BIRDS OF PREY #25 (New 52) - Zero Year

Previously...

Over in the pages of Batman, the titular hero's origins have been rewritten for the New 52.  One of the major moments of Batman's "Zero Year" is a city-wide blackout caused by The Riddler.  In November 2013, a number of DC comics tied into this event to show where characters like Clark Kent, Barry Allen, and Dinah Drake among others were six years ago.  What kind of characters were they during "Zero Year" and how did the events of that time shape the kind of heroes they would become?

Birds of Prey #25: "Sunrise" is a Zero Year tie-in set six years before the current events of the ongoing series, and extended to 28 pages at $3.99 instead of the usual 20 pages for $2.99.  The issue is written by Christy Marx, with art breakdowns by Scott McDaniel, pencils by Romano Molenaar and Daniel Sampere and Travis Moore, inks by Jonathan Glapion and Vicente Cifuentes, and colors by Chris Sotomayor.  Jorge Molina drew the cover... and what a horrible cover it is.  The idea is nice, showing a younger Dinah defending herself from a gang in what looks like a street-cycling prototype of her Black Canary costume.  But the colors drown out any sense of pop or dynamism about her costume.  Everything sort of washes and blends together.  And, my lord, what is wrong with her face?!!  That could be the ugliest depiction of a beautiful woman I've ever seen in comics!  Why didn't the editor laugh at this and pass it back demanding a redo?

...Okay, moving on...

Six years ago, Dinah Drake is teaching a martial arts class at her dojo in Gotham City.  There is an alter on the wall to a Sensei Desmond Lamar, who we'll meet later in the story.  Dinah's instruction is interrupted by a street gang running a protection racket.

Dinah quickly disarms and beats down the five thugs, showing her students exactly what they could accomplish if they heed her wisdom.  She sends the gang running, declaring that neither she nor her dojo will cower to criminals.

After class, she cleans the dojo, which is also her home, and later visits the grave of Sensei Desmond.  She is restless, at a crossroads in her life.  The dojo is failing as a business and she doesn't know what to do with her life.

We jump back even further into Dinah's past, to the moment when she first met Sensei Desmond.  Dinah had runaway from her foster home and scrounged food out of Sensei's dumpster when he found her and took her into his home.

He gives her a place to stay and a worldview that isn't full of anger and hatred toward other people.  Over time, she starts to pickup on the fighting lessons he teachers his students until she is old enough to be trained.

Sensei Desmond dies of brain cancer a few years later.  By that time, he was as much a father to Dinah as a teacher, and his death is devastating to her.

On the subway coming back from the cemetery, all the power goes out.  Dinah takes charge and helps get the commuters off the train and back to the street safely.

Hey, it's that woman again!  The old black lady, Miz Etie, who shared a table with Dinah back in issue #18, and then met Condor outside the bank in issue #22.  Who is this 99 year-old woman (although, I guess she'd be 93 in this issue), and why does everyone call her "Mother"?  And why is she so concerned with Dinah after all these years?

Elsewhere, the military is monitoring the blackout.  John Lynch, who will create Team 7 a year after these events, is told by a commander with what look like cybernetic parts on his head that the blackout was caused by an electromagnetic pulse set off by a terrorist.  The commander says someone named Ye tried to warn them of the EMP, and sends Lynch to Gotham to retrieve Ye.

Hang on, if it was an EMP how come the flashlights were working in the tunnels?  Wouldn't those be killed, too?

It's a blackout caused by an EMP--where's all the light coming from?  Dinah's running around the streets, saving Vietnamese grocers and stopping looters complaining about the lack of power or traffic.  But everything looks fine.  The lights are on!  I don't think Chris Sotomayor knew what he was coloring when he got these pages.  This shouldn't be more than a cosmetic mistake but it really bugs be because I have long complained about the editing on this series--without ever naming the editor(s).

Dinah finds someone in a nearby alley.  It's Ye, and he's been fatally wounded.  He passes the tracker with intel valuable intel for the military that was hardened against the EMP.  He tells her to find Lynch, but of course he dies before telling her who Lynch is or why she should do that.

Then the ninjas show up.  They killed Ye and they want the tracker.  They chase Dinah who employs her mastery of the various martial arts forms that Sensei Desmond taught her to defend herself, even taking a number of ninjas out so that the leader demands more forces be unleashed on her.

Back in the alley, Lynch's team finds the dead Ye and one of the living ninjas, who kills himself rather than answer their questions.  Lynch starts tracking Dinah.

