In this review of Birds of Prey #21, as the Birds of Prey are attacked on all sides, all over the globe, the world is about to learn why the Birds are of PREY!
Birds of Prey #21 main cover by Annie Wu (DC Comics)
Birds of Prey #21
On the Run, part 2
Writer: Kelly Thompson
Artist: Sami Basri
Colors: Adriano Lucas
Main Cover: Annie Wu
Variant Covers: Nimit Malavia, Rian Gonazales, Cliff Chiang, Lee Garbett
Release Date: May 7, 2025
This review contains Spoilers
As Big Barda plummets to earth from an exploded rocket, Babs desperately calls a Code Black for a downed Bird. Cass Batgirl and Sin/Megaera fight in the Gotham Sewers, while Black Canary shrieks her Canary Cry at the snake villain Copperhead in Tokyo. Canary refuses to run, despite Oracle’s orders.
Batgirl fights a cheetah-type villain with super speed, figuring out how to punch where she WILL be, and saves Sin from a soul-stealing sorcerer villain. They leave the seward and escape together.
Near Dubai, Bards hits the ground, alive but unconscious, and the mysterious shape shifting villain Inque from last issue uses her knife arm form to cut a hole in Barda’s armor and skin and then shoots a tranquilizer dart into the wound.
In Tokyo, Copperhead runs as a huge army of drones attack. Canary is able to scream some of them down, but enough escape to steal the tech.
Oracle warns all operatives of the Birds from the first part of this run of the danger, and tells them not to come in.
In a shadowy Gotham army base, the mysterious drone controlling villain Daemon assembles their forces – the cheetah and sorcerer villains from the sewers, Copperhead from Tokyo, and Inque from Dubai, now in Barda form.
Analysis
After a really excellent first issue where writer Thompson and artist Basri drop our experienced heroines into a much bigger fire than they expected, we see the fallout of those fights in this issue. Not a ton of character development or moments for the heroines this time, though Canary and Oracle both get nice lines in their monologues and dialogues. However, the focus on desperate action and villains who seemingly have intelligence and planning instead of just blundering around fighting the heroines gives a nice sense of a plot instead of a car crash of events. Thompson continues to have a really strong sense of the voices of these characters and how to write an action packed, straightforward story with nice mystery and twist elements that feel like the classic Dixon and Simone Birds of Prey. Two solid issues in, this arc “On the Run” promises to be at the least very entertaining!
Sami Basri continues to provide top notch art for the characters and action. Solid villain design renderings for our despicable baddies, and suitably heroic and appealing renderings for the Birds. There’s a clean-lined solidity to Basri’s work that never feels rushed or haphazard. While not quite as overly sexy as classic Birds of Prey artists like Greg Land, Butch Guice (RIP this past week), Ed Benes, or Joe Bennett, Basri’s Birds are still quite sexy while still being more interested in kicking butt than sticking their butts out. Colorist Adriano Lucas provides perfect straightforward action colors – no washed out silliness like the early arcs of this run, just straightforward plain comics coloring for a straightforward excellent action adventure issue.
Annie Wu’s main cover features a clever inverted reflection of Cass Batgirl and Sin/Magaera in the sewers, the drips of water providing a lot of great visual interest – as to be expected from Black Canary’s 2015 punk rock artist. Nimit Malavi’s gorgeous yellow-hued Black Canary variant features Cass Batgirl kicking all around Dinah as a kind of animated frame composition – quite nice. Rian Gonzales’s chibi variant features Black Canary as a paper doll with variant outfits – extremely cute. Cliff Chiang’s connecting AAPI heritage month cover features Katana’s full torso as well as parts of Swamp Thing and Robin Damian Wayne, among others. Lastly, Lee Garbett’s 1 in 25 incentive variant features Canary and Oracle atop a stack of dead CRT monitors, as Canary screams defiantly and Oracle works on her laptop – a nice image of their friendship.
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Final Thoughts
Thompson and Basri continue the action packed globe trotting feeling of a great Birds of Prey story. Not a TON of character stuff for our heroes, but some nice conflict with a large chunk of our villain team sets up the second half of the arc nicely.
