things still seem a bit clunky in the storytelling of this series, I do have to say that I am interested to see how the guest star of this arc plays with our Birds team and that I really enjoyed the art in this issue.
6/10
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