The ninjas chase her into a blind alley.  The leader gives her the chance to give up the package and walk away.  She calls his bluff and starts dropping his minions.

Eventually, their numbers overwhelm her.  Just before she is killed, Lynch arrives and the commandos kill all the ninjas except for the leader, who escapes.

How did she know he's Lynch?  He's just the first face she sees that isn't covered by a mask so she assumes he's the one random person a dead guy asked her to find?  God, why is she always so trusting of everybody?!!

Lynch drives Dinah back to her home while filling her in on some of the details, including the involvement of EMP-causing device called a Marx generator.

Wait, what--what, no, no... what the--WHAT?!!  Seriously, Christy Marx you're going to name a device in the comic after yourself?  REALLY?!!  MY GOD THAT IS SO ARROGANT AND STUPID AND--

Oh.  I just looked it up.  Marx generators are a real thing.

Never mind then.

Lynch pulls up in front of Dinah's dojo which is burning to the ground.  She's lost her home, her place of business, her only tie to the man she loved like a father.  She's utterly vulnerable, and that makes her an appealing target for Lynch.

Of course, Lynch isn't picking her up for a date; he offers her a job as a special ops agent, which will eventually lead to her inclusion on Team 7.

The Characters

Dinah is the only member of Birds of Prey featured in this issue and we really learn a lot about her.  Why it took twenty-five issues to get to this point, I don't know, but whatever.

Dinah was an orphan, abandoned by her mother and never knew her father.  She ran away from an unsupportive foster home and was living on the streets eating garbage for a while.  The timeline isn't specific, but based on the art, I would guess she was between the ages of nine and twelve when she first meets Sensei Desmond.  She's clearly a few years older when he starts training her in the styles of Jeet Kune Do, Wing Chun, Jiu-Jitsu, wrestling, boxing and Karate.  We also see him tutoring her in what appears to be book-style homework.  I don't know if she enrolled in school or had any formal education or if that was all Sensei.

Some years pass by the time he dies, and I'm guessing she's about 19 or 20 when this story takes place.  That would make her 25 or 26 in the current continuity.  That corrects an earlier problem I had with her continuity.  I thought to become the kind of high-tier special forces operative she was in Team 7 would require many years of training, which by my calculations would have put her in her mid-30s in the present.  What Marx has done with this issue is establish her extensive physical training over years in her childhood, so that even with only a year of military training under Lynch, he would choose her for his select team.

Impressions/Questions

There are problems with this story.  The art is mostly fine; the three different pencilers don't get in each others way, but the colors during the blackout really, really take me out of the story.  There's also the superficiality of the ninjas as antagonists in the third act.  There's nothing special about them and Lynch even blows off the answer so we don't really care.

Then there's the cameo by Etie, or "Mother".  It's kind of a nice nod to Marx's current story, but it's also a bit distracting because nothing comes of it later--unless she's the one who burned down the dojo!

Maybe the biggest problem, though, is how conveniently things come together in the end.  I know Marx was bogged down by the crappy continuity she inherited, but the union of Dinah and Lynch at the end is too fast, too simple, too contrived.

On the other hand, there is a lot to like about this issue.  I feel like I finally know who Dinah Drake is in the New 52.  She is not the Dinah Drake, or the Dinah Laurel Lance of pre-Flashpoint DC; she's someone else.  She's an orphan without family connections who was adopted by a loving sensei that taught her various fighting forms.  Then she was "adopted" by a harsh military man who taught her how to fight and kill for the government.  Then she fell in love with and married a man who helped her control her meta-human power.

Actually, that last one doesn't mesh.  She only used her power once before Kurt Lance supposedly died!  That whole bit of her history was screwed up by the end of Team 7.

This was definitely one of the best issues of the series, but considering I have never given a chapter from this series an A, that isn't saying much.  And I still won't.  This isn't the best, but it's pretty good.

Grade: B+

BIRDS OF PREY #24 (New 52)

Previously...

Black Canary and Condor were captured by Condor's former teammates--Hydra, I mean Basilisk terrorists!  Regulus, the leader of Basilisk, has mysterious plans for Canary.

Birds of Prey #24: "Together Again" is written by Christy Marx, with art breakdowns by Scott McDaniel, pencils by Romano Molenaar and Robson Rocha, inks by Jonathan Glapion and Oclair Albert, and colors by Chris Sotomayor.  Jorge Molina provided the cover art depicting Dinah's agonizing moment of discovery that her husband is alive.

