Tag Archives: Duane Swierczynski

I feel like Saiz must have coordinated with colorist June Chung, like he let her know he was going to go light on detail and she’d need to shade in what he should have otherwise been drawing. The art on Birds of Prey feels rushed and only the occasional Saiz greatness shines through.

It’s upsetting. The book at least had good art.

Swierczynski brings Poison Ivy onto the team–though it’s hard to figure out when everyone votes her in–and it does add some flavor to the story. There’s such a lack of personality, Ivy can’t help but spruce it up.

Get it? Spruce?

Anyway, the standard problem is still extant. Swierczynski’s creation for the series, Starling, is still without personality and just a blah character. Oh, wait, she makes fun of Katana and then Swierczynski chickens out of Katana’s reaction.

Besides the occasional signs of life, it’s lame.

Swierczynski’s Birds of Prey shows exactly why the comic needs two strong leads. Having Dinah partner up with some lame brained new character devoid of personality just shows all the cracks in the concept. Even having Katana, who Swierczynski writes better than anyone else, show up doesn’t help things. Swierczynski’s set the book up with Dinah deceiving everyone, just so he can have soft cliffhangers with Poison Ivy.

But Saiz’s artwork is so great this issue—there aren’t many stupid looking bad guys this time, just one it seems—I’m finding it difficult not to support the book. Saiz has a nice way of not objectifying the characters. Though the costume designs might force him in that direction. Black Canary looks more and more like Brubaker’s Sharon Carter all the time.

There’s no compelling villain, which the book definitely needs. But Swierczynski’s improving and his writing is getting reassuringly mediocre.

It’s been a while since I’ve read a Duane Swierczynski comic book, so I forgot how badly he writes dialogue. He should teach a class in verbose declarative statements.

That defect—and his interesting comfort having a female character refer to herself as “bitch”—aside, Birds of Prey isn’t terrible. Jesus Saiz is a good artist. In some ways, of the good artists DC has on these relaunch titles, Saiz is the only one who doesn’t let himself get lazy. He does his work.

There’s a fair amount of new origin stuff here, but Swierczynski’s a deceptive writer—one who doesn’t have enough faith in the material being good so he has to pace out revelations to keep up interest. I mean, Black Canary’s a fugitive. Batgirl doesn’t want to be her partner. Instead, the new partner’s Starling, which is pretty dumb superhero name.

It’s without value, but not worthless.