Birds of Prey #5 - Comic Review

 

The last issue of Birds of Prey was something special. The team fighting their way though Themyscira, having to go up against Wonder Woman in some of the best fights not just in the series, but that DC has done all year, and an art style that felt different from other books and was really growing on me. It became an easy 5 star issue, and one that was making me think that perhaps this series should take a spot on my top books of last year list. But issue five really undoes a lot of the good work of the last issue.

We pick up where things left off, with Megaera having taken over the island in her attempt to get hold of Sin, forcing the amazons under her control, leaving the Birds to have to try to save the day. Sadly, things kind of screech to a halt after that. For an issue about fighting a huge god monster and saving the day there's not a whole lot of action happening, and that that does feels less interesting than what we've had before. Plus, things get very dialogue heavy.

For me, a large part of why this issue just doesn't work as well is that the art team have changed. Up to now we've had Leonardo Romero and Jordie Bellaire drawing and colouring things, giving the book a old-school, slightly pulpy comic feel that was a style that I wasn't completely on board with to begin with, but had grown on me across the last four issues. The book had a look that made it stand out, and the stylised fight scenes worked so well. This issue, in contrast has Arist Deyn and Clayton Cowles on art and colours, and is so different to what we've had before that it's jarring as soon as you open the book.

The pulpy quality with the colour palate that used more muted colours, and went for the less traditional options is gone to make way for brightly coloured pages with hyper feminine, sexualised art that makes me think of early 2000's Michael Turner. Everyone in the book is super skinny, with very pointy faces, and sharp features. The style is almost the exact opposite to what the book had before, and I just don't understand why they'd go for someone so vastly different to do this issue. I also don't really like the hyper feminine, male-gaze like art that this issue has, so it was really off-putting to have it on a female team in a series that hadn't tried to make the characters look pretty or sexualised up to this point, but just presented them as strong women.

The change in art, along with things getting kind of slow as Sin has long conversations with Megaera, then Dinah has long conversations with Megaera, left me feeling kind of bored in places. The book wasn't nice to look at, and there was just too much going on for me to really feel invested. And 
I don't know if Megaera was supposed to be funny in scenes where she was using sarcasm and slang, but it felt like it was trying to be subversive and silly 'the ancient god is more hip than you thought, haha' and it just didn't do much for me.

Last issue was one of my favourite books of the year, but this one had me rethinking if I was wrong about that. If this is just a stand in for the art team for a single issue I'm hoping that the quality will start to improve again next month; however, if this is what the book is going to be going forward I can't see myself enjoying the series much anymore.

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