We pick up with Batgirl and Strix scrambling to the roof of the Birds' hideout only to watch their comrades whisked away in an air transport.  They have no idea where Basilisk is taking Black Canary and Condor, which doesn't matter because even if they did they have no means to follow them.

Luckily, there's a storytelling thing called deus ex machina that Marx utilizes effectively albeit overtly right here.

A mysterious stranger in a suit and shades shows up on the roof at that exact moment and offers his help.  Basically, he tells Batgirl, "I know where your friends are going...but I can't tell you how. And I'll help you get them back...but I can't tell you why."  Batgirl is justifiably suspicious, but desperate enough that she trusts this guy who she vaguely remembers as a former Gotham detective that worked for her father once.

Yes, this mysterious "benefactor".  That's a convenient enough cover that never needs to be explored if this plot hole is ignored.  Okay, I'm going to assume that the benefactor is Amanda Waller.  Why?  Well, last issue we saw that Regulus has Kurt Lance's body preserved in a stasis pod, but way back in issue #0, we saw that Amanda Waller was in possession of Lance's stasis pod.  That means, at some point in the last year Basilisk acquired Lance, and I'm betting that Waller wants him back.

We return to Basilisk's fortress in the Andes Mountains, where Dinah comes face to face with the husband she thought she killed five years ago.

Then, after a pretty lackluster kick, Dinah discovers the truth about Regulus!

That's right, Regulus is Dean Higgins...sort of.  Dean Higgins, the member of Team 7 that nobody cared about and that the writer(s) as often forgot about.  The teammate so useless and devoid of character, that he didn't even get a death scene in the final issue.  They just stopped drawing him on the pages!

Well, Marx decides to pounce on that continuity gaffe, by explaining that when Dinah used her sonic scream to level Kaizen Gamorra's palace, Higgins, the Kaizen, and some creepy psychic children all fused into one being: Regulus.

Okay, whatever.  It's strange, it's not clean, but it works and it creates a powerful villain with a genuine tie to Black Canary's history and a personal beef against her and her former teammates.  I'll take the consolation prize over nothing.

Meanwhile, Condor wakes up in another part of the compound.  Like Dinah, he cannot access his telekinetic powers.  Tsiklon leads him around the place where he meets up with Hammerdown and Whipcrack and discovers that Regulus has been kidnapping civilians for some reason.  I guess Condor is like a prisoner but they're not worried about him fighting back or trying to escape.  It's like they've brought him back into the fold on a probationary basis.

Batgirl and Strix parachute down to Fortress Basilisk with a crew of paramilitary soldiers waiting to back them up at the base of the mountain whenever Batgirl calls for help.  The ladies take out the fort's surveillance equipment and then go to work on the guards when they discover the captives Regulus had been collecting.

Back in the, um, stasis room, Regulus tells Dinah that he has learned to control Kurt's brain functions, which means he can control Kurt's powers to augment or dampen superpowers.  That's why Dinah and Condor can't access their abilities.

Regulus' plan revealed.  He can shut down all of the superpowers in the world, making everyone a base-line human like he is was.  But he can also activate them again at his whim, which gives him a lot of power to blackmail or auction his control of the superpowers.

Elsewhere, Condor is mouthing off to his former teammates when he sees Batgirl and Strix.  He leads the Basilisk crew right to his new friends.

Is this another betrayal?  Or is Condor going to help Batgirl and Strix fight the others and save Canary...which, I guess, would be another betrayal...?

The Characters

I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by Black Canary in this issue.  Upon seeing her husband relatively alive in a stasis pod, she didn't freak out and start crying.  She didn't try to get him out either, but I'll ignore that for now.  Instead, she was active and tried to fight Regulus.  At this point, it's pretty one-sided, but at least she's taking the fight directly and trying to stop him.

Condor clearly hasn't defected back to Basilisk.  He's playing them so he can help Dinah and Batgirl, though I don't know why Tsiklon gives him the chance to betray them.  I guess everyone in this universe trusts obvious enemies or total strangers with hidden agendas.

Impressions/Questions

I was happy that Dinah's crew were finally getting their own distinct villains, and this issue further solidifies Regulus as a worthy nemesis.  He's not the most nuanced or interesting antagonist (let's be real, he's as cookie-cutter as any '90s hero or villain), but at least he has a layered backstory that is intimately tied to characters like Black Canary and Amanda Waller.  I wouldn't miss him if he was killed, but I kind of hope he survives this encounter to plague the Birds of Prey in the future.

