Blowing Stuff Up Good
Hey, I had January 1st off from work. Yay for me, right? Well, on New Year’s Eve, I spent many fun-filled hours playing City of Heroes, I got to go to sleep late, I got to wake up late… and from that point on, I pretty much had the worst day off imaginable. Let’s just leave it at that — if I could have a day off to recover from my day off, that would be just awesome. Anyway, let’s hit a quick review.
Birds of Prey #113
Believe it or not, this is actually the first issue of this comic I’ve ever read. And I dug it, so I’ll be picking up more of them.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, it’s about a mostly covert team of superheroes organized by Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl now operating as a super-hacker called Oracle. The classic Birds of Prey team was just Oracle, operating behind the scenes, and Black Canary, doing all the fighting. The current team is a bit larger — Oracle is still the leader, with Huntress, Lady Blackhawk, and a somewhat crazed teenager named Misfit helping out.
This issue, the team is tracking a girl who wants desperately to be a major crime boss and is apparently planning on blowing up a truck bomb in Metropolis to do it. Huntress is riding the truck trying to talk the girl down, Lady Blackhawk is flying a plane in to try to blow it up a bit more safely from the air, Misfit is being over-exuberant and goofy, and Babs is trying to keep everything together. And the whole mission goes way, way bad. Like hundreds-of-people-dying bad. And when that many people die in Metropolis, Superman’s gonna want to have a word with the people involved.
Verdict: Thumbs up. Good grief, why didn’t I get on this comic years ago? The characterizations are fun, the action is great, and I love the way they get Oracle involved even while she’s just sitting in front of a bunch of computers. And Misfit is my new Favorite-Character-This-Month. I would love to see a Misfit miniseries. Anyone this funny needs a lot more guest appearances in comics.