You’ve probably seen me wax poetic about the current run of “Birds of Prey,” but perhaps not as often as I should. I was first getting into comics when the original series, which took then-sidelined heroines Barbara Gordon/Oracle/Batgirl and Dinah Lance/Black Canary and quickly thrust them back into A-list territory, was becoming a hot commodity. Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to read it in its prime, so I leaped at the opportunity to be on board with this one from day one.
The thrust of the new “Birds of Prey,” written by “Captain Marvel” and “Absolute Wonder Woman” scribe Kelly Thompson and featuring art from Thompson’s “Hawkeye” collaborator Leonardo Romero, revolves largely around Black Canary and her young charge, Sin, who is targeted by the evil entity Megaera in the book’s opening arc. When a nebulous truce of sorts is brokered between Sin and Megaera, the title shifts to Canary and Oracle’s team solving problems around the world while they attempt to understand Sin’s bond and new powers and…look, I don’t want to talk about that. You can (and SHOULD) read the book to get that plot.
I want to talk about Big Barda and Batgirl/Cassandra Cain, the real reason you should be reading this book.
Small Bat and Big Barda 4Ever
Is this Cassandra Cain’s first meeting with a New God? I think it is, but I don’t honestly know that I ever read the full breadth of her story. I do know Cassandra arguably got shafted the hardest with the New 52 transition, being completely obliterated from continuity until the Rebirth era and “Batman & Robin Eternal.” Even then, she only recently returned to her Batgirl identity, having used the generic Orphan codename for a spell.
Cass has shone in “Detective Comics” and “Batgirls,” but she’s always been a tough nut to crack. Her backstory is incredibly heavy, and her relationship with the Bat-family has always been a complicated one. Rebirth solved a lot of that by injecting a little more humor into her and playing up her friendships, and that’s where she shines in “Birds of Prey.”
Cass and Big Barda instantly hit it off. You don’t see it develop, but you don’t really need to. They just immediately gel. Best of all, because they’re not a central focus of the book, they get to just be cool BFFs in the background of most stories. So while Oracle and Black Canary are trying to solve the ongoing mystery, Batgirl and Big Barda are busying themselves training and testing Sin…which manifests as a game of laser tag.
More recently, Black Canary was busy training Sin herself, which left Batgirl and Big Barda to hang out and play video games while they waited for their next mission.
Everyone’s a little quippier in “Birds of Prey,” but that was the case with the original 1999 run, too. Both books also put a strong focus on growing friendships and the character dynamics of their rotating casts.
It’s not all fun and games for the two, though. The arc “Bird Undercover” that starts in “Birds of Prey” #14 sees Cassandra go deep undercover to infiltrate a mysterious organization, The Ninth Day, to find missing Amazons. It is an incredibly fraught infiltration, with Cass repeatedly being rebuffed and the Birds anxiously waiting with no clue what’s going on.
Barda takes it the worst, though. She’s a gal of action, dammit, and she just wants to smash some heads, so she spends a not-insignificant portion of the story blowing off steam and expressing her dislike for letting Cassandra get in over her head.
Naturally, it goes pear-shaped in the worst possible ways. It turns out the Amazons are being turned into hulking monsters, and a completely isolated Cassandra has to try to fight mutated animals and Amazons before she, herself, gets dosed, leading to a berserk Cassandra Cain and a stoic Big Barda brawling.
It’s honestly a really sweet payoff of a moment a few issues earlier, where Cassandra saved an infected Big Barda by reminding her, “Hey, you’re Big Barda, this isn’t a problem for you.” But it’s also a gorgeous full-circle thing about two characters who you wouldn’t think make sense as BFFs but would absolutely get along.
Think about it. Are Barda and Cass that different? Barda Free, raised in the hell of Apokolips at the whims of Granny Mercy. Cassandra Cain, born of a loveless tryst to create a perfect assassin, trained by the world’s most ruthless killer. They are two sides of the same coin, and all that truly separates them is that one just happens to be a New God.
It’s the kind of one-in-a-million pairing that oddball books like “Birds of Prey” are built on. There’s never really any reason for these two characters to be in the same room, let alone meet. Even pre-“Flashpoint,” when Cass was a prominent member of the Bat-family and Big Barda a recurring heavy hitter across the DC Universe, they seemingly existed on the opposite ends of the world. We need books like this more than ever, so these great weird pairings can happen, which makes the harsh reality of these books a much more bitter pill to swallow.
Good comics deserve an audience
“Birds of Prey” is definitely Oracle and Black Canary’s book, but I keep coming back for Batgirl and Big Barda. It’s an incredible friendship that I’m going to be gutted to see end when this title wraps up and other writers forget about the pairing. And this title will inevitably end because I know that, statistically speaking, YOU are not reading this book!
Yeah, “Birds of Prey” might be in a rough spot. ICv2 Top 200 rankings (h/t ComicBookRevolution) indicate the book’s performance may be slipping.
| Issue | Month | Ranking |
|---|---|---|
| “Birds of Prey” #12 | August 2024 | 94 |
| “Birds of Prey” #13 | September 2024 | 81 |
| “Birds of Prey” #14 | September 2024 | 159 |
| “Birds of Prey” #15 | November 2024 | 98 |
| “Birds of Prey” #16 | December 2024 | 123 |
| “Birds of Prey” #17 | December 2024 | Unranked |
The book typically debuted with strong numbers, with #1 hitting the charts in the 19th slot and quickly slipping down to 59th with its second issue. Since then, it’s been dipping further and further down the list, particularly in months where issues are solicited or released close together. Most recently, “Birds of Prey” #17 went Unranked, dipping outside of the top 200.
(It’s worth noting that “Birds of Prey” #14 was re-solicited in October 2024, where it ranked 180.)
This is a title that deserves a stronger following. “Birds of Prey,” in its totality, has been one of my favorites on the market today. It’s a fun, white-knuckle adventure with traditionally underutilized characters actually getting some love (make sure you check out the opening two arcs for some great Zealot and Vixen stories!).
All this has been to say you’re probably not reading this book, and you definitely should be. The latest issue, “Birds of Prey” #18, is out now and kicks off a brand-new two-part adventure, so there’s no better time than now to catch up.
