With his Birds of Prey run, Duane Swierczynski has developed this annoying habit of dropping plot threads without fully resolving them and diving right into new stories. That trait continues as his latest arc kicks off in issue #13. The conflict with Poison Ivy has been all but abandoned from where it ended in issue #12. Instead, we're informed that Batman randomly showed up to assist the BoP gals with their poisoning and they're now all on the mend and craving munchies. It's as if there was a Birds of Prey #12.5 that got lost at the printer and Swierczynski is relying on exposition to make up for its absence.
The conflict on tap this month instead involves the theft of Katana's sword/disembodied husband. This should have at least allowed for some decent character development on her end, but Swierczynski gets too wrapped up in the hunt for the blade itself and the new third party that complicates matters. But the most upsetting aspect of the script this month is that the Birds happily allow Starling to torture an enemy for information. While on some level it's fun to watch her work her brand of magic, this really isn't the sort of Birds of Prey team I want to be reading about. And coming on the heels of Black Canary's moral outrage in issue #12, this behavior really makes no sense.
Romano Molenaar enjoys another solid month following his debut on issue #0. He continues to capture the darker style of Jesus Saiz while simultaneously lending a more freewheeling, energetic touch to his pages. With the scripts growing less satisfying all the time, at least the series still has some selling point to fall back on.
Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
