2018.003 Batgirl And The Birds Of Prey Vol 2: Source Code

I'm continuing to enjoy this book very much, but I've come upon a couple of realizations.  I don't know if the Bensons have ever written comics before.  This is my first experience with them.  I think they're going a decent job with the book, but I think the way they write, this book would be enjoyed more monthly.  I say that only because I feel like when they're telling a story that gets published over six months, reading it over six months makes it feel like it's going at the right speed.  Reading it in one fell swoop makes me feel like the story is rushed.  Six months may have passed in the real world, but in the story, maybe six days have passed.  Does that make sense?  I'd like to have seen this story as maybe the third arc of the book.  It feels like too much has happened too soon to me.

My only other gripe about this story is Huntress.  It feels like they don't know who she is.  She felt very empty.  Lacking personality.  Like, they could have had any character in that role and no one would have noticed a difference.  Again, I wonder if this is part of the issue I mentioned above.  They're trying to turn her from who she was in Grayson to who they want her to be here and it's too much, too quickly?  I don't know.

But don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the fuck out of this book.  I look forward to more.

Also, I'd be remiss not to mention the amazing variant covers collected at the back of the book by Yanick Paquette.  Amazing, amazing stuff.

Batgirl And The Birds Of Prey Vol 2: Source Code

Written by: Julie Benson, Shawna Benson

Illustrated by: Roge Antonio, Claire Roe, Breno Tamura, Yanick Paquette

DC Comics

077 Batgirl And The Birds Of Prey Vol 1: Who Is Oracle?

I loved this book.  Cover to cover.  I loved the story.  I loved the art.  I loved everything about it.  Rebirth Birds of Prey is so much better than New 52 Birds of Prey, I can't even tell you.  And I'm not quite sure, but reading this makes me think that New 52 Birds of Prey has been retconned out of existence.  It builds more on pre-Flashpoint BoP than anything else.  But it's not pre-Flashpoint.

Anyway, Batgirl and Black Canary are together again and they're trying to track down and figure out who usurped Batgirl's old Oracle identity.  It also brings into the mix The Huntress, fresh from her run in Grayson.  And not only is BoP building on the foundation laid down by the pre-Flashpoint BoP, the Huntress has her roots in the origin of the pre-Flashpoint Huntress.  It's a fun story to read, it's great watching the dynamic between all three main characters, and it's fucking awesome watching them burn up the streets on their motorcycles.  

I really, really, really, really can't recommend this book enough.  

Oh, and I forgot to mention this in my Justice League post, but Yannick Paquette has turned in some of the best covers of his career with this book.  He did the variant covers for JL, but the main covers for this book.  They're all amazingly beautiful, at least to me.

Batgirl And The Birds Of Prey Vol 1: Who Is Oracle?

Writer: Julie Benson, Shawna Benson

Artist: Claire Roe, Roge Antonio, Yannick Paquette

DC Comics

072 Justice League Vol 2: Outbreak

Even without Bryan Hitch drawing this book, it still has this great, cinematic feel to it.  He continues to write this book like it's a big, widescreen movie.  I love the whole feel of it.  This volume, although still very cinematic, has a lot of smaller moments.

This book collects two stories, which makes me happy.  I like that we still get occasional two-part stories.  There's a two-parter and a four-parter.  Not everything needs to be six issues.  The first story focuses heavily on Jessica Cruz, Earth's newest Green Lantern.  The League battles and defeats an alien invader, or so they think.  The creature managed to infect the League with fear.  They defeat the creature, but at the end, Jessica doesn't think the League is the place for her and leaves.

The second story is kind of silly to me.  The League gets hacked.  Hardcore hacked.  By a hacker that makes Oracle look like an amateur.  I know this is just a comic book, but this story was even a little too far fetched for me when we find out who the hacker turned out to be.  Read it and tell me if you agree.

Justice League Vol 2: Outbreak

Writer: Bryan Hitch

Artist: Neil Edwards, Jesus Merino, Matthew Clark, Tom Derenick, Daniel Henriques, Andy Owens, Sean Parsons, Trevor Scott

DC Comics

024 Nightwing Vol. 1: Better Than Batman

I read some back to back Grayson this weekend.  The last volume of Grayson followed by the first volume of Nightwing.  It's part of the DC Rebirth extravaganza.  The non-event where DC is trying desperately to fix the disaster they created called the New 52.  If you ask me, Dick Grayson wasn't broken, so they didn't really need to fix him.  I really enjoyed the Grayson series.  A lot.  But this puts him back into costume, back into the DC Universe proper where he belongs.  He's back in the black and blue version of the costume, which makes me happy.  The black and red one was a stupid move on DC's part to differentiate the New 52 version from the previous one.  Made no sense.  

This book was fun, but it was a little off.  It felt like DC mandated Dick Grayson back into costume before Tim Seeley was ready to do it because he still had Grayson stories loosely plotted out.  This felt like a rejiggered Grayson story, with some plot points changed to reflect that it's now a Nightwing story.  But it felt more like wrapping up loose ends than the end of Grayson did.  I can appreciate that.  What I was fearing is the story that took place in this volume was just the beginning of a long, drawn out 36 issue arc.  That would have bored me to tears.  Wrapping it up in six issues was perfect.

The Nightwing Rebirth issue is also represented here (as well as in the Grayson trade.)  That one issue did more in it's 20 pages than the whole previous trade paperback did.  It closed most of the loose ends from Grayson while laying out the groundwork for Nightwing.  I miss single issue stories that can fit so much in to 20 pages without ever feeling cramped.  I want more of those.

All in all, it's a good read and I'm looking forward to more.

Nightwing Vol. 1: Better Than Batman

Writer: Tim Seeley

Artist: Javier Fernandez, Yanick Paquette

DC Comics