Birds of Prey #15 – Kelly Thompson, Writer; Sami Basri, Artist; Adriano Lucas, Colorist
Ray – 9.5/10
Ray: Every issue of this series has felt a little different, with the arcs shifting tone and genre dramatically. After two arcs that played on high adventure and multiversal time travel themes, this arc is a tense espionage thriller – with Cass taking the lead role as an infiltrator into a shady agency that’s been kidnapping Amazons and experimenting on them. Her alter ego, Shen, has won the backing of the evil masterminds with her impressive display of martial arts skills, but it’s not long after she finds out what the actual secret of the facility is that she goes rogue and tries to free the captives. And that’s where she quickly gets shot and captured, in a display of just how dangerous these people are. But that ironically also puts her exactly where she wants to be, in the middle of the massive prison complex – and able to get out to start breaking the Amazons out of this fortress.
But as interesting as Cass’ segment is, the more laid-back segments involving the Birds back at base are just as strong. While everyone is clearly worried about Cass as soon as her comms go dark, it’s Barda who starts unraveling fairly quickly. The bond between these two has been a lot of fun, but it’s also been codependent in an odd way, and it falls to Black Canary to point out to Barda that her “small bat” is very capable of handling herself. There’s also a great scene with Sin as the young warrior (now with an ancient goddess sharing her body) wonders when her mentor is going to give her a shot on the main team. There’s a great family vibe to the whole team – except that one of them is in the bowels of a secret prison fortress, with a twisted failed experiment coming after her. Kelly Thompson has just had her biggest debut of her career a few weeks ago, but her first main DC book is still running on its A-game non-stop.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
