Review: Birds of Prey Vol. 4- The Cruelest Cut

Quick Summary

Pros: The characters are still fun and their stories are entertaining. The second half of the collection returns the series to a better level of quality.

Cons: The beginning of the collection has a number of odd moments. The crossover in the collection’s first half feels bloated and unnecessary.

Overall: Though there are a number of solid story elements that continue throughout this volume, a few big negatives in the first half really sour the collection as a whole. These negatives mostly revolve around a sharp twist in the narrative and a poorly executed crossover. Once these are over with though, things get back to normal and the Birds of Prey’s adventure is just as fun as it used to be. This is a collection for those who truly enjoy the Birds of Prey and don’t mind reading through some poor chapters to get to some good ones.

Story

Birds of Prey Vol. 4: The Cruelest Cut continues the character-focused action and heroics that has now become this series’ signature. However, this volume also starts out with some serious growing pains, possible from the shift in creative teams. These growing pains are then compounded by a somewhat intrusive crossover, which also takes place in the collection’s first half. Though the volume recovers as it progresses, these early negatives hurt it significantly. Overall The Cruelest Cut is a volume that starts out poor and then slowly climbs back up to mediocre.

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This volume starts out with the Birds of Prey going up against Mr. Freeze, who is continuing a vendetta against the Court of Owls. While the concept here is great, especially since the Birds have a former Talon on the team, the execution is pretty poor. It is quite possible that a number of the negatives here come from the change in the writing team, Christy Marx takes over in this volume. Marx is not necessarily a worse writer, the end of the collection sees quality on par with the previous volume, but the transition between the two writers simply does not seem to happen in the most fluid manner.

The biggest example of this is that Starling’s betrayal, which seems far too sudden and inconsistent. She goes from taunting her former teammates to saying that betraying them was the hardest job she ever had to pull, all within a few pages. This betrayal also completely undermines any character development she had going for her, which is particularly upsetting since previous volumes spent a good deal of time establishing a background story about her connection to Amanda Waller. Instead of a shocking, yet understandable twist, this just feels like a cheap excuse to get Starling off the team.

This uninspired betrayal is immediately followed by a crossover with the Talon series. Once again this is an idea that works in terms of concept, having two former Talons is a neat premise but fails in execution. The characters involved fight for a few moments, Talon and Mary have a few solid interactions, and the rest of the crossover just feels like bulk. Multiple pages here are devoted to portions of the Talon series which do not concern the Birds of Prey at all. The positives in this crossover are simply too small to overcome the negatives.

Once all this is over with, the volume begins a new story arc involving Condor’s old team and Black Canary’s past. This is the point of the story where things start to reach their old level of entertainment, without sharp plot twists and unnecessary crossovers. There are cool fight sequences, twists that make sense, and plenty of moments where readers get to learn more about the character’s pasts. Hopefully, the next volume will see the quality from this portion of the story continue.

(spoilers end here)

Art

The majority of the artwork in The Cruelest Cut is provided by Romano Molenaar on pencils and Jonathan Glapion on inks. Molenaar’s pencils do well in depicting action and fight sequences, which is good since there are plenty of these throughout this volume. However, his work on character’s faces is sometimes lacking, especially when a character is attempting to express any sort of extreme emotion. The end result is a collection that is pretty average in terms of quality but does well in depicting the story being told.

Continuity

Birds of Prey Vol. 4: The Cruelest Cut continues the story from Birds of Prey Vol. 3: A Clash of Daggers (Review).

The story here continues in Birds of Prey Vol. 5: Soul Crisis (Review).

This volume also references stories from other comic books, detailed below:

• Mr. Freeze’s particular interest in the Court of Owls dates back to Red Hood and the Outlaws #9, now collected in Red Hood and the Outlaws Vol. 2: The Starfire (Review).
• A portion of this collection is a tie-in with the Talon comic book series. Though this Talon series begins with Talon Vol. 1: Scourge of the Owls (Review), the portions of the series relevant to this crossover occur at the very beginning of Talon Vol. 2: Fall of the Owls (Review).
• Batman mentions the Joker attacking her mother and her brother being involved in her life. She also mentions killing someone and her father being on the lookout for her. All of this is dealt with in Batgirl Vol. 3: Death of the Family (Review).
• The origins of Team 7 are detailed in Team 7 Vol. 1: Fight Fire With Fire (Review).
  
• Batgirl mentions being shot by the Joker. This happened a long time ago in Batman: The Killing Joke.