Since the end of the so-called crossover with Talon, this series has picked up a lot of steam (for a series as bad as it was), and Christy Marx is starting to win me over that the book could be salvaged and taken into new and interesting directions.

Of course, next issue is another shameless tie-in to a Batman event.  Oy...

Grade: B+

BIRDS OF PREY #23 (New 52)

Previously...

Not long after taking refuge in Condor's workshop, the Birds are attacked by a group of super criminal terrorists from Basilisk.  Piling one betrayal on another, the attackers reveal that Condor was once a member of their group.

Birds of Prey #23: "Dreams That Never Were" is written by Christy Marx, with art breakdowns by Scott McDaniel, pencils by Romano Molenaar, inks by Jonathan Glapion, and colors by Chris Sotomayor.  Ricken provides yet another misleading cover, depicting a battle we don't find within the pages of this issue.

Before going on, I must say this issue is, by a wide margin, the most pink comic I've ever read.

We pick up with the Basilisk team standing over the unconscious Birds.  The young woman named Uplink is using her telepathic powers to keep Black Canary's team incapacitated, but there seems to be even more than that.  While subdued, each one of the Birds begins to dream of their deepest desires, much like the effect of the Black Mercy plants that Mongul is famous for utilizing.  This effect requires a lot of pink energy.  Seriously.

The team leader, Tsiklon, who is described as sounding Russian, which makes sense given the spelling of her name, prevents the brutish Hammerdown and Whipcrack from killing Batgirl and Strix.  Then she lingers over her ex-lover, Condor, and wonders what he's dreaming of.

(It ain't you, lady!)

Yeah, Condor's deepest desires are cooking for Dinah, massaging her feet, and taking her to bed.

Is she dreaming of him?

Ohh... sucks for Condor; she's dreaming about the time she used her power to destroy Gamorra's palace and maybe possibly buried her husband, Kurt Lance, under the rubble.

What a remarkable comeback!  Dream-Kurt absolves her of the needless guilt over his death, allowing Dinah to redirect her lust on the Condor.  Who still lied to her about being a terrorist, but whatever.

Batgirl dreams of dinner with her family.

In this fantasy, she hasn't killed her brother because he's not a psychopath, and her father, Commissioner Gordon, seems healthy and happy for his kids.

Around this time, the transport arrives to pick up Black Canary and Condor.  Regulus tells Tsiklon that Canary is the real target, which is weird, because I thought the point was to retrieve his wayward enforcer.  What ever could the head of Basilisk want with Black Canary (other than revenge for her integral role in the destruction of the nation of Gamorra and everyone living there)?

Strix dreams of her childhood.

I guess Strix doesn't have happy dreams or memories, because even in this state she cannot escape the trauma that created her.  It's enough to break Uplink's control, resulting in a psychic feedback that knocks Uplink out.

Black Canary and Condor have been loaded onto the transport in capsules to keep them unconscious.  Batgirl and Strix recover and fight Whipcrack and Hammerdown.

Strix's sword does little against Hammerdown, who batters her into a wall.

Their primary objective completed, Tsiklon gets her soldiers out of there and the transport takes off, carrying Dinah and Condor to Basilisk's South American base.  Batgirl and Strix can only stand and watch helplessly, wondering what manner of convenient storytelling will help them find their friends next issue.

The issue ends with Dinah crawling out of her capsule, realizing she cannot use her sonic scream.  But the only thing--the only person--who could dampen her power was her husband.  Dinah wakes to find Kurt's body in a stasis pod, and the evil Regulus looming over them both.

The Characters

The dream sequences are a nice, convenient way to show each of the Birds' personal motivations and desires.  Condor, in spite of his criminal past, seems to genuinely love Dinah and wants to spend his life with her.

Dinah still feels the guilt over Kurt's death, but is it abating so she can move on to Condor?  Also, why does she always talk about how Kurt Lance could control her power.  According to Team 7, she only got her power in their disastrous final mission, and Kurt only boosted her power; he never dampened it.  And he only affected her power twice--once to horrible, horrible effect!

Batgirl wishes her family could be safe and happy.  Heh.  Not in Gotham.

Strix can't sing even in her dreams.  That's rough.

