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| Comic trade paperback, n.pag. Published 2016 (contents: 2016) Acquired November 2016 Read December 2016 |
Written by Brenden Fletcher, Matthew Rosenberg, Julie Benson & Shawna Benson
Color by Lee Loughridge, Serge LaPointe, Allen Passalaqua
Letters by Steve Wands, Marilyn Patrizio
New Killer Star just isn't as good as Kicking and Screaming. Part of this is that it's kind of a hodgepodge: one four-issue story arc, one side story of the band visiting Gotham Academy, one flashback story (set before Kicking and Screaming), and one part of a story about Dinah being (re)united with Batgirl and Huntress to (re)form the Birds of Prey.
And part of that is that none of these components are particularly satisfying. The main four-part story is about Dinah being kidnapped by a ninja clan or something who want to know the martial art secret previously known only to Dinah's mother. There's a lot of backstory invoked here, some of it new (I don't think the New 52 Birds of Prey ever said a thing about Dinah's parents) and some of it old, but all of it isn't very illuminating to the Dinah of the present. I want to read about the band having wacky martial arts adventures on the road! But mostly the band is separated from Dinah during this adventure, and the story feels like it's ignoring the premise of the book more than it's using it.
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| It's kind of weird how this reinserts Dinah's post-Crisis backstory into the New 52, kind of, after Birds of Prey spent so much time developing her orphan backstory. from Black Canary vol. 4 #10 (script by Brenden Fletcher, art by Sandy Jarrell) |
The art, too, is disappointing. Sandy Jarrell isn't a bad artist, and neither is Moritat, but neither of their work compares to that of Annie Wu, the primary artist on volume 1 of Black Canary, who only draws two issues here-- they just lack the dynamism, fun, and sexiness that Wu brings. I know Wu did some well-received Kate Bishop Hawkeye comics for Marvel, but I don't know what else. She's clearly an up-and-coming dynamo (or ought to be), so I'll have to keep on top of her work.
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| Dinah Lance, no matter how you're rebooted and relaunched, you'll always be sexy and badass. from Black Canary vol. 4 #12 (script by Brenden Fletcher, art by Annie Wu & Sandy Jarrell) |
The side stories are okay. I feel like the Gotham Academy one stops abruptly in a weird way; I look forward to reading Gotham Academy in full some day and getting a feel for this in context. (Black Canary's manager Heathcliff was a Gotham Academy student, and his girlfriend a member of the Gotham Academy cast.) The flashback issue is a solid but unremarkable story; I did love how the attendees of the Gotham deubtante's birthday party the band is hired to play at include obvious supervillains like Hugo Strange, but the band isn't allowed to be rude to them. An old comrade of Dinah's from Team 7 shows up, too. It turns out he's 100% a retcon, never actually appeared in Team 7, but that book's characters were so forgettable I didn't even suspect!
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| Always use your enemies' weaknesses against them, even evil vinyl hipsters'. from Black Canary vol. 4 #10 (script by Brenden Fletcher, art by Moritat) |
Finally, there's the first issue of the new Batgirl and the Birds of Prey series. I feel like DC is learning the wrong lessons from the way the New 52 was received, which is probably because the fans don't understand their own opinions. The problem (as I've said before) isn't that the backstories/premises of DC characters were rewritten, it's that they were rewritten badly. The New 52 incarnations of Dinah and the Birds of Prey were more boring than the post-Crisis one. So now DC is "fixing" that by reuniting Dinah, Barbara, and Helena. The problem I have with this is that the New 52 was finally managing to accumulate an interesting history of its own!
These Black Canary comics are great in conception if not always in execution, and the Fletcher/Stewart/Tarr Batgirl of Burnside books were clearly building up a female super-team that would have been the basis for a new Birds of Prey book, with Batgirl, Spoiler, and Bluebird as field agents (plus sometimes Black Canary), and Frankie as their Operator. But that history, which grew up organically, is just being tossed aside in favor of nostalgically bringing back a team from fifteen years ago... even though in the new continuity, Helena is a government agent and not a vigilante, and has no association with Dinah and Babs. It's just weird and sort of frustrating that once DC gets a viable premise for a new Black Canary book and a new Birds of Prey one, they clumsily toss it all aside in favor of nostalgia. The idea that Barbara actually was Oracle at some point in this new history, something someone never mentioned in the 52 issues of Batgirl or 34 issues of Birds of Prey is particularly retrograde. Yes, I think it was a mistake to toss away Oracle, but bringing her back in a weird way that makes the New 52's complicated history even more complicated isn't the answer.
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| Helena, Dinah, and Barbara: Together Again, for the First Time! from Batgirl and the Birds of Prey: Rebirth #1 (script by Julie Benson & Shawna Benson, art by Claire Roe) |
Um, so as to the actual issue, it's fine. Mostly set-up. I guess I'll see what is done with it when I pick up the trade from the library someday in the far future. It's just a real shame that a premise with as much potential as Dinah-Drake-leads-a-rock-band-that-fights-crime-with-martial-arts is tossed away after just two thin volumes.
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