Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Birds Of Prey, The Early Pitch

From the Ask The Answer Man column in Green Lantern #118 (1979):

I would totally read the hell out of that comic book...

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Oracle Invents eHarmony, Sort Of

In a prequel to the very first Birds Of Prey story, Barbara Gordon is searching for the right female operative for the job...

And yes, you saw right, that is quite the embarrassing "typo":

Anyway, Oracle starts to go through her options, and man, is the woman picky!!

And then she begins to get more in-depth (and desperate)...

C'mon, Babs...make a decision!!

YAAAAA!!!!

Anyway,several more pages of searching (and rejecting), Barbara finally chooses Black Canary, and the rest is history.

Of course, I wouldn't want to be the one to tell Dinah she was Oracle's last choice, would you?

From Birds Of Prey Secret Files 2003

Manic Monday Bonus--The Tabloids Of Gotham City

You know, the celebrity trash press in Gotham City must be pretty interesting...

And sometimes it gets downright tawdry...

Oh, and that Penguin story?

EEEEEWWWWWWWWW!!!!!

Don't worry, genteel reader...Oswald Cobblepot himself assures us that it isn't true...

Oh, poor Ozzie...

From Birds Of Prey Secret Files 2003

Manic Monday--Breakfast With The Penguin

As much as I hate to admit it, there are times when I just have to agree with the Penguin...

You tell 'em, Oswald. It's always a good timer for waffles.

From Birds Of Prey Secret Files 2003

Spoiler Saturday--Birds Of Prey #10

I'm about to spoil the living hell out of Birds Of Prey #10, so if you don't wanna know, click away now and come back after you've read it...

Life is funny sometimes. I wrote a bunch about Black Canary, her powers and her origins earlier this week, and specifically noted that the nu52 was being unduly cryptic about both.

And then this happened, the very same week.

Earlier in the issue, Dinah took her sonic scream powers to new levels, not merely being a really loud noise, but...


...a fully functional, missile and explosion stopping force field.

And then, facing an uncrossable gorge, she takes it to yet another level:







Yes. Black Canary can now fly.

Aside from the obvious--

*You'll believe a canary can fly!
*Well, if Banshee can, than it's only reasonable...
*DC's Marvel fetish just reached whole new levels of copy-cattedness

--aside from that, the question each of us must answer for ourselves is this:

In the old 52, much was made of Dinah's fighting prowess, how she had made herself into one of the top unarmed combatants in the world, how she could step into a match with Lady Shiva and not be immediately dead. Her Canary Cry was there only as the occasional Get Out Of A Tight Jam Free Card.

But now, Dinah can project force fields and fly with her voice. (And, no doubt, soon they'll have her making solid sound constructs and controlling minds, stopped only by Vibranium...)

So the question is, does this diminish her character, by making those hard-fought for and long-admired physical fighting skills pretty much unnecessary? Does jumping her up 4 or 5 levels of superhuman power suddenly make her less of an appealing character, less of an "everywoman"? Is the special "thing" that made Black Canary what she was gone now??

Then again, for a large majority of her modern career, she already had one superpower, albeit one that was hard to control and kept getting lost and refound. Given that she already had one deus ex machina for writing her way out of corners, are a couple of new manifestations really so bad? Is this really any different than Sue Storm suddenly developing force fields?

I honestly don't know...or at least I haven't quite made up my mind about it. Any input from youse guys?

Foreshadowing?

Graffiti on the wall of a Gotham City alley in Birds Of Prey #2:

If you can't make out the "insane goth" font, it says:

TWO-FACE IS GOD/THE DEVIL

Hmmm...it could be just random. Then again, you don't see a single other piece of graffiti anywhere else in the issue.

Is Gail Simone about to give us a story involving a Two-Face worshiping cult?

Hmm....

I Heard The News Today, Oh Boy

Something familiar about this news story...

Good question, Batman.

Now, this is pretty transparently a gimmick set-up for a relaunch of some type. Last week, Dan DiDio was going on about how the "Battle for the Cowl" is going to be a huge thing for the Bat titles, how it's all about "generations and legacy," "sidekicks and other characters that inhabit Batman's world."

Even under normal circumstances, the likelihood that these 3 Bat-related comics, whose sales are pretty much mid-range, would be canceled simultaneously is win-the-lottery unlikely. But given that these guys are all going to be involved in the Battle for the Cowl, it seems clear to me that this is a stunt, and March or April will see relaunches (perhaps preceded by some one-shots/mini-series, as happened with the Outsiders relaunch).

But hey we're all talking about it, so as a publicity stunt it worked, right?

Spoiler Alert

Dear Sean McKeever and Mike Carlin,

If you want the surprise reveal on page 16 of the villain who's been lurking around all issue to actually BE a surprise reveal,

Maybe you shouldn't broadcast his presence ON THE BLEEDING COVER OF THE ISSUE.

Idjits.