Impressions/Questions

After last issue really impressed me, this one takes a step back.  A lot of that has to do with how little is actually in this issue.  There are nine pages of dreams/flashbacks.  Nine out of twenty; damn near half the issue is pink!  Now, some so-so characterization emerges from these dreams, so it's not all bad, but it felt like so much filler.

What I do appreciate about this story is that, despite continuity errors and gaps in logic, it really seems like Christy Marx is trying to tackle the mystery of Dinah's husband and get it over with.  Thank God, man, it's been two years!

Grade: B-

BIRDS OF PREY #22 (New 52)

Previously...

Starling revealed her treachery--at least one part of her treachery--by leading the Birds into a trap meant to eliminate Strix.  After Canary and the others fought off Starling and her partner, Mister Freeze, Strix was attacked by the rogue Talon, Calvin Rose, whose better angels won over when he chose not to kill her.

Birds of Prey #22: "Operation: Kaizen" is written by Christy Marx, with art breakdowns by Scott McDaniel, pencils by Romano Molenaar and Robson Rocha, and inks by Jonathan Glapion and Sandu Florea, and colors by Chris Sotomayor.  McDaniel, Molenaar, Glapion and Sotomayor provided the cover.  Typically, a book with this many artists in the credits is a bad sign that the book was behind deadline and could suffer from major lack of story cohesion.  Will that generalization plague this story?  Let's find out...

We pick up where we left off--with the Birds searching for Strix in the Court of Owls' revivification lab.  I feel compelled to mention at this point that this is Christy Marx's fifth issue of the series, and only about two hours time has passed for the characters since the beginning of issue #18.  Anyway, Black Canary, Batgirl and Condor find Strix in the basement.  She can't tell them why the other Talon let her live or why he took the dead woman's body that had been in the lab before, but it really wasn't worth reading the first time, so let's move on.

Dinah blows up the lab so the Court cannot use it again.  Then the full gravity of Starling's betrayal crashes down on Dinah as she realizes that she can't go home and she can't access her bank accounts because Starling knows too much.  Dinah is effectively penniless and homeless.  All because she trusted too many criminals.

Oh well, I'm sure that won't happen again.

The gang retreats to Condor's workshop.

Oh no, Dinah is stuck in Condor's manly garage... with all of its power tools and grease... and she doesn't have any clothes to change into... whatever will they do?

Meanwhile, somewhere in the Andes (Mountains, I assume), we meet Regulus, leader of the evil terrorist organization Cobra Hydra Basilisk.  Regulus tells his subordinate, Tsiklon, to assemble the strike team for Operation: Kaizen, a name we haven't heard since Kaizen Gamorra in Team 7; Gamorra was a haven for Basilisk back then.

Regulus dispatches the team to go retrieve their wayward co-terrorist, Condor, but he also wants Black Canary brought to him.  It seems Regulus has something special planned for her, and there seems to be a history between them.

Back at Condor's workshop, we learn that days have past--whew!--but days where Dinah hasn't seen or heard from Batgirl.  Damn, what kind of unit is she running here?

They've been hiding out for days and they still haven't bothered to put on some different clothes?

Condor, whose real name is Ben Reyes, heads out and withdraws some money from the bank.  An elderly black woman asks him for some change, and he hails a taxi for her, paying the fare.  Upon close examination, we can see that this woman is Miz Etie, the 99 year-old woman who sat across from Dinah in the coffee shop back in issue #18.  She tells the cab driver that Ben passed the test.  Who is this woman?

Batgirl returns to the hideout.  She is emotionally shaken from having to kill her brother in the recent issues of Batgirl.  Dinah offers her support, but then the Basilisk strike team kicks down the door.

Tsiklon ambushes Condor on his way back to the workshop.  From the sound of things, they used to be lovers.  Hammerdown attacks Black Canary and Batgirl, while Whipcrack uses his powers to stun Strix.

Then another crushing blow falls on Dinah, one that doesn't involve Hammerdown's rocky fists.

That's right, Dinah, the man you've been locking lips with, the most recent addition to your team... used to be a terrorist operative for Basilisk, the group your husband died fighting.

Boom.

Uplink uses her mental power to psionically attack the Birds.  Dinah and Condor are to be brought back to Regulus, while Whipcrack plans to kill Batgirl and Strix.

