Birds of Prey vol. 2: Worlds Without End

Last time we found out that someone from the future was trying to kill Barbara “Batgirl” Gordon. That led Dinah “Black Canary” Lance to put together a team and start some trouble on Paradise Island.  With that trouble now behind them, they’re now trying to figure out who’s been trying to kill Barbara.  Their only clue is that some unknown individual is using The Red to time travel in order to do it.  Which means that this new gathering of Birds of Prey – also including Big Barda, Cassandra “ [Also] Batgirl” Cain, and the combination of Sin with Megaera are going to need an expert like Vixen to help them out.  Too bad she’s currently dealing with an outbreak of crimes committed by people wearing her clothes.

This leads to a fun two-parter that has the girls dressing up in lingerie for a fashion show, and then taking on some possessed beefcake before jumping through multiple pocket dimensions in the title story.  It’s a romp that sees them pass through a spooky Victorian shadow-realm, a deserted 1950’s suburb, THE TIME OF THE DINOSAURS, and a ridiculously violent cartoon realm.  While I think the new villain orchestrating all of this is a bit thinly developed, writer Kelly Thompson still does a good job of making things fun with the verbal interplay between the team members and all of the witty one-liners they toss off.

Unfortunately the art isn’t on the same level as it continues to have the same kind of drab, washed-out look to it that was present in the first volume.  Actually, it’s even worse here because now it looks like there were reproduction issues in getting most of the art on the page with most everything having an off-putting fuzziness to it.  Which also could be down to the coloring because it’s not present in Sophie Campbell’s cartoon world which is easily the best-looking part of vol. 2 with its great style and colors that pop.

I don’t know if there were technical problems with the art here, or if there was something getting in the way of colorist Jordie Bellaire delivering the kind great coloring she does on her other books.  Whatever the case is, it has resulted in a book where the art capably tells the story, but just looks really blah overall.  Juann Cabal is illustrating the next arc and he’s done consistently great work on titles like “All-New Wolverine.”  So we’ll see if he can make “Birds of Prey” finally look as good as it deserves, or if he’ll get dragged down by the coloring here as well.