In this review of Birds of Prey #21, as the Birds of Prey are attacked on all sides, all over the globe, the world is about to learn why the Birds are of PREY!
Birds of Prey #21 main cover by Annie Wu (DC Comics)
Birds of Prey #21
On the Run, part 2
Writer: Kelly Thompson
Artist: Sami Basri
Colors: Adriano Lucas
Main Cover: Annie Wu
Variant Covers: Nimit Malavia, Rian Gonazales, Cliff Chiang, Lee Garbett
Release Date: May 7, 2025
This review contains Spoilers
As Big Barda plummets to earth from an exploded rocket, Babs desperately calls a Code Black for a downed Bird. Cass Batgirl and Sin/Megaera fight in the Gotham Sewers, while Black Canary shrieks her Canary Cry at the snake villain Copperhead in Tokyo. Canary refuses to run, despite Oracle’s orders.
Batgirl fights a cheetah-type villain with super speed, figuring out how to punch where she WILL be, and saves Sin from a soul-stealing sorcerer villain. They leave the seward and escape together.
In a shadowy Gotham army base, the mysterious drone controlling villain Daemon assembles their forces – the cheetah and sorcerer villains from the sewers, Copperhead from Tokyo, and Inque from Dubai, now in Barda form.
Analysis
After a really excellent first issue where writer Thompson and artist Basri drop our experienced heroines into a much bigger fire than they expected, we see the fallout of those fights in this issue. Not a ton of character development or moments for the heroines this time, though Canary and Oracle both get nice lines in their monologues and dialogues. However, the focus on desperate action and villains who seemingly have intelligence and planning instead of just blundering around fighting the heroines gives a nice sense of a plot instead of a car crash of events. Thompson continues to have a really strong sense of the voices of these characters and how to write an action packed, straightforward story with nice mystery and twist elements that feel like the classic Dixon and Simone Birds of Prey. Two solid issues in, this arc “On the Run” promises to be at the least very entertaining!
