Some thoughts about Birds of Prey #1

Can Black Canary save Sin?

Dinah's adopted daughter has been kidnapped and now she will to recruit a brand new team to rescue her. However, not all of them are willing to help her.

I guess I'm not saying anything mindblowing with this: Birds of Prey is pretty much like the Suicide Squad at this point. Meaning that they didn't have the best of lucks with their titles from the last few years (although Suicide Squad might be even worse in that regard due that it had even more chances) and for the Birds this is pretty much since the New 52 started more than a decade ago (or maybe even before because even Gail Simone's second run was not that great). However, such luck might change because Kelly Thompson was chosen to handle this new team and direction and I remember enjoying her work at Marvel years ago (particularly her take on Hawkeye, Kate Bishop) so this might be the right time to give the title a new chance.

Unfortunately, it doesn't start the best way if I'm completely honest. The first thing I could notice is that the presentation itself is pretty mediocre, we open right away with Ollie and Dinah speaking about how she needs a team to save Sin and... that's it, no creative introduction into the idea of the book, no bigger or new insight into Dinah's mentality, nothing really, the only thing that seems to remain "new" is that Dinah wants Barbara out of this for some reason and she can't even call Huntress now. I might be missing some details because I've been skipping a lot of extra books lately but still, as a brand new series that supposedly wants to get new readers, this doesn't really do that good of a job,

Second, the introduction of the rest of the cast is not that great. It basically is about most of them fighting a group of randoms and each member of the team praising each other for how "badass" they are and I prefer to see those things happening in the story with actually memorable moments, is a case of "tell, don't show" and ultimately is part of why the whole presentation is very underwhelming. Not to mention that I still dislike Harley Quinn as part of the team and there's not a lot of reason to get her aside from that she's popular. Plus, the issue ends in a rather abrupt way without anything really important happening.

Leonardo Romero's artwork is pretty solid though, full of expressive characters, clean style and precise storytelling.

Average overall, not sure how it will go on.