Thursday Comic

Birds of Prey: Perfect Pitch - Gail Simone et al.

When one of Helena Bertinelli's students gets in trouble with a gang, she does what any inner-city teacher would: use her secret vigilante identity, her family ties to the Gotham City mob and her newfound friendship with superhero information broker Oracle to enact a complex sting operation that will put everyone involved behind bars. Meanwhile, shadowy forces are conspiring to attack Oracle's operation at its most vulnerable points - her friends.

This volume begins with some rather nice artwork by Bruce Timm and David Lopez (above), before passing the paintbrush through a few different hands and wavering around the weakest point I've seen the artwork reach on this series. On the writing side, the most interesting thing here is the One Year Later event that DC Comics pulled across all its series, which seems like it was kind of intended as a chance for non-regulars to hop onto some superhero comics. But Simone uses the device purely as a writing, rather than marketing device. If anything, after the story leaps ahead, it's even more entangled in previous Birds of Prey storylines and even more affected by wider events in the DC Universe.

As always, though, Simone's writing - and in particular her characterisations - keep me hooked in spite of all the DC baggage, even if this is the point that Creote and Savant, two of my favourite members of the team, get left by the wayside.