Colourist: Adriano Lucas, Letterer: Clayton Cowles
With the previous arc over we catch up with the Birds as they take some downtime. Dinah and Sin are hard at work training, testing Sin's new powers and abilities, whilst Cass and Barda train in another way entirely, in video games. Unfortunately, the team's peace is shattered when Barbara gets some intel that indicates the cult who are after Sin and Megaera are coming to Gotham to capture her. Not wanting to risk civilians, Dinah and Sin head out to a remote cabin in the woods to set as trap for the cultists. Meanwhile, Cassandra and Barda get called away to help Constantine, who's transporting a demon inside himself in a magical plane, but who needs some help getting it where it belongs.
Birds of Prey has done a great job at balancing personal character moments with big, larger than life adventures that takes a team like the Birds to solve. This issue continues that, with things split pretty decently between the team just hanging out with each other and having fun, with the two missions that they get sent on. Even when they're on mission Thompson does a fantastic job at injecting a lot of character into everyone, and it really does feel like this team keeps doing stuff together because they're actually having fun being heroes and enjoy each other's company. It's a great tone that allows the book to take itself seriously, but never feel dour or grim, and it always ends up being a load of fun.
Juann Cabal and Adriano Lucas do a fantastic job on the art, and every character has a ton of great visual moments. Whether it's the small facial expressions that Barda is making in the background when she finds out that she's not going on the mission, or the way that Cass looks sad even through her mask when Barda breaks her game controller, these moments inject a lot of life into the book and make it an enjoyable read. The art team also throw a few background gags in there, like 'The Art of Ambush' book on the coffee table as ninja's are sneaking up on the heroes.
Perhaps the best moment from the art team is when Barda actually uses one of the frames around a panel to launch herself into an attack. Does this mean that Barda can break the fourth wall, is that one of her New God powers, or am I overthinking the whole thing? I don't know how that works, but it's brilliant to look at. I think a lot of people may have overlooked Birds of Prey for other big name teams, but this is easily one of the best team books on shelves right now.
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