The Characters

There is a non-dictionary definition of insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results."  Black Canary keeps recruiting known killers like Poison Ivy and Strix, and people she hardly knows but meets under nefarious circumstances like Starling and Condor.  Even her former boss, John Lynch, subjected her to experiments that activated her meta-human power without her knowledge or consent.  Everyone she trusts tries to kill her.

Condor told her he was part of a team that didn't end well, and he dropped a line a couple issues ago about not falling for another blonde.  Christy Marx does a solid job of salvaging these lost nuggets of characterization by making him a former Basilisk operative.  It looks like he genuinely defected to the side of the heroes, but can we really trust that?  We'll have to see.

Batgirl has to deal with the fallout from events in her own book.  Marx does a decent job of taking her off the board while these actions happen elsewhere, but it does bring me back to the opinion that Batgirl does not need to be in this series.  She doesn't add anything to it other than sales, naturally, because she's wearing the bat symbol.

The big addition to this book is the villains.  Holy shit, we finally have worthy villains!

Okay, none of these characters are worthy of the Legion of Doom, or the Flash's Rogues, or Batman's enemies.  They're pretty generic bad guys who look like something out of '90s WildStorm comics.  But you know what?  They're better than the Cleaners from issues #1-7 and they're better than Heartbreaker robots from issue #17 and they're better than another Batman villain.

Regulus looks like King Cobra or Serpentor, but that's fine.  He doesn't strike me as a natural foil for Birds of Prey, but maybe that'll change.  Hammerdown has rocky arms and strong-guy powers.  Whipcrack can generate electrified whips.  Tsiklon can turn use whirling gusts of wind like Red Tornado.  And Uplink has some kind of psionic powers; I'm not sure if she was redirecting Dinah's sonic scream in that last page or not.  They're all pretty one-trick copies of other characters, but hey, something is better than nothing.

Impressions/Questions

This issue didn't piss me off.  More than that, it actually entertained me.  My Black Canary is a hot mess, but Condor is getting more interesting by the issue.  The crew finally has some visually distinct, original villains to throw down with, and the painfully slow pace of the last couple issues' confrontation with Freeze and the Talons has picked up at last.

I needn't have feared the stack of artists on this issue, because they all came together if not seamlessly then complimentarily.  Scott McDaniel's fingerprints are all over the three pages with Regulus, which looks straight out of '90s WildStorm in layout and composition.  The Basilisk strike force members look like McDaniel or Jim Lee designed them.

I'm not going to say this was a great issue, because it's still plagued by the same problems that have weighed the series down from the get-go, but it showed me something new and it kept forward momentum.  Hell, this was my favorite issue of the series.  Is it finally coming together after two dark, dreadful years?

Grade: B+

BIRDS OF PREY #21 (New 52) & TALON #9 (a little)

Previously...

The ladies went to a Court of Owls laboratory to rescue their friend Starling from the cold clutches of Mister Freeze, only to discover that Starling had been in league with Freeze all along.  Words were said, punches were thrown, and it was all very messy.  Mister Freeze escaped, and probably Starling did, too.  Batgirl took Strix to the rooftop where they were confronted by another Talon.

Birds of Prey #21: "Talon vs. Talon" was written by Christy Marx with art by Romano Molenaar and Jonathan Glapion.  Molenaar also draws the cover with Vicente Cifuentes inking.  This issue was hyped by DC in the solicitations as the first part of a crossover with Talon #9.

The issue opens with Calvin Rose, a rogue Talon who has turned against the Court of Owls just like Strix has, attacking Batgirl so he can kill Strix.  I haven't been reading Talon other than the zero issue, because the premise didn't appeal to me (like Strix doesn't appeal to me), so I don't know why he is working for the Court again, but it's kind of explained later.

Anyway, Rose attacks Batgirl, but she senses that he's not bringing his full force to the conflict; it's clear that he's targeting Strix and doesn't want to seriously injure Batgirl.

Rose manages to separate Batgirl by tossing her down the stairs and jamming the roof door shut.  He offers to make Strix's death as merciful as he can.

She responds by tackling him off a roof, because it's been like, three issues since someone fell off a roof in this comic.

Meanwhile, downstairs in the Owls' laboratory, Condor makes himself useful by boosting their computer hard drives to gather valuable intel.  Black Canary is less useful as she continues to fume over Starling's betrayal last issue.

Condor reveals a little more about his mysterious past, rehashing the lines he dropped back in Japan when he told them he used to be part of a team and things didn't work out well.  He tells Dinah he knows how it feels to be betrayed by someone he trusted.

