Bird Hunters

Birds of Prey #122

Manhunter’s gonna be off the team for a bit — Visionary’s fear power messed her up pretty good mentally and emotionally. But Visionary’s Silicon Syndicate and their new ally, the Joker, stage an attack on police HQ to draw the Birds out of hiding. The bad guys manage to plant a tracker on Lady Blackhawk and figure out the team’s base of operations. Looks like they’ve tipped the cops off, figuring that the police don’t like superheroes so will blame them for all the trouble. Oracle sends the rest of the team away so maybe the cops and bad guys are really dumb and will just think that Lady B. just dropped off her jacket in the lobby. Barbara figures she can make the cops think it’s a bad call… oh, wait, that’s not a cop, that’s the green-haired guy who put her in that wheelchair…

Verdict: Thumbs up, even though the story relies on way too many people being way stupider than normal. I’m just digging the idea of Babs Gordon vs. the Joker next issue…

The Flash #244

Flash introduces his kids to the location where he got his superpowers, then the three of them take down a trio of villains while Flash experiences some mysterious cramps in his muscles. But there’s an emergency to attend to — someone’s running around in a scary bee suit and using toxic programmable killer bees to kill people. Looks like it might be an attempt to steal an alien-tech communicator, which is on the other side of the country, making Flash the obvious choice to collect it before the bee-man can. Unfortunately, Flash’s cramping muscles are becoming more of a problem, leaving him having seizures and unable to run above the speed of sound. Why? Looks like when Wally used his powers to fix his kids’ powers last issue, his superspeed somehow reverted back to his preteen days before his abilities matured. That makes absolutely no sense, but I guess it’s what we’re going to go with.

Anyway, Wally can outrun the bees, but not by much, so when he gets to the research facility where the communicator is being kept, he actually rents a deep-sea diving suit to keep the bees out. Unfortunately, the bee man is a bit too tough for him — the bee dude gets away clean, and Wally’s in really, really bad shape…

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s nice to see Wally running a lot, even if it’s at a lower speed. Only thing I’m worried about is whether DC’s trying to drop his speed down so they can have Barry Allen take over this book. I wouldn’t like that one bit.