Batgirl and the Birds of Prey #21 Review and *SPOILERS*

Canary's Cry

Written By: Julie Benson, Shawna Benson

Art By: Roge Antonio, Marcelo Maiolo, Saida Temofonte

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: April 11, 2018

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's the penultimate issue of Birds of Prey and previously we saw Calculator lose his shit at Oracle (Barbara Gordon) hacking his system so in retaliation he somehow went and built himself a burning robot called Burnrate, who has been going around trying to find out Oracle's identity for her master.  This led to the Birds not really trusting one another because Barbara kept this from her team and their former protege Gus Yale was killed by the robot because he wouldn't give up Oracle's identity.  Calculator's really turning up the heat now though because he's broken Blackbird and Huntress' mother Fenice out of Arkham and he intends to use his new team to not only discover Oracle's identity, but to take out the Birds once and for all.  Let's check out this issue to see how our team will counter Calculator's move and what Huntress' reunion with her mother will look like.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with a whole bunch of dialog balloons being out of sync with who's supposed to be talking and I really hope that this is only in my review copy because goddamn this would be terrible if it made it to issue.  Our Birds are going on the offensive this issue now that Calculator has put his team together and also because Huntress is a target because Blackbird mind controlled Fenice into giving up Helena's secret identity.  With that, Barbara and her are going to track down Calculator's location, while Black Canary with the help of Green Arrow try to track down Blackbird.  

After some searching and Black Canary being afraid of her "Cry" out of nowhere, the team decides to send Calculator a message that if he wants Oracle's identity he has to meet our team at Terracare to get it........... and it's there that our team just plan on fighting Calculator and his crew and we also get Catwoman and Poison Ivy joining the mix to give our heroes the upper hand. 

In the end, we get a big fight that only succeeds in Black Canary using her cry to destroy Burnrate, but Blackbird has thrown her so off her game that she ends up hurting her entire team in the process.  Our issue ends with Blackbird controlling Huntress into spilling the beans about who Oracle is.

That's it for this issue of Batgirl and the Birds of Prey and while I really enjoy the art in this issue, the lettering and character moments feel really off.  Like I said at the beginning, the dialog balloons are just all over the place at the start of the issue and it's ridiculous for how many are wrong.  As for the character moments........ Well, it just seems weird for Black Canary to be having doubts about her powers since it's been awhile since we dealt with Blackbird and she was fine with using them after that until now.  Just feels forced and all in all, a lot of this issue just feels kind of padded to give us this development out of nowhere.

Bits and Pieces:

The Birds of Prey are on the offensive this issue, but other than a big fight at the end and a character having problems out of nowhere, there isn't much to this issue besides for some really decent art and a intriguing cliffhanger.  Hopefully the next and final issue of this series bring this whole last arc together because right now, besides for the first issue, this arc has been kind of lackluster.

5.2/10