Before they can start making out, Batgirl tells them they have a Talon trying to kill their Talon and they should meet up on the roof.

Meanwhile, on the street down below, Strix and Rose both survived the fall on account of their regenerative abilities.

When Strix sneaks back into the building, Rose understands that she wasn't trying to kill him; she was protecting her friends in the same way that Rose is trying to protect two people I've never heard of.

Dinah, Batgirl and Condor get to the roof to find neither Talon around.  Condor does some aerial reconnaissance to confirm they haven't taken the fight to another building.  Batgirl knows they're still in the building so they split up.  She goes back downstairs to find her friend, giving her alone time to think about the mess of her life currently playing out in the issues of Batgirl.

As soon as Dinah and Condor are alone again, they stop caring about Strix or anything other than their raging hormones.

Oh god... Seriously?  You're surprised that he knows your name, Dinah!  You've been working together for three months.  Why wouldn't he know your name?  Why would you keep it from him?  What kind of trust does that build?  What kind of leader are you?  This is why everyone you recruit betrays you!!!

You didn't know his name?!!!  Why are you recruiting teammates you don't know?!!!  The problem isn't everyone you trust lies to you--the problem is you're stupid and you put your trust in villains!!!

The only reason they don't get pregnant in this scene is the interrupting sound of the fight taking place upstairs where Strix is about to be executed.

Calvin Rose chooses not to kill Strix, even at the risk of his own life and the two hostages the Court has taken from him.  Strix shows some sympathy for him, given that she knows a thing or two about being used as a soulless killing machine by the Court of Owls.  She comes up with a plan to help him and the two Talons rush off together.

And the last page says "To Be Concluded in Talon #9" which I will discuss after my thoughts on this chapter.

The Characters

We learn more about Condor in this issue.  His first name is Ben, for one thing, and he knows a lot about Dinah--her name for one thing--including the connection her husband, Kurt Lance, had to her powers.  He suggests that he can be a focus/control the same way that Kurt was.  Is this just a line so he can see her naked, or is there really something about Condor that can help her focus her Canary Cry?

Impressions/Questions

I give Christy Marx credit in this issue for not only delivering an action-oriented script that also moves Dinah and Condor closer together, but also doing her homework about other series.  This issue features two different narrators, Batgirl and Calvin Rose, and each feels relatively authentic and natural.  Clearly, Marx read enough of Gail Simone's Batgirl and James Tynion IV's Talon to get a feel for these characters and present this tale from their differing perspectives.  That's more than I can say for Tynion's script for Talon #9, which I'll come back to.

Most of this issue is about Calvin Rose, which is unfortunate because I don't care about him and I found his part of the comic and the fights with Strix to be a little boring.  I hate that Dinah's incompetence as a leader is reinforced yet again, but at least she's getting some action and some use of out of her lips that don't involve shattering walls.

My biggest complaint with this issue is that DC continues to lock this book into the Batman community of comics without utilizing Batman himself to boost its popularity.  Batgirl, Poison Ivy, Penguin, Mister Freeze, the Court of Owls, Talon... lots of second or third tier Batman characters, but never a substantive connection to Batman or a chance to branch out and form its own identity.

We're almost two years into this series and I still don't know why the Birds of Prey formed or what they're supposed to do.

Grade: C+

But wait, there's more!

Talon #9: "Uneasy" is written by James Tynion IV, with art by Graham Nolan and Miguel Sepulveda, the latter of which provided the cover.  This issue was billed as the second part of the crossover with Birds of Prey.

...

That's a big fucking lie!  The Birds do not "guest-star" in this comic.

Black Canary appears on the cover only.  Batgirl appears in a recap panel on page 1.  That's all the first page is, a recap of BoP #21.  Strix appears in the next three pages and that's it.  She doesn't say a word (because she doesn't say a word) and she doesn't do anything (because she doesn't need to).  She's less than a background characters; she's set-dressing.  The rest of the story is just another chapter in Calvin Rose's normal adventures.

I feel like Christy Marx at least took the time to figure out who Rose is and what his situation was in the current series because she mentions it and even writes from his POV.  Tynion, on the other hand, clearly doesn't give a fuck about the Birds, and if he bothered to put any research into their series, he certainly didn't transfer it into his script.

This issue was a cheap and blatant example of false advertising.  I paid $2.99 for this comic based on the claim that the Birds of Prey guest-starred in it.  They didn't.  DC lied to me and stole my money.