Ladies and gentlemen, may I present: Lady Blackhawk’s impossibly adorable dimples!

Dimples!

DIMPLES!

OMG TEH DIMPLEZ!!1!

All art from Birds of Prey #113-115, pencils by Nicola Scott and inks by Doug Hazlewood.

And on a serious note, ya ever noticed that most comic artists tend to draw most women exactly alike except for their costumes and hairstyles? (Michael Turner, Rob Liefeld, Ed Benes, I’m looking at you.) It’s really nice to see a character who doesn’t look like she was born in the clone-vats of Ceti-IV. I wish more artists would put more effort into drawing female characters who look different from each other…

 

Birds of Prey #115

Huntress goes on a road trip with Lady Blackhawk and her impossibly adorable dimples to find the evil villain Killer Shark, who used to inject her with Evil Drugs back in the ’40s. Their plane crashes in the ocean, and they go swimming, where they get attacked by monster eels. Once they make it to Killer Shark’s island, he gets the drop on them. Meanwhile, magic-using goth Black Alice joins the group, and of course, Misfit hates her, because Oracle treats Black Alice as a valued team member and never has a kind word for Misfit. Anyway, in the end, Black Alice ends up stealing Misfit’s powers.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Black Alice is an amazingly cool character, and it’s great to see her get a bit more exposure. Misfit’s reactions to Black Alice seem appropriately realistic, and Huntress’ fear of drowning is also pretty well-done. And again, Lady Blackhawk has the world’s most completely awesome dimples. Go pick this one up — it’s lots of fun.

 

The Brave and the Bold #10

The Challengers of the Unknown tangle with the monster inside the Book of Destiny and find out what Megistus is after. Meanwhile, within the stories of the Book of Destiny, Superman travels in time to team up with the Silent Knight, and the Teen Titans team up with Aquaman. And an unexpected hero is fighting on Megistus’ side.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The Teen Titans/Aquaman story was ehh, okay, but I was really surprised by how much I liked the Superman/Silent Knight story. You’ve never heard of the Silent Knight, have you? He’s an old, old character, created for the very first issue of the original run of “The Brave and the Bold” back in 1955, which is just part of what makes his appearance here so cool. He lives in medieval England, and he’s just a kid who’s found a suit of magical armor. He can actually talk, but he stays quiet when he’s wearing his armor because if the guy running his village finds out about him, he’ll try to have him killed. Anyway, that little burst of out-of-the-blue Silver-Age fantasy made the story way, way more fun than I was expecting it to be.

 

The Flash #237

Flash flunks some job interviews and helps Superman fight a robot yeti. The kids try to steal Superman’s cape and fight Livewire.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Groooaaan, why isn’t this comic book cooler than it is? The Flash is just about the coolest character DC has, with the best powers, and they still can’t find anyone who’ll put together a good story about him. Even the robot yeti is dull. Who ever heard of a dull robot yeti?!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if it’s Friday night, it must be time for Friday Night Fights!

From Birds of Prey #112, by Tony Bedard and David Cole: Lady Blackhawk may be a booze-swilling, short-skirted, hard-fighting, time-tossed temptress, but she always insists on good manners.

Bahlactus always plays by the rules!

 

Groo: Hell on Earth #3

When last we left the mighty (but fairly dim) barbarian warrior Groo the Wanderer, he had been named the general of an army and was questing about mostly at random looking for another army to fight. Meanwhile, the Sage was trying to get all the different nations to stop abusing the environment — unfortunately, no one wants to take his advice because it would mean they’d have to work! Work’s no fun!

In this issue, much of the same. Groo is still leading his reluctant army, and the Sage is still meeting nothing but frustration when trying to convince anyone about what’s going on. But among all that, we get Groo interrogating pigs, Groo and his dog Rufferto gleefully feasting on rotten bison meat, the Sage getting on the bad end of an exploding cow belch, and Groo finally — finally! — running into a real army he can fight!

Verdict: Thumbs up. Groo is grand fun, no matter what.

 

Birds of Prey #114

Oracle is angry at herself over the failure of the mission last issue and the heavy loss of life, so she’s pushing herself and the rest of the BoP way too hard. She’s also taking out a lot of her frustrations on Misfit. Huntress and the time-displaced Lady Blackhawk go out drinkin’, and Lady B. runs into Killer Shark, an old enemy from back in the ’40s. Oh, and Black Alice shows up wanting to join the team.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of cool stuff in this issue. Lady Blackhawk talking about her AARP card. Huntress getting drunk. Misfit being terrified — rightfully — of having to fight Oracle. The Question refusing to play Oracle’s games. Lady Blackhawk’s thoroughly adorable dimples. And Black Alice is always a lot of fun — it’ll be fun to see her next issue.

Hey, I had January 1st off from work. Yay for me, right? Well, on New Year’s Eve, I spent many fun-filled hours playing City of Heroes, I got to go to sleep late, I got to wake up late… and from that point on, I pretty much had the worst day off imaginable. Let’s just leave it at that — if I could have a day off to recover from my day off, that would be just awesome. Anyway, let’s hit a quick review.

Birds of Prey #113

Believe it or not, this is actually the first issue of this comic I’ve ever read. And I dug it, so I’ll be picking up more of them.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, it’s about a mostly covert team of superheroes organized by Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl now operating as a super-hacker called Oracle. The classic Birds of Prey team was just Oracle, operating behind the scenes, and Black Canary, doing all the fighting. The current team is a bit larger — Oracle is still the leader, with Huntress, Lady Blackhawk, and a somewhat crazed teenager named Misfit helping out.

This issue, the team is tracking a girl who wants desperately to be a major crime boss and is apparently planning on blowing up a truck bomb in Metropolis to do it. Huntress is riding the truck trying to talk the girl down, Lady Blackhawk is flying a plane in to try to blow it up a bit more safely from the air, Misfit is being over-exuberant and goofy, and Babs is trying to keep everything together. And the whole mission goes way, way bad. Like hundreds-of-people-dying bad. And when that many people die in Metropolis, Superman’s gonna want to have a word with the people involved.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good grief, why didn’t I get on this comic years ago? The characterizations are fun, the action is great, and I love the way they get Oracle involved even while she’s just sitting in front of a bunch of computers. And Misfit is my new Favorite-Character-This-Month. I would love to see a Misfit miniseries. Anyone this funny needs a lot more guest appearances in comics.