Review: Birds of Prey Vol. 2- Your Kiss Might Kill

Quick Summary

Pros: The characters are still entertaining and receive a good level of development. Action sequences are exciting and over-the-top.

Cons: The inconsistent narrative is tough to become invested in. The artwork is significantly worse than the previous volume.

Overall: The level of entertainment found in this volume is something that will significantly differ from person to person, depending on what they are looking for. Those who only care about seeing the Birds of Prey preform cool stunts while dealing with personal issues will find a lot to love here. However, the book’s plot and artwork are certainly poor enough to turn away a number of readers who aren’t as attached to the characters. This is a book for those who like the Birds of Prey, not those looking for a well written story on its own.

Story

Birds of Prey Vol. 2: Your Kiss Might Kill, by Duane Swierczynski, follows in the footsteps of its predecessor by making sacrifices to the narrative in order to place emphasis on action and character development. This means that the characters really drive this book, their trials and struggles become the source of the vast majority of the book’s positives. However, the actual narrative the characters follow is disjointed and unreliable, making it hard to become invested in what this series is about and where it is going. Overall, this dichotomy means that readers who care about these specific characters and those who care about fun action scenes will leave satisfied, while those who only care about the plot will leave disappointed.

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The book starts out by seemingly discarding any leftover plot threads from the previous volume. The threat from Choke, Batgirl’s reluctance to join the team, and the team’s current rocky relationship are all unresolved story elements that are never returned to. While this is something that will only affect those who read the previous volume, it is still annoying for such a large shakeup to happen this early in a series.

On the flip side, the book also manages to start out and maintain a solid level of action and cool moments from most of the characters. The Birds of Prey go up against, and defeat, criminals specifically designed to counteract their powers, an impressive feat to see play out. Then they take down a nearly invincible villain, survive a plane crash and subsequent explosion, and stage a number of successful attacks on major industries. These moments are bold and exciting and make reading the book feel like watching a fun action movie or big-budget summer blockbuster.

Among these action-filled moments, character development is also constantly in the spotlight. Readers get to see the Birds of Prey band together in a crisis, react to Ivy’s betrayal, and even get to see their origin. These moments strengthen the team and make the characters all the more compelling.

However, a number of odd narrative choices prevent the action and character development from being as entertaining as it could be. The first of these is the rapid pacing. At the moment of her betrayal, Ivy had only been on the team for seven issues, two of which she played a very minor role. Her lack of history with the team makes her betrayal feel less shocking and significantly dampens the impact of the entire reveal. Her control over the team also only lasts two issues, undercutting her significance as a villain as well.

In addition, the lack of fallout from many storylines takes away from some of the drama in the book. For example, the volume starts with a detective investigating a murder that Black Canary supposedly perpetrated. This murder is only brought up again once. The same thing happens when Black Canary states that she killed her husband; this shocking revelation is only barely brought up through the rest of the book. This makes becoming invested in the story harder because you are constantly wary that a seemingly significant moment will have little impact on the future story. I ended the volume doubtful that the cliffhanger ending will materialize into anything at all.

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Art

The change in artistic teams has a significant negative effect on the visual appeal of this series. The first volume saw Jesus Saiz do an average job with both characters and detail. He repeats this here but only has one chapter to do so. In addition, Romano Molenaar only has one chapter here but manages to do a good job with it. His Birds of Prey origin story looks good overall and ends up being one of the best looking issues in this collection.

The rest of the art seen here ranges from bad to awful. The biggest offenders are the multiple issues penciled by Travel Foreman. Flaws here range from a slightly annoying lack of detail to noticeably distorted human body features. These are not good looking chapters and really bring the entire quality of the volume down.

Continuity

Birds of Prey Vol. 2: Your Kiss Might Kill continues the story started in Birds of Prey Vol. 1: Trouble in Mind (Review).

The story here continues in Birds of Prey Vol. 3: A Clash of Daggers (Review).

This volume also references a story from another comic book, detailed below:

• The second chapter, of this volume, is a tie-in to the Night of the Owls event from the Batman series. Our review of the event can be found here.