Looking for comments on "Birds of Prey"

Seldes Katne

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Does anyone here read this series, or has anyone picked up and read any of the trades? One of the later TPBs was reviewed in a recent issue of Library Journal, and I was wondering how the series was as a whole. Also, is it necessary to read the trades in set order, or are they pretty much stand-alone arcs? No one else in our system owns copies, so I decided to ask the experts. :D
 
I thought I'd bump this for anyone who may have missed it.

Sorry Seldes but I have not read Birds of Prey before, but I've heard it was quite good until One Year Later. I can't shake the feeling that thee great one has read it though.
 
An ex of mine read a few of the trades of this. It was originally written by Chuck Dixon. Then Gail Simone took over, and now Tony Bedard is on. I've flipped through a few issues, but haven't really sat down and read any of it in a big block. I did borrow some trades from her though, and I plan on sitting back and reading them when I get the chance. From the first Simone arc I glanced over, it seems to be pretty accessible. All you really need to know is that Babs is the brain and Dinah is the muscle, and they operate as a sort of A-Team style squad. I'll get back to you on it once I've dug a little deeper into the trades, if you still need answers in a while.

Anyway, I mentioned this to her the other day after seeing this thread, and from talking to her, my understanding is this. Dixon's run was decent comic adventure fare, like most of what Dixon churns out. It was basically Barbara Gordon and Black Canary kicking ***. Simone's run (56-108 ) is supposedly really, really good, which doesn't surprise me one bit. When Simone takes over, it goes from being a fairly typical "grrl power" book and becomes a rather intelligent espionage title. She starts rotating in a wild amount of well-characterized and somewhat obscure DC females and really just spins it into a high octane, smart spy book. I've heard Tony Bedard's stuff isn't all that great, but the Simone issues are supposed to be the sweet spot. My understanding is that Simone basically used Birds of Prey as a farm team, to take poorly or under-characterized female characters and expand them in a way that they could step up as more prominent personalities in the universe proper.

Someone who's actually read it can probably elaborate better than me. But I'd trust tossing down cash on practically anything Simone penned. She's an all-star.
 
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I thought I'd bump this for anyone who may have missed it.

Sorry Seldes but I have not read Birds of Prey before, but I've heard it was quite good until One Year Later. I can't shake the feeling that thee great one has read it though.
When this thread didn't get a response, I thought no one here was reading the series. Thanks for the boost.

It's entirely possible that TGO is reading it -- he's got a pull list a mile long. :lol:

I'll get back to you on it once I've dug a little deeper into the trades, if you still need answers in a while.
If you get time after you've read some of the issues, I'd be happy to hear what you thought, thanks. You might get a few other people to read the trades as well.

Dixon's run was decent comic adventure fare, like most of what Dixon churns out. It was basically Barbara Gordon and Black Canary kicking ***. Simone's run (56-108 ) is supposedly really, really good, which doesn't surprise me one bit.
I'm not surprised either. I've heard a lot of positive things about Simone. I think she's written a couple of kid-friendly Spider-Man comic books that we have in Juvenile collection.

But I'd trust tossing down cash on practically anything Simone penned. She's an all-star.
Thank you. I think I'm going to pick up the first couple of trades of her run for the Young Adult collection and see how they circulate. If nothing else, it will give me the excuse to read them. For some reason, I've never had much interest in DC Comics. (I don't know why, either. I can't think of anything really negative about any of the major DC characters, other than wondering how Green Arro finds time to crime-fight when he seems to spend so much time in bed....:?)
 
I thought I'd bump this for anyone who may have missed it.

Sorry Seldes but I have not read Birds of Prey before, but I've heard it was quite good until One Year Later. I can't shake the feeling that thee great one has read it though.

I have read it and I enjoy it.
 
Thank you. I think I'm going to pick up the first couple of trades of her run for the Young Adult collection and see how they circulate. If nothing else, it will give me the excuse to read them. For some reason, I've never had much interest in DC Comics. (I don't know why, either. I can't think of anything really negative about any of the major DC characters, other than wondering how Green Arro finds time to crime-fight when he seems to spend so much time in bed....:?)

Same here, most DC stuff I read is the out of continuity stuff.

I have read it and I enjoy it.

Knew it.
 
So, I've read through the better part of Simone's Birds of Prey and it's pretty good. It's a brisk read, but the kind of thing you don't want to put down when you pick up. It's nothing high literary, but it's crafted well. Characters and events are stacked and wound together in ways that have long-term effects on the story. There's some substantial cameos by DC characters, but the necessary background is told nicely without being intrusive. Same with crossovers. Whenever there's a mandatory editorial crossover, she does a good job weaving it into the crossover without disrupting the pace and growth of her own story, but it only happens a couple of times. Her characters have that sort of Vaughan/Whedon thing going on where they're either excessively clever and jokey or they're the butt of the joke, but it works for the most part. The pacing on it seems similar to a primetime TV show, to me, but that works too. It's brisk espionage that reads fast but has a deep layer of internal continuity. It's not particularly violent. I mean, it's girls with crossbows and kung-fu kicking ***, but it's not particularly bloody and there's the "no kill" mentality you see in most DC books. And it starts with a "girlfriend in the refrigerator" type scenario with Black Canary, but it's basically a reversal of the whole phenomenon. Either way, I think high school kids could really dig it.

And Green Arrow does what he does because he's a pimp. I mean, he's a rich playboy, and he can't run around fighting crime all the time. What else is he going to do?
 
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Great. Thank you, Zombipanda. Once I get back to work, I'll order the first two in the series and see what happens.

And Green Arrow does what he does because he's a pimp. I mean, he's a rich playboy, and he can't run around fighting crime all the time. What else is he going to do?
What, is the man totally illiterate? He could go read a book or something. :wink:
 

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