BoP #111
Okay peeps, I know I said I was offline for a few days due to RL stress, but I just got the new issue of Birds of Prey (#111). I loved it. I could not stop laughing, it was well-written and well-drawn (women were in real clothing! With high necklines and no bared stomachs!) and I can’t let it go without rec’ing it.
Full review behind the cut, SPOILERS for Birds of Prey #111, writer Tony Bedard, art Jason Orfalas.
I gotta say, I looked at the cover for this issue and groaned. Oracle Meets the Calculator? We DID that already. She kicked his ass. Rehashing that is not interesting-and I was terrified they were going to make it another long arc of a story we’d already read. The Calculator vs Oracle is not interesting over and over again the way Batman vs Joker can be-Joker’s (and the rest of the Gotham Rogues) saving grace is his unpredictability. Calculator and Oracle are always going to have the same fight the same way because of who they are.
However! The issue quickly convinced me that I was wrong: this was something different. It was a cliche, but it was a fun cliche: Oracle Meets the Calculator-literally! They run into each other in their civilian identities (or rather, undercover civilian identities, so they never learn each other’s real names) because they’re both after the same thing at a "Macroware" convention. He stumbles in her, she stumbles into him, they exchange witty banter, they have lunch, he crushes on her brain (It was really cute! In a doomed kind of way!) and then they both get on the Macroware intranet and have the requisite cyber-battle.
Misfit is playing computer games in Oracle’s control room and calls to see where the boss has gotten to. Birds accumulate in the control room throughout the issue, till we have Helena (being adorably teacher-y and taking away Misfit’s joystick) and Zinda and Misfit all playing a sort of Oracle to Babs in an interesting turnaround. They (and Calculator’s internal monologue) provide an outlet for the necessary exposition that, while it wasn’t masterful, was neither clunky nor interrupted the flow of the story.
Babs and Calculator are in the same room, and Calculator realizes this when she shouts "Yes!" in triumph and he hears it. He goes after her, shoots the girl in the wheelchair who turns out to be a stuffed lion (which was in like, every establishing panel of Babs while she was hacking. I’ve mentioned I think I love this artist, right?), and then Babs gets to kick his ass. She breaks his leg with her escrima sticks, disarms him and probably would have broken his jaw if Hellhound hadn’t interfered. The cavalry is too far away to do any good, but Misfit has an idea...
Meanwhile, Babs is on the ground armed with a pair of escrima sticks and puts up a seriously good fight against Hellhound-which ironically, is what convinces Calculator that she can’t be Oracle. He’s convinced anyone who can fight physically can’t be smart enough to be Oracle. Is it sad that I squeaked with glee when he called her a "stick-wielding thug"? So Hellhound gets pissed off, Calculator promises his thug that he can torture her but first they have to load Calculator into Babs’s chair, because, oh yeah, she broke his leg. Hellhound is taunting her as she crawls away . . . until she turns on him with Calculator’s gun pointed at his head.
Then it’s Nerds to the Rescue! Misfit saves the day.
I’m aware the whole situation was pretty comedic-setup, but it was executed well, was true to all the characters, and told a good story. The art was great, Babs was physically threatening, and there was an interesting subplot of role-reversal with the Birds in the Towers and Oracle in the field. I loved it.
I’ve actually really appreciated the last three issues of Birds-#109 was the so-very-needed issue where Babs tried to talk Dinah out of marrying Ollie, #110 reaffirmed Helena and Babs’s relationship-both how it is like Babs’s and Dinah’s, and how unique it is. Helena is a different person than Dinah, Babs was a different person when she took Helena on than she was when she took on Dinah, and they had a much rockier road getting to be friends and partners. This addressed all that, had some interesting Birds backstory, and still had all the action required in a superhero comic. I also enjoy the fact that these have all been one-shot issues. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a good arc, but there’s something nice about being able to sit down and read the whole story.
The main thing that makes me love this issue, above and beyond all else, is that this is my Babs. Smart, strong and kicking ass in cyberspace and in real life.