Batgirl and The Birds of Prey #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Whacking Day!

Written By: Julie Benson, Shawna Benson
Art By: Claire Roe, Allen Passalaqua, Steve Wands
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: August 17, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

There's just something about the idea of this series that makes me happy.......... I say idea because for a long time there we had a bunch of nonsense coming out of the Birds of Prey book, but hopefully that's all rectified with Rebirth coming about and taking comic book readers by storm.  Is that too dramatic?  Whether it is or not, that doesn't change the fact that I really dug the Rebirth issue to this series.  We've got some mysterious person taking the name Oracle, which gets Batgirl to get the band back together and since at this moment Black Canary happens to be band-less, she's all about it...... Well, because of that and the fact that the name Oracle carries a lot of weight between Barbara and her.  Hopefully they can get to the bottom of this mystery because as we left our heroes in the previous issue, they were confronted by Huntress, who wants to do a little more than talk to one of our Bird's leads.  Let's jump into this issue and see how Huntress becomes a part of the team and how Batgirl looks beyond Helena's body count.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with a flashback of one of Black Canary and Oracle's first missions together and really just establishes how well the two work together, which is good to know because when we get back to the main story, our two heroes are going up against Huntress, who's trying to kill one of the men behind her family's murder........ The only problem there is, it's also a lead to who this fake-Oracle really is.  During our heroes fight to get to their man, Terroni escapes and a high speed chase ensues........which just leads to Terroni driving into a pole and our heroes finding him dead behind the wheel...... and the apparent cause of death..... is being bitten to death.  If that wasn't strange enough, our heroes just simply leave Terroni's body there and go about their business and do nothing to look into it.  Why the hell would Batgirl or Black Canary just shrug their shoulders and say "Meh" to somebody being bitten to death mysteriously in a moving vehicle?...... or anywhere?

It doesn't matter though, because after our heroes regroup at Barbara's and witness her realtor trying to break into her home for some unknown reason, they decide that Terroni was only a pawn and the real answers can be found from his boss: Santo.  The reason the snake bites don't matter is because it seems everyone wants Santos dead...... I'm talking Huntress of course, but also a character calling himself The Asp, who has the ability to control snakes........ and what snakes bite........ Why didn't our heroes look into that murder?  Anyway, Black Canary cries the Asp out of there and all three of our heroes decide that working together to take down Fenice is the way to go, since this new mob boss is trying to pull a Black Mask and get rid of all the other families so that she can take control of Gotham for herself........... Also, Huntress is going to help Barbara find out who this Oracle character is.

In the end, we find out that Fenice has hired Oracle to get the information on all her rivals and after the Asp returns to tell Fenice of his failure, our villain contacts Oracle to find out where the Birds of Prey are so that she can take her revenge.

That's it for this issue of Batgirl and The Birds of Prey and while the story continues right where we left off with the Rebirth issue, it doesn't have quite the same impact on me that the other issue had.  Especially since our heroes go and blow my mind by completely ignoring a murder scene that they were involved with....... It's crazy and feels just over the top convenient when the killer comes around even after our heroes have ignored his initial murder.  Everything just feels forced here and leaves me wanting more out of this issue and that goes for the art as well because goddamn did Batgirl look weird as hell in this story.  Yeah, the story and the art weren't up to snuff from what we got before, but I still had some fun reading this comic and I only hope that the quality picks up as we move forward.

Bits and Pieces:

This installment of Batgirl and The Birds of Prey doesn't have the same impact on me that the previous issue had and that's because both the writing and the art seemed to be off a bit from what we got for the Rebirth issue........ Not to mention our heroes acting really strange when presented with a crime.  Overall, I still look forward to this series, I just hope that it picks up from here.

6.5/10