Birds of Prey #17 (May 2000)

Previously in Birds of Prey...

Birds of Prey #17: "Nuclear Roulette" is written by Chuck Dixon with art by Butch Guice.  His cover, depicting Power Girl desperately catching or stopping a nuclear missile pointed at New York is exciting, but the text on this cover is a little bizarre.  "Where are the Birds of Prey?  Power Girl would like to know."  Um, is that question supposed to be rhetorical?  Because Black Canary and Oracle are all over this issue.  And Power Girl is with them, working alongside Dinah and getting updates from Oracle.  There is some tension between them, yes, but it's not like the Birds have disappeared or like they're not trying to stop the Joker's plan to murder everyone in New York City.

Anyway, the issue opens with Black Canary flying over the ocean looking for the ship carrying a nuclear warhead bound for the Big Apple.  How is Canary flying?  Well, it has a lot to do with Power Girl and her post-Crisis crazy-ass Atlantean origin and powers.

Power Girl and Black Canary find a Liberian ship and Power Girl scans it and knows that this is the ship they're looking for.  She tells Oracle to get off her back, so there is clearly some history between them and PG doesn't care for her.  The blondes drop onto the ship where they immediately come under heavy fire from the crew.

Power Girl is mostly impervious to the bullets so she takes the brunt of the crew's attack while Dinah fights her way to the bridge to interrupt the missile launch.  She arrives too late, though, as the captain presses the button.

Six missiles launch from the ship, one of them slamming into Power Girl who is hovering in the air.  The missile that bumped her careens out of control and detonates in the water.  Oracle screams at Power Girl to get away from the blast sight, but Power Girl tells her it was only a conventional missile, not a neutron bomb.

Black Canary decides to interrogate the ship's captain to see how many, if any, of the missiles are nuclear.

As Power Girl races through the sky to stop the missiles, Oracle updates her that only one of the five remaining is neutron capable.  Then Power Girl shows an embarrassingly poor understanding of rudimentary mathematics, so either she's an idiot or Chuck Dixon is.  But anyway, Power Girl takes out two more of the missiles, neither of them being the nuclear bomb.

Now it's up to Oracle and her back up plans to stop the three remaining missiles.

The second half of the book is some tense Tom Clancy stuff, full of technical jargon pertaining to the Navy and national security (and kind of an awkward slam against President Carter).  I won't go into as much detail because you lose a lot of the suspense, but it's a cool sequence.

Essentially, Oracle contacts Major Van Lewton at the Pentagon and coordinates attacks with the United States Navy along the Atlantic Coast and violates some international laws.  U.S. Warships shoot down two of the three remaining missiles.

For the last missile, Oracle takes control of several satellites and bounces a laser off more than one, doing a "bank shot from pool" in order to blast the last missile before it hits New York.  The day is saved, everyone rejoices even though no one can ever speak a word of what happened hear because they all violated laws and treaties.

Back at the ship, Power Girl talks cryptically about why she doesn't like Oracle.  I have no idea what this tension is about, because PG just worked with Oracle a couple issues ago and they seemed fine.  Also, Power Girl's white and gold costume in this issue is stupid and her Atlantean origin is stupid.

This was a better issue than the last one.  It was nice to see Oracle do her thing and do it well, but Black Canary was shoved to the way background for this chapter.

Come back next week for a review of Birds of Prey #18.

Birds of Prey #16 (April 2000)

Previously in Birds of Prey...

While the last issue of Birds of Prey set a newly raised bar for the title with the addition of Butch Guice on art duties, issue #16, "The Joker's Tale" takes another step in the wrong direction.  This time, writer Chuck Dixon wastes Guice's considerable talent by forcing him to draw 40 panels on about ten pages of the Joker talking to a wall in his cell.

We begin some time after the Joker addressed the United Nations as Qurac's ambassador where he apparently announced that everyone in New York City would die in a matter of hours.  The Joker has been captured, and he figures he's back at Arkham Asylum, safe from whatever doom awaits New York.  He doesn't know who is interrogating him, but he wastes a lot of time trying to talk about his origin and stuff.

When pressed, he suggests that New York will be rendered lifeless by a neutron bomb and kind of rambles about how the bomb came into his possession.  Then he talks about how he got to Qurac by murdering the ambulance crew transferring him to Arkham the last time Batman beat him up.

Then he tells a would-be origin story of murdering his abusive father on his eighteenth birthday, but his interrogator doesn't believe the story is true and doesn't care any.  The Joker is stalling, like Chuck Dixon is stalling.

Finally the Joker recounts how he addressed the United Nations and then luxuriated in his diplomatic limousine, believing he had immunity.  Then the diplomatic convoy is attacked by Power Girl.

While Power Girl takes out Quraci henchmen in her new yellow and white costume, the Joker makes a run for it.  But Black Canary chases him.

The Joker is struck by a pedestrian bicyclist and knocked into traffic, where he is finally caught and brought to Arkham.

Only he wasn't brought to Arkham.  Barbara Gordon surprises Joker by revealing she's holding him in New York so he'll reveal where the bomb is in order to save himself.

He tells her there are nuclear warheads on a ship in the mid-Atlantic.  As she starts to leave, he asks if he's the one who put her in the wheelchair so maybe he doesn't recognize or remember her.

Babs contacts Dinah and Power Girl...

... then she makes a surprise call to Major Van Lewton of the Pentagon's cyber-warfare devision.

I like the Joker, but does anyone really want to read 19 pages of him sitting in a cell, toying with his interrogators, occasionally flashing back to random acts of violence against people we don't care about.  After the joy of issue #15, this issue might be the worst Birds of Prey yet because nothing happens and it's not about the titular characters.

Come back in two weeks for a review of Birds of Prey #17.

Birds of Prey #15 (March 2000)

Previously in Birds of Prey...

Birds of Prey #15: "Face Time" turns a corner as Chuck Dixon finally gets an artist who can elevate his limited scripts into something special.  Butch Guice comes aboard as the regular artist and his first issue is possibly the best of the series for his involvement.

After spending the last couple months dealing with super-powered villains and other-dimensional landscapes, Dixon lets Black Canary and Oracle let their hair down a little and spend some free time on character progression.  Of course, Dixon's better angels can't shout down all of his problems as he still wastes precious comic page real estate at the beginning of the issue.  This time, thankfully, it's not an unnecessary splash page followed by an equally unnecessary double-page splash.

Instead, he devotes the first two and a half pages to TV news coverage of horrible violence in the nation of Qurac.  Guice does a great job rendering the ugliness of the war and its combatants, but then we pull away from the news footage to reveal a salesman hocking high definition TVs and computer monitors to Barbara Gordon.  She ends up rolling over his foot with her wheelchair.  Yeah, the first four pages are just set-up for a not-that-funny gag.

Babs has come to a tech convention, but not to shop for new products.  After months or years of dancing around cyber-dating, she has finally come to meet her online friend, "Bumblebeeb".

Meanwhile, Dinah Lance spends her day off retrieving piles and piles of junk mail from the mailbox of her apartment.  She complains to Henry, the doorman.  Another tenant comes home, and when she goes up the elevator, Dinah notices the woman has a black eye.  Henry tells Dinah the woman is Olivia Crichton, Dinah's next-door neighbor, and she's single but has one gentleman caller.

Later, Dinah goes to Olivia's apartment and makes up a lame excuse to get inside and check out the bruise on her face.  Olivia insists that she's fine and her situation is none of Dinah's business.  Dinah offers her friendship and any help she can provide before Olivia makes her leave.

Back at the tech convention, Babs avoids more cheesy product placements while the news talks about the United Nations new, mysterious ambassador from Qurac.  This is foreshadowing, so you know.  Then, at last, she meets her blind date.  Bumblebeeb reveals his real identity, and would you believe it  it's Ted Kord!  They awkwardly introduce themselves and make up some half-truth cover stories for their jobs.

Elsewhere in Gotham, Babs' ex-boyfriend Jason Bard goes to see her at her apartment.  But instead of Barbara Gordon, he finds her other ex-boyfriend Dick Grayson hanging around, making repairs to stuff damaged during the Gotham Earthquake.  Boy, that's a little awkward; two exes meeting each other at Babs' apartment while she's out on a date with someone else.

Meanwhile Dinah gets more junk mail as a menu is shoved under her door.

I love this page, not because of Dinah's skimpy outfit but because of the Toth's Gym shirt, a nice little reference to the work of Alex Toth who drew a gorgeous Black Canary in Adventure Comics.  Anyway, out in the hall Dinah notices Olivia's "gentleman caller" go inside with two bodyguards left standing by the door.

Babs and Ted go to a diner to get to know each other better.  Ted tries to impress Babs by saying he  works in a similar law-enforcement capacity by designing nonlethal crime-fighting hardware such as gases, armor, and other kinds of deterrents.  She asks if he ever gets out in the field and he says no way, he's just in R&D.  Then she asks why he chose the avatar Bumblebeeb and he insists there is nothing significant about the name.

Meanwhile, Dinah watches TV in her bedroom in the fourth different outfit we've seen her wear this issue, and presumably only about an hour has passed.  She flips through channels and we get more foreshadowing of the mysterious, unseen ambassador from Qurac going to speak at the U.N.  Above Dinah's bed is a portrait of her father, Larry Lance.  A bump on the wall from next-door nearly knocks the photo on her head.  Sounds like Olivia is getting beaten by her man again.

After knocking out the bodyguards, Dinah hears gunshots coming from Olivia's bedroom.  When she sneaks in, she finds Olivia with the gun and the man lying dead on the floor.  Olivia sobs, saying she warned the man not to hit her again.

Babs and Ted walk through the lobby of the tech conference.  She confesses to knowing the truth about him, that he's secretly the costumed adventurer known as Blue Beetle.  He freaks out at first, telling her to keep it secret, but then he puts two and two together and realizes the only way she could know his double identity is because she had one of her own.  He stops her from rolling away and calls her Oracle.

They go back to the diner to start their date over again with their cards metaphorically on the table.

Then the news in the restaurant turns to coverage of the Quraci ambassador addressing the United Nations.  As he begins to speak, Babs is horrified that she recognizes the voice.

No costumes and no superhero antics, but still probably the best Birds of Prey story up to this point.  It's great seeing Babs and Ted Kord feel each other out on their date.  It reads like Barbara was legitimately surprised to find her date was Ted Kord, but once he introduced himself, she knew who he was.

Dinah, meanwhile, gets to kick ass and show her compassion for a victim of abuse.  The best parts of her story, though, are the artistic flourishes that Guice adds, such as the portrait of Larry Lance in the bedroom and the Toth's Gym shirt.  I am so glad Butch Guice becomes the regular artist for the next couple months.

Come back next Tuesday for a review of Birds of Prey #16.