A Day With My BFF
(Beatdown Frenzy Fighter)
Written By: Brenden Fletcher
Art By: Moritat & Sandy
Jarrell, Lee Loughridge
Letters By:
Steve Wands
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: April 13, 2016
**Non-Spoilers and Score
At The Bottom**
We now return to our
regularly-scheduled story arc, which involves Black Canary having escaped from
her aunt’s ninja cult, just in time for the rest of the band to fall into her
aunt’s clutches. So what’s next for Dinah “D.D.” Lance? Well, she’s going to
catch up with her old pal Batgirl, that’s all. They’ll get around to saving the
day, first they’ve got to paint Burnside red and have some girl time. Of
course, when Batgirl and Black Canary have “girl time,” a lot of crooks end up kicked
in the head and in need of dental surgery. So let’s get to it, shall we? Pull
on your fishnets and fix your lipstick, because we’re stepping out with two
alumni of the Birds of Prey, and they’re certainly going to be well
put-together. Read on, lads and ladies of the night!
Explain It!:
Dinah has returned to
Burnside, Gotham City to visit her buddy Barbara “Batgirl” Gordon. Sure, she
left in something of a huff about a year ago, considering Babs had burned down
her van and then her roommate was less than hospitable to D.D. crashing on the
couch, but these two are best friends and nothing can keep them apart!
Particularly when Dinah needs something from Babs. This time, she needs
Batgirl’s eidetic memory in order to recall some stuff about her ninja aunt.
But first! Crimefighting! Our daring ladies take to the streets and start
pummeling various criminals, eventually coming across evil DJ Mad Wax and his
minions. During their tussle, which is halted by Babs threatening to break a
rare vinyl record of Max’s, it comes to light that Dinah is actually D.D. from
Black Canary, the band, and he wants her autograph. I think we can safely say
now that naming the band Black Canary, when the lead singer’s alter ego is also
Black Canary, was probably a bad idea. Actually it might work just fine, but
it’s a pain in the neck for reviewing. Since reviewers are routinely pains in
the neck, I suppose it’s a wash.
Dinah isn’t hanging around
Burnside just to beat the pants off of hipster villains, however, she needs to
use Batgirl’s super memory powers to remember a picture of her mom that was
stashed in an old storage unit they shared until Babs burnt it down. This
part…is pretty stupid, though it works if you’ve been reading the main Batgirl title. They sometimes plug shit
into her brain or use pseudo-hypnosis to “access” parts of her eidetic memory,
and while human memory doesn’t actually work that way, if you’re going to make
it a DCU “thing,” I’ll roll with it. So by peering into her memory, Babs is
able to make out a bunch of names on the back of the photograph somehow, and
I’m gonna be honest with y’all, I really couldn’t tune into this part. I don’t
know what it was, I read it three times trying to understand what was
happening, but it ended up being a bunch of names I couldn’t keep straight that
were important for reasons I didn’t understand. And it just went on for pages,
getting more and more complicated while my brain receded more and more into
humming the theme from Super Mario Bros.
over and over. I have failed you, as a spoiler and a reviewer, and for that I
am sorry. But I’m not going back to that crap for anything.
Luckily, things get
interesting again when Dinah’s Aunt Rena smashes into the recording studio
(that Dinah and Batgirl are using as an office for some reason) with a bunch of
ninjas and attacks them. Aunt Rena “Greyeyes” is after the “Five Heavens Palm”
which Dinah learned from her mom, and this is the first I can remember hearing
about it. Batgirl, Dinah and the ninjas mix it up in some pretty satisfying
action scenes, including one where Dinah unsnaps Batgirl’s cape and uses it
sort of like a matador would against a charging bull. Eventually, Dinah and her
Aunt agree to a faceoff, without using their powers, because oh yeah Aunt
Greyeyes has electricity powers now by the way? And in their supposed fair
fight, Greyeyes uses her nuclear electric powers or something and Batgirl can
tell she’s going to explode somehow, so she grabs Dinah and Bat-Grapples out of
there in a fairly dynamic scene that makes not a lot of sense. Back at Crash
Pad Central aka Babs’ and Frankie’s apartment, Frankie informs Dinah that some
thing on the internet indicates that her old bandmates are in Germany, probably
held by the ninjas and stuff! So Dinah resolves to rescue her friends, which
she should have done two issues ago!
This was a nice issue for
people who missed the dynamic between Batgirl and Dinah that was present at the
beginning of the revamped Batgirl book
by Stewart, Fletcher and Tarr. Those of us actually following a story and who
were hoping to be presented with cogent answers to pressing questions will be
disappointed. There is actually a lot of new information in this issue, but
much of it is presented without context or explanation, so it’s tough to tell
what will be relevant later. There’s only two issues left in the series,
however, so it shouldn’t be much longer before all is revealed. I always like
to see Moritat on a book, though his style would be better suited to Batgirl than Black Canary. Sandy Jarrell does a fine job, but it’s a little
jarring after Moritat’s decidedly rounder, cartoonish style.
Bits and Pieces
The Dynamic Duo of a bat and a bird is back in action, but this time it's Batgirl and Black Canary, and they spend half the issue talking about Black Canary's family tree. Some good action scenes in this issue, but also a huge info dump of which I could not make heads or tails. The art shift from Moritat to Jarrell is a little jarring, but it's really the extended yammering that made it more of a drag. Only two issues left to figure out whatever the hell it is we're supposed to care about involving Dinah's mother and maybe some weird Swedish dude that may or may not play an important role at the end of this series.
6.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment