Birds of Prey: Murder and Mystery

Birds of Prey (1999) (New Editions)

by Gail Simone, Ed Benes (Illustrator), Cliff Richards (Illustrator)

Just in time for the release of Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) comes the seminal story that brought the Birds of Prey into the spotlight of the DC Universe!

Written by award winning author Gail Simone, Birds of Prey: Mystery & Murder explores the relationships and pulse pounding action that made the Birds of Prey the premier female super team!

In a tricky legal and ethical dilemma, the Birds of Prey must show mercy to a would-be white-collar criminal, but their act of compassion brings them to the attention of master extortionist (and one-time super-hero) Savant, a man who claims he can outthink Oracle and outfight the Canary...and can prove it!

And just when things seem to be settling down for our heroines, Black Canary is sent to China on a mission of mercy and runs into the DC Universe's most deadly combatant: Lady Shiva! But Shiva has an agenda of her own, while making Canary an offer that could change the course of her life.

Collects: Birds of Prey #56-67

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Dc Comics, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics, Fiction, Comic Book

296 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2004

About the author

Gail Simone is a comic book writer well-known for her work on Birds of Prey (DC), Wonder Woman (DC), and Deadpool (Marvel), among others, and has also written humorous and critical commentary on comics and the comics industry such as the original "Women in Refrigerators" website and a regular column called "You'll All Be Sorry".

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the first conversation between Oracle and Black Canary, you can instantly tell this was written by a woman. It just sounds like how two women who are close friends would talk to one another. She quickly works on strengthening the bonds between the two characters. This seems to be the beginning of opening up the team to a larger group of heroines from the DC universe on an as needed basis, giving the book a bit of a Mission: Impossible feel. The highlight of the book continues to be the character interactions.

The weird juxtaposition of the book is that even though you have a woman writing the book, Ed Benes's art, while technically pretty and clean, is all crotch shots and taut boobs with costumes only covering half their butts. It's very cringey. It's like he went out of his way to make the art pervy.

This replaces two older collections, Birds of Prey, Vol. 3: Of Like Minds and Birds of Prey, Vol. 4: Sensei and Student

[Diz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first part of the book is a bit irritating because it features Savant, a character that I can't really stand. However, it picks up steam when it shifts focus to a story that features Black Canary, Lady Shiva, and Cheshire. The interactions and the tension between these characters are a joy to read.

[Khurram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Team building

I loved this book. The team of Gail Simone and Ed Benes created an awesome story, great artwork, great characters, and even better character development.

Black Cannery is the field agent to Oracle, but when she is captured, Oracle has no choice but to bring in a woman in Gotham she does not fully trust/like, The Huntress.

The second story arc follows the fall out from the first but also has the Black Cannery following a personal erend, but she has no idea how personal this mission is for her. Also, Oracle finds out she is not as unreachable as she thought. Many favours will be needed and called in.

Awesome series, great foundation for these characters. It is a very good overall story with great artwork, making the ladies look great and lots of butt kicking action. Great banter, even about each others costumes. The book finishes with character profiles of the main characters.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a terrific collection of some of Simone's Birds of Prey run, surely the best female superhero team from the last century. Simone gives the characters depth and life and illustrates their friendships and rivalries and goals subtly via their interactions, not by just stating how things are to be perceived. She's certainly one of the best comics writers ever, and Batgirl/Oracle and Black Canary are probably her two best characters. Lady Shiva, Huntress, and Cheshire figure prominently, too, and there are pleasant appearances by a host of others, including Catwoman, Batgirl (Cassandra Cain), etc. (The only really annoying character is Savant, and I suppose that's the point.) In the first half, Black Canary is taken captive and Huntress is enlisted to help rescue her, and in the second she travels to Japan to avenge the death of her teacher, but there's a whole lot of other interesting stuff transpiring simultaneously. (Simone plots and writes wonderfully, did I mention that?) The art is problematical; it's very vibrant and attractive and colorful, but also very objectifying, which seems to be kind of in opposition to the theme. The book collects issues 56-67, and it should be noted that a few years back DC released the first half as Volume 3: Of Like Minds and the second half as Volume 4: Sensei and Student, so if you have read those books, you've already read this one.

[Artemis Crescent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thankfully, this is much better than I thought it would be.

'Birds of Prey: Murder and Mystery' - combining the original comic volumes 'Of Like Minds' and 'Sensei and Student' - is one of the few 'Birds of Prey' titles I've come to like. Which is quite a relief for me as I'm a huge fan of female-led superhero teams, and I'd hate to be disappointed by one of the popular examples. This is 'Birds of Prey' in its original, back to the basics, classic DC line, as penned by the ever-awesome Gail Simone.

This big volume is clever, intriguing, sharp, snappy, funny, and full of badass, kick-ass and boss-ass women. I can see what some people mean when they call it well-written cheesecake. Because, while the writing and female character development and interactions are excellent (you can definitely tell it was written by a woman), the artwork just can't resist emphasising female crotch shots, big breasts, cleavages, and arses (with thongs riding right up the crack) from time to time. In almost ten years of reading comics, I can't believe I only now noticed how often women are drawn from behind with snake-like spines, with their arses sticking out in very unnatural and uncomfortable-looking poses. Like, do some straight male artists think that women don't simply stand up, but bend slightly but not all the way so it looks like they can't quite commit to pole dancing?

Note on the trade cover: images are obviously traced over something else and photoshopped into limited space; why is Huntress surfboarding a keyboard? What is Black Canary looking at? And why is Oracle wearing sunglasses when she doesn't at any point in the actual comic?

If you can ignore instances of typical male-gazey and sexist comic book art autonomy, then you'll find that the characterisation more than makes up for that. I've come to appreciate Dinah Lance a lot more now, when she's this well written and three dimensional (and far less male dependent). Never mind about the fishnet stockings. She's one of the best martial artists and endurance champions in the world; she doesn't always need to use her canary cry to beat bad guys. She's tough but friendly and compassionate, like the super intelligent Barbara Gordon as Oracle. Barbara is as amazing as ever, as a tech genius, a world class hacker, and a deductive detective who can rival Batman (you also find out here that she likes teddy bears! Aww!). The crossbow-wielding Huntress has her moments of vigilante coolness as well. The violent, violet Italian former mob boss's daughter is shown to have less of a civilian identity than the other two, though; her nighttime caped escapades are her life.

It's not always easy for these women to be friends, for many different reasons, but they can depend on each other, and support one another. They make a wonderful team.

Other awesome female characters include Shiva, Cheshire, Cassandra Cain as Batgirl, Catwoman, Katana, Gypsy (these latter four are cameos, really), and Dinah's mother, the original Black Canary, who is shown in a flashback issue when Dinah is uncovering a mystery (there are a load of those lying and filing around). Good, bad, morally grey: all kinds of strong and utterly human women are featured and are empowered in this comic. Regardless of whose side they are on, they help to take down rich, privileged old white men in positions of power who have gotten away with murder and sexual assault and scandals for decades. That is always gratifying to see.

A downside to 'Murder and Mystery' is that there is a lot going on in it that you need to pay close attention to - it's complex and intricate, not all of it brainless cheesecake. I won't reveal the plot(s) here because I don't wish to spoil anything, and also because it would be fairly difficult to describe what happens in a few short sentences. Two male villains in the comic are gay, or at least one of them is(?), but they are given depth and are fleshed out; they don't exist for one story.

It is so good to be able to finally read an old 'Birds of Prey' comic by Gail Simone and see what the fuss has been about. This trade paperback isn't that expensive, at any rate. Smart, dark and writhing with twists and turns, and women overcoming the corrupt, toxic and deadly mess that is the patriarchy. I recommend it.

Superheroine and antiheroine power!

Final Score: 3.5/5

[Highland G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it. A couple of art inconsistencies here and there and black canary has a slightly different backstory to what I remember reading recently but overall this could well be on its way to being my favourite Gail Simone work. Its just great story telling.

[Nicole Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read that makes me want to read the rest in the series.

https://nicolewbrown.blogspot.com/202...

[Colin Post · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been meaning to check out Gail Simone’s work on this series, and I was finally motivated after being floored by Kelly Thompson’s new Birds of Prey #1. Simone’s work here is marvelous: the characters are alive, the story zips, full of exciting action, and there’s a biting and smart feminist critique underlying the whole thing. But the art is so outdated in the most contradictory way: all the women characters have the exact same body type with comically exaggerated breasts and butts. There’s still a tendency to oversexualize women characters in comics but it was pretty jarring to open up this book from just 20 years ago and see the dramatic difference. It really did make it hard to read at times but I’m overall very glad I did.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this book! Cannot say enough good things about this collection. Cannot wait for the new collected edition of Simone's run coming later this year. I hope DC collects all of the remaining issues. I would also love to have Simone's run in an Omnibus. Why has that not happened already? Comic book perfection.

By the way, ignore that dumb and terrible Birds of Prey movie. Read this instead. DC really screwed up the Birds of Prey film.

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has its endearing moments of friendship and teamwork between lady superheroes and super villains. I like that it starts off berating white collar criminals for stealing their worker's retirements and mostly makes fun of the villain Savant for being a privileged rich kid. There is a brief subplot where the characters go to Asia and despite most of the characters being authentic and realistic women there is a lot of sexualization in that art, pretty typical of the genre.

[Shaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

[Flora · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book that I read was “Birds of prey: Murder and Mystery” by Gail Simone. The author’s objectives are to show that you can do anything. You shouldn’t let injuries or other people stop you from doing what you love and feel is the right thing to do. There is a lot of female empowerment because you are following female hero’s on their adventure to stop crime. We begin the book following Black Canary and Oracle as they try to stop a corrupt businessman. Though this leads to a much bigger enemy named Savant who Kidnapes Black Canary, to try and get to Oracle. Though Oracle calls in the huntress which can save Black Canary. Though Black Canary suffered some injuries and is in a wheelchair for a little while. She has to get used to not be being able to use her legs, just like Oracle. Oracle used to be Batwomen, but when she was hot in the spine by the Jocker she turned into Oracle. Fighting crome from the computers, and helping all of the JSA members. Once Black canary is healed she goes to see her Dying sensei, where she meets another one of his students Shiva. They go to get a drink and are attacked by some gang members, they realize they are a distraction and go back to their sensei. Their sensei was killed by poison, even though he was already on his death bed. They know that Chesire is a position matter and go to confront her. They can surprise Cheshire when she sleeps and begin to integrate on why she killed their sensei. At this time Oracle is kidnapped by a senator because he is afraid that Oracle has information on him. He is working with Savant to find Oracle. Meanwhile Black canary and Shiva learn that Chesire is being framed by the senator, and they head back to the U.S. so Chaesire can prove her innocence. Oracle can call Huntress for help, even though Oracle doesn’t entirely trust Huntress because of past actions. She still relies on her to get her out of her kidnapping. Huntress follows through and can get oracle free from her captors. When Black Canary, Shiva, and Cheshire reach the U.S canary goes to look for information that her mom left behind, WHile Shiva stays with Cheisr, though this is when we lawn that Cheshire is fooling them and is going to use Shiva as a decoy. This way Chesire can kill the senator, and then use shiva’s dead body as her dead body, hat way everyone thinks she is dead. Though Shiva survives, and Black Canary, Huntress, Oracle, and even Catwomen team up to take Cheshire down. They save the senator and take him and savant down. Black Canary can finally say goodbye to her sensei and makes sure he has a good funeral. Oracle learns that you shouldn’t hold grudges for something that happen in the past, because they could be a great ally in the future. Shiva realized that other people can help her. I think that author did a very good job of delivering an interesting story and a story with good morals. I really like how the main charters were all females, who were strong and independent. They didn’t let anyone tell them what to do, or how to act. I think that this is an important message that young women need to learn. You can do whatever you want, and you don’t need someone else. Even though Oracle is unable to use her legs she found another way to fight crime and help other people. Black Canary didn’t let anyone tell her what to d, and that she couldn’t be a hero. If Oracle didn’t want to work with her because she didn’t want Black Canary to get hurt. Black Canary decided that she would work by herself, and trained even harder to get stronger. Another lesson that Oracle learned is not to hold grudges as she did with the huntress. A lot of the time women will take other women down, and it is important to realize for women to realize that other women aren’t out o get you. Women should help each other out and it would help them succeed and become stronger. It also shows that keeping a friendship open could have great benefits in the future. I would recommend this book to others it is an amazing read, with great storylines and morals. The illustrations were done well and were quite enjoyable to read.

[Arianna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank GOD Cheshire was in this book because she was the only good element of it. This volume features one of the worst villain line-ups I've ever seen: you have a blond guy whose only saving grace is he kinda looks like Azrael, his homosexual lover and the guy they're blackmailing. Then a senator, his serial killer father and his special needs son who's also a gifted hacker. That sounds like a lot of uninteresting people, but the actual story features even more of them.

The attempt here is to create broad narratives that interweave many, many, MANY story elements but the result is clumsy at best, never cohesive and overall really confusing.

This effect is only worsened by the mediocre art. The artist has no attention for detail as evidenced by a plane sequence where Dinah is initially occupying an aisle seat and in the next page she's in the middle seat. I guess he was distracted by all the female body parts he got to draw, which seem to have bothered some readers but I would personally rank as the second best element after Cheshire. The layouts were awful, there was never any clear flow, plus the integration of all those extra elements like Dinah's thoughts and the pieces of her memoir (it only comes up once and it's not even the only memoir in the book) made everything more confusing.

As far as the actual Birds of Prey are concerned, I don't even know what to say. Dinah's only personality traits are that she's nice and good at fighting - good for her. She has the most lukewarm moral quandaries here, that never result in any visible distress and are immediately solved whenever they come up. Barbara is less nice but still quite nice, and good at hacking - good for her. She makes worse moral choices than Dinah but she doesn't get any comeuppance that she wouldn't have got if she didn't make those choices, so I'm not sure what the point of that was. And then you have Huntress who is not nice, but she's good at fighting (not as good at fighting as Dinah though!) and she's only used as a deus ex machina to save people when they're in trouble.

Overall I hope this was just a clumsy start and the other volumes will be better.

[Jadyn❀ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stand by what I said in the update I posted while reading this, which is that the art is distracting in a bad way. I know men are the biggest comics reading audience there is, but it’s a crime how obviously designed for the male gaze this art is. I’d be reading and stop short, thinking “really, this is the angle we needed for this panel?” Or “was this outfit really necessary?”
And all of this is even more of a shame because the Birds of Prey got a woman writer with this volume, and that’s undoubtedly a win. It’s not flawless writing— there’s still some choices I didn’t love, but I was pleased with it overall. The choice to bring on The Huntress was a great move and I mourn the fact that she is missing from the current 2025 Birds lineup.
I even liked Shiva here, and I normally find her way more annoying.
Maybe Savant and Cheshire took all of the annoying for this volume.
Savant is scary in a real way. Like, what happened to Dinah during that arc was genuinely terrifying and I don’t want to downplay that. But the character is so intolerable. I think they must keep reminding you that he’s hot to make that his one good quality but it really didn’t work for me. Women who are victimized by men aren’t usually stuck on how hot they are. I don’t really care if he has an extremely minor redemption later. He still sucks.
As for Cheshire, I think she was a good choice of villain for this arc because she’s no stranger to playing that role for the Birds of Prey. Her weird motivations regarding Roy and Lian’s relationships with Dinah were so strange though, and I honestly didn’t find them to be compelling enough motivations for everything she did. What it comes down to basically is that she’s jealous. Yawn.
The real highlight here was Barbara and Dinah, as usual. I love watching their friendship continue to grow.
Finally, Simone is a proponent of giving librarians their flowers (literally), which I can obviously appreciate.
I look forward to reading on.

[rhian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plot was great, but the art style is so sexist it really does take away from the wonderful writing. I’ve removed any comics done by this illustrator for future reads because I simply cannot take the writing serious enough when I am getting the most sexualized positions and costumes you could possibly have for every woman on almost every page. The writing is definitely a 4/5, but the art is a 2/5.

[Jipi Perreault · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wity dialogues and sumptuous art. The only nitpick I have would be that the avalanche of butts and boobs will distracting from what's going on.

[Snafulina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Awesome story, but tits and asses are a bit much and the plotting is horrible at times.
Still, the story is fun and finally smth written by a woman 🙌🏻

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Birds of Prey: Murder & Mystery by Gail Simone (Art By Ed Benes)
★ ★ ★ ★

“But I thought you, of all people, understood… I need to do good. I have to help people, if I can. It’s the only thing I do that makes any sense. If that’s how I go out, so be it. I’m no one’s sidekick anymore, Babs. You’re going to have to trust me as your field agent. That’s all there is to it”

This was such a great read! Murder & Mystery collects Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds, Birds of Prey: Feeding The Game, and Birds of Prey: Sensei & Student (my personal favourite).

Simone is such a fantastic writer - she brings the perfect amount of wit, heart and badassery to the table. She is especially skilled at writing authentic women that readers can connect with. There can be a lot of “menwritingwomen” in the realm of comics, so it’s refreshing to see a female writer do justice to these awesome characters in a way that feels meaningful and representative. I really enjoyed Oracle and Black Canary’s relationship, and I enjoyed Huntress coming into the fold as well. I look forward to reading more of Simone’s Birds of Prey run, as well as her New 52 Batgirl run.

Ed Benes’ art was overall nice too. It could be a bit cheesecakey at times, which was kind of jarring in juxtaposition to Simone’s writing. But he’s really good at capturing characters’ emotions, especially in close-up panels. There was definitely a lot to appreciate in what he had to offer.

[Duncan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by Gail Simone and drawn for the most part by Ed Benes (one story is drawn by Michael Golden), this is a book from the early 2000's which I bought thinking I'd probably read these in comic form 15 or so years ago. I used to buy Birds of Prey comics but if I read any of these I don't remember. These Birds of Prey stories are interesting because unlike most other superheroes they don't have magical or super powers (except for Black Canary's sonic scream which she uses far too little, I mean if I had that ability I would use it all the time to take out my enemies but for some reason BC would rather use karate chops and jiu-jitsu kicks to take out baddies).
The big selling point of these stories is the art by Ed Benes, who was one of the best pencillers of beautiful women in the comics world. The stories are fine, nothing to complex to follow but nothing too compelling either. Standard super hero stuff. I remember it seemed to me at the time I bought this book a year or two ago it was imperative I buy it now before someone else did because the book was more expensive on the internet and I got it for cover price. But as so often happens it stayed in my "to-read" pile for a long time before I actually got around to reading it. It wasn't disappointing at all, about what I expected. Okay middle-brow comic fare.

[harley :D · Rating 5 out of 5]

okay so this is definitely the best volume so far EVER everything about this is awesome and after 50 something issues they finally had a female writer and you can see the difference SO much it’s so refreshing

gail simone is putting chuck dixon in a corner with how awesome this is oh my god because the bringing of huntress in this arc and seeing the development of the characters of barbara and dinah is so awesome and huntress being there too is so nice and the three of them interacting is honestly one of my favourite things EVER

and having an arc focus on barbara are always my favourite ones and this was just beautiful and having the dual story usually disappoints but both stories were so amazing?? like dinah lady shiva and cheshire is something so amazing and finally having some not so terrible characterization of lady shiva is so refreshing oh my god

I also like the callback to dinahs mom and the general focus on her backstory and her character itself and not just being a sex object is soooo good oh my god also dinah and shiva being freaky is something I wasn’t expecting at ALL but now im kind of obsessed with it, I really hope they interact more with each other in the future

also the art was just so beautiful and I especially love how barbara is drawn especially the cover it’s in very oracle fashion and it’s just really amazing and i love it so much oh my god

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gail Simone is an excellent write. That said, the real question is how well a reader will do tolerating the art.

Technically speaking, the art isn't bad. But it's misogynist. Let's say, Ed Benes is one of the artists who made the Hawkeye Initiative necessary. (For those who don't know, the Hawkeye Initiative had people replacing comicbook images of women with men (usually Hawkeye) in the same exact pose.

Gail Simone has the characters comment on how ridiculous their costumes are (which was probably as much DC in general's fault, as much as Benes' fault). One wishes that some of these characters were 4th wall breaking to comment on why tf the panel angle nominally of one character talking at a distance from the viewpoint shows a close up of a woman's costumed butt filling half of the panel.

(Many of the men are similarly ridiculous in the degree that they are muscle bound--to the point where they probably shouldn't be able to move, and certainly have muscles that don't exist in the human body).

[Nate]

Simone has a great ear for dialogue. It’s witty, snappy, and other words ending in y. Her dialogue makes this a fun read that flows well. She also has a strong handle on these characters. Each has a distinct voice, while they all go through tangible changes here, especially Babs and Dinah. She writes them well alone and together. Now, the stories are where I run into trouble, because none of them excited me very much. The second major arc, “Sensei and Student,” goes on too long, though it does contain probably the best issue in the book (the flashback issue with Dinah’s mom). And then there’s Ed Benes’ art, which is... fine. It’s ugly at times and oversexualized but fairly standard for the genre. So all in all, a decent start to Simone’s run. The character work is where this series shines and I’m hoping the actual plot improves soon.

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've generally liked Simone's writing in the past with various volumes of Batgirl, Secret Six, Red Sonja and Uncanny X-Men so I was hopeful with this acclaimed run. This stood out for me from those previous volumes and had me hooked a third of the way through the issues.

I thought the dialogue between the characters was very natural and I particularly enjoyed the middle issues where Barbara and Dinah try to work things out.

The trip to Hong Kong was fun as someone with East Asian heritage. It's interesting seeing Simone's interest here and in her other work.

The flashback issue to the original Canary was great.

The artwork was well done through all the issues but I'm less of a fan of the very 90s style these days.

I bought this volume to give a well known DC run a go without necessarily planning on reading more but I'll definitely be ordering the next volume!

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the better books in the Bat-Family read. Short version: Gail Simone is really good, and if you're a comics person, you should just read anything she's written. Her run on Birds really defined the series, and this is the first volume of her run. It expands the characters of Oracle, Huntress, and Black Canary, giving all of them more depth and humanity. And the writing is just good. The plot moves along at a great pace and the book is driven by character and plot, not just by fight scenes. The only thing stopping me from giving it a 5 star review is that the last issue doesn't quite stick the landing.

If you're a fan of Birds of Prey, Gail Simone, or the Bat Family, this is a really great read.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeśli chodzi o historię w tym komiksie to jest naprawdę genialnie obmyślona. Kiedy wydaje się, że z danej sytuacji nie ma wyjścia, bohaterki dają radę coś wymyślić. W ogóle połączenie Black Canary, Oracle i Huntress jest ciekawe. Każda z nich ma swój niepowtarzalny charakter, ale wszystkie bez wyjątku są silne i niezależne. Kreska Eda Benesa pokazuje te kobiety w dziwnych, nienaturalnych pozycjach, czyli ze złamanym kręgosłupem i nieco je seksualizuje. Nie jestem jednak jakoś mocno za to zła, bo bohaterki charakteryzuje seksapil, mógłby być jedynie trochę inaczej przedstawiony. Dzięki temu komiksowi całkowicie zakochałam się w Huntress.

[João Filipi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! First thing i wanna talk about is the story arc! Simone is a talented writer, so it is not a surprise that the story is excellent! The dynamics between our main heroines are amazing too

Oracle is just the best, she is badass and also very human! You can see that she is the most complex out of the three main characters

Black Canary is just amazing! Her pure heart, one-liners and her overall badass fighting scenes are just too good

Huntress is the least developed yet, but im sure she will be a better character in the future!

So, in general, i Liked it! Very Much! In fact: I LOVED IT

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oracle, Black Canary, and Huntress band together to look into Savant, a blackmailer who is messing up their plans

I quite enjoyed this which surprised me because superhero comics are hit and miss. I like the idea of a female superhero group (even though the art leans way too heavily on T&A).

I really liked Gail Simone's 'Crosswind' and also liked her 'Clean Room' so maybe I'll look into more of her work.

[a ☕︎ · Rating 3 out of 5]

a lot of people keep saying it was obvious this was written by a woman but i’m not really sure how… no one i know talks like this… we’re also not that petty abt boy drama or ever rude to service workers lol. but maybe this is bc my friend group is mostly sorority girls and idk insomniac OLs. not hacker computer geniuses. lol. i also saw a lot of crit for the racy pin-up art but i honestly thought it was really funny. maybe tongue-in-cheek?

[Mariano · Rating 4 out of 5]

This read almost like a first issue, so great begging from Gail. The stories are a mix between mystery and action, with a good dosis of fan service from Ed Benes, which I guess made sense at the time. I like his style so I'm glad he is consistent through the whole thing, except for a fill on from the amazing Dan Brereton. Now to chase the next volume

[Nickolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The relationships and playful banter make this a pleasure to read. Savant is hilarious as well! Gail Simone has a talent for taking some tropey ideas and turning them on their head. That leads to some interesting surprises. The art is at times beautiful, but it is often too cheesecake / pinup style to really fit the story well, IMHO.