Birds of Prey by Kelley Thompson and Leo Romero

[Hypo]

So, Once Again The Day Is Saved, Thanks To...

You may have also seen in the wild last week, DC’s Solicits for July — which include my girls the BIRDS OF PREY getting pre-historic with things.

First up, Leonardo Romero’s main cover, which is one of my favs from this run. He’s such a smart artist — the way he lays things out — you get so many layers of action, but it never feels confused or muddled or overworked. LOVE IT.

I’ll show off the other three covers below as well, but first I just wanted to talk a little bit about this wild arc we’re leaping into. As you guys know — at the end of Issue 8 the ladies all went willingly into a portal that had sucked Barbara Gordon into it.

The portal conceit meant that we had an opportunity to lean into different artists and styles for each “world” — and so we leaned ALL THE WAY IN.

BIRDS OF PREY 9 kicks off arc 3 — called WORLDS WITHOUT END —and begins a series of 5 awesome artists taking on the book — all unified by Jordie Bellaire’s incredible colors.

Jonathan Case is our first artist (you may know him from — among other things — that recent incredible mostly silent issue of BATGIRL!) Case is creating our “nightmare Gotham” that the Birds first encounter when going through the portal. Here’s a couple tiny peeks:

art by Jonathan Case, colors by Jordie Bellaire, lettering by Clayton Cowles


art by Jonathan Case, colors by Jordie Bellaire, lettering by Clayton Cowles

[Hypo]

art by Jonathan Case, colors by Jordie Bellaire, lettering by Clayton Cowles

BIRDS OF PREY 10 finds Robbi Rodriguez taking on “Barda’s World” — which may not mean quite what you expect — and includes Rodriguez designs for two exciting new characters that I hope will make a big impact on the BIRDS OF PREY.

BIRDS OF PREY 11 gets us back the glorious Javier Pina and — as you can see from the covers on offer — dinotastic outfits AND obstacles.

BIRDS OF PREY 12 brings in an artist I am DEEPLY excited about and I think you will be too, but I don’t know that I’m allowed to say who it is yet since it’s not been announced.

BIRDS OF PREY 13 will have Gavin Guidry wrapping up the arc — and he’ll also be doing some “real world cutaways” throughout the arc as Meridian, Zealot, and others try to free the Birds from the Portal.

It’s going to be a truly wild ride and while I hope everyone loves it, I also really hope everyone can get into the spirit of the idea. We want to tell incredibly fun — and hopefully complex and interesting stories about these ladies — but we also want to play with the form a little bit and experiment as we have been doing from the start — and I hope you’ll all find it more than worth the price of admission. <3

Okay, here’s the rest of those issue 11 covers:

Love this awesome offering from Melnikov. Super fun Dinah and Barda. Love Cass watching the skies. Zealot IS in this issue, but she will not be seeing any dinosaurs, fyi!

Even more intense on the dinosaur action is this wild offering from Serg Acuna!

[Hypo]

And from Chris Ng, the 1:25 incentive cover featuring Cass and Sin/Megaera:

[Frontier]

Sin really leaning into being the team mage.

[Primal Slayer]

Lack of consistent art is just.....oyvey

[Ruthborn]

Not exactly sure what Cass is trying to do in the mouth of that T-rex. Best leave the feats of superhuman strength to the gals that have superhuman strength.

[Frontier]

Not exactly sure what Cass is trying to do in the mouth of that T-rex. Best leave the feats of superhuman strength to the gals that have superhuman strength.

Barda is doing the heavy lifting...

[Godlike13]

Honestly that’s just probably instinct despite it’s fruitily.

[PUGSSSS001]

I continue to hate that Sin, sheltered for so much of her life, suddenly is a 16 year old with a great gasp of the outside world and lingo. It's sloppy, lazy writing TBH.

I just wish that Kelley would do better in this respect - or just didn't use Sin at all. That said, I enjoy her take on Barda.

[Primal Slayer]

I continue to hate that Sin, sheltered for so much of her life, suddenly is a 16 year old with a great gasp of the outside world and lingo. It's sloppy, lazy writing TBH.

I just wish that Kelley would do better in this respect - or just didn't use Sin at all. That said, I enjoy her take on Barda.

The last time we saw Sin she was how old again? A child. Probably 10? Barbara hasnt been full on Oracle for YEARS so its perfectly acceptable that she's aged 5-6 years (if only others could). She's been in Dinahs world for a long time and acclimated well. That is far from sloppy or lazy.

She was already doing a good job as a kid and was far from some recluse. She was never Cassandra.