Book Review: Birds of Prey vol #8

Book: Birds of Prey volume #8: Blood and Circuits (issues #96-103) by Gail Simone with illustrations by various artists

Edition: Single issues

Rating: 5 stars

Review:

It was so worth it going to several comic book stores to find all of these issues. In these fast-paced action packed stories, the Birds of Prey had a lot to deal with.

The Birds of Prey (along with Gypsy helping out) had a very difficult task of trying to stop Talia al Ghul, Cheetah and Felix Faust from trying to get Lori Zechlin a.k.a. Black Alice to join them. But the problem didn't come from those three but from Lori who has become even more powerful. And when Lori is really angry her alter-ego Black Alice a magical prodigy emerges. She's so powerful she even scares Felix Faust.  

Prior to the Birds and the evil trio showing up, Lori was trying her best to be a normal girl and not let her powers take over but she was pushed to the edge and that can only lead to something really terrible.

Meanwhile, back in Gotham city a new Batgirl has shown up taking down criminals as well as Huntress has a former crime boss going after her. The new Batgirl seems to be a bit unstable and Barbara doesn't want the girl to get hurt but it turns out the new hero is tougher than she looks and has a unique catch phrase "Dark Vengeance".

After Huntress and Black Canary dealt with the former crime boss and Barbara tried to literally knock some sense into the new Batgirl, the Birds had to deal with something truly unexpected. Black Canary was going to be leaving the team, Dinah wanted to give Sin (the young girl she rescued back in vol #7) a more stable life. It was a tough decision but she knew it was the right thing to do.

With Dinah leaving, it left the team in a spot because now Barbara was going to have to recruit some new members. And with new members comes a new set of problems that may bring about the end to everything Barbara holds dear. Especially now that one of Barbara's old acquaintances Spy Smasher is doing everything she can to ruin the Birds of Prey. Lois Lane was even included in that plan but one thing Spy Smasher didn't seem to realize is that Lois is nobody's sheep.

I have said this before but Gail Simone does a really good job with how she writes the characters. Each character has their own personality and voice. You get to see who they are and why they do what they do. She's also good at writing an interesting story.

The artwork was good throughout, I just have one teeny tiny little issue and that's with Nicola Scott's artwork (issues #100-103). Everything about it was good but the problem I had was with the way the faces were drawn, they all look the same. But that's also an issue I have with several other artists including Brett Booth. Some artists don't seem to be able to make the characters look different from one another.

Besides that small problem, this was really good. The writing was very good and the scenes when not filled with tons of action had a lot of good character development. Looking forward to reading volume #9.