Review: Birds of Prey #13

Review: Birds of Prey #13
[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]

Writer: Kelly Thompson
Art: Gavin Guidry
Colors: Jordie Bellaire
Letters: Clayton Cowles

Reviewed by: Matthew B. Lloyd

Summary

Dinah, Babs and Co. have their “final” confrontation” with Maia, and Cela has to make a decision about her future.

Positives

Birds of Prey #13 has some decent action.  It’s not overwhelmingly good, but some of the issues in this arc have had the group waiting around for something to happen.  They had no agency last issue in finding Barbara, so it’s nice to see them actually combat Maia.  That’s about everything that stands out about this issue from a positive perspective.

Negatives

The biggest problem with Kelly Thompson’s version of Birds of Prey is that she really doesn’t seem that interested in Babs, Dinah and the other women she’s put in the book.  There’s a whole more passion and excitement for Maia and Cela’s story.  And, it really IS their story.  It should be their comic in a creator owned series published by Image or someone. Thompson has tried to make it about Maia trying to kill them- (but, why didn’t she kill Barbara when she had her captive?  The group already took the bait and followed her into the pocket dimension.  Maia didn’t need her alive) -Thompson puts far more effort into the relationship between Maia and Cela and what Maia did or didn’t do.  You’ve got  Barbara, Dinah, Barda, Cassandra Cain, Vixen and Sin.  Couldn’t Thompson have found a way for the emotional beats to be about one of these characters or the relationship between two of them?  Remember when Chuck Dixon and Gail Simone wrote Birds of Prey and the relationship between Babs, Dinah and Helena mattered?  There was tension and they grew together and worked through their differences to make them a stronger unit working together?  They might’ve encountered others, but the three of them were the emotional focus.  Maybe Thompson doesn’t remember that.  Maybe Thompson never read those comics.  It’s hard to read this series and believe she did. 

This makes Birds of Prey #13 and the whole series in fact feel very superficial.  Once you start to think about it…the flaws stand out.  Why would Barbara or Dinah consider murder an option.  Thompson brings it up again (it was in last issue as well- Babs’ idea!), Barbara and Dinah aren’t killers.  That’s not what this concept is about.  They’ve had to pull Helena (Huntress) Bertinelli back from the edge in stories in the past.  I don’t think Thompson really gets these characters.  The whole series has been her telling us she doesn’t understand the concept of the Birds of Prey, but this bit about murdering Maia in particular demonstrates that Thompson doesn’t get these characters.  It’s quite disturbing actually.

Along these same lines, what’s the purpose of Constantine and Xanthe Zhou appearing in this issue and the last?  They do absolutely nothing.  They don’t help rescue those in the pocket dimension.  Their sole contribution besides standing around is for quipping and jokes that don’t land, and the “surprise” at the end of last issue when Zhou claimed those inside the pocket dimension were “already dead.”  If anything, it seems like Zhou is just here so Thompson can have a non-binary, Asian character in the book.  The pages with these characters are a waste of space.  Certainly these pages could’ve been used to develop an aspect of the main characters in this book, right?  Maybe Thompson really like’s Zhou and wanted to use the characters, but just wasn’t clever enough to make her fit in the story logically.

Verdict

Birds of Prey #13 is yet another disappointment.  Thompson has had plenty of opportunities (13, so far) to make this series into something, and she just can’t land this as a Birds of Prey series.  She’s got elements of Doom Patrol (wild wacky extra dimensional shenanigans), and an independent creator owned series with the focus on Maia and Cela.  Writing a Doom Patrol series would be fine.  A book about Cela and Maia would probably be really good, it’s clear that’s where her passion lies.  This is just another superficial series with style over substance and none of the characters people are here for (Barbara, Dinah) show any real depth.  Somehow, the resolution is better than the previous issue.