Birds of Prey 25
Christy Marx, Romano Molenaar, Daniel Sampere, Travis Moore
Zero Year Crossover
Spoiler alert! You have been warned!
This book is one of (fortunately for the company) very few of the New 52 that just hasn’t ever really found its footing. Even a crossover issue can’t get me excited like it should. Unfortunately, none of the characters are interesting, consistent, or engaging. Chief among them being the New 52 Black Canary. When it comes right down to it, the reboot killed her. Hopefully not permanently, but for the last few years, she’s never really seemed like anything other than a generic tough female character in a book full of equally generic tough female characters. Which is sad, because I know for a fact that writers Duane Swierczynski and Christy Marx are capable of good storytelling. Much to my disappointment, but not much to my surprise, the Black Canary-centric Zero Year issue is just more of the same torture we’ve had to endure since the line-wide reboot from DC Comics.
During the time of the blackout in Gotham City, Dinah is in charge of a dojo, left to her by a deceased friend and father figure who took her in when she was an orphan living on the streets. He not only took her in, but trained her to be a good fighter. And then, when everything seemed to be good with her world, he announced that he had inoperable brain cancer and was going to leave her the dojo. Which he did. And she lived there, ran it, and tried her best to be happy. But then the blackout and the riots happened, which attracted the shadowy government types (namely John Lynch). Dinah fights thugs and ninjas (why not) and tries to get back to her home, when Lynch and his men save her, but not in enough time to prevent the dojo from being burned to the ground. So, she signs up for Team 7 and then later becomes Black Canary.
Like I said. Generic. There’s no reason for this to be an extra dollar. There’s no reason for it to tie into the event. And, quite honestly, there’s not really much of a reason for the title to even exist. Now, if we could get a bold new direction going or a Team 7 story that didn’t seem convoluted, paced weird, or just a way to keep the old Wildstorm characters relevant, that would be a nice start. Or maybe throw in the inevitable Green Arrow romance story. Or, you know, just let Gail Simone write the book again and pretend like the first two years of stories never happened. That would work, too. But until something drastic happens, I’m going to continue inching toward dropping this book. It’s not bad. It’s just not very good, either.
My Rating: 2.5/5
