Review: Birds of Prey Volume 2 - The Death of Oracle

After years of being the superhero community’s 411, Oracle realizes that her visibility and prominence poses too great of a risk to herself and her allies. So, she comes up with a solution – Oracle must die! What follows is an elaborate ruse that depends entirely on the involvement of her often unpredictable foe Calculator. Will he play along? Or will the Birds get caught in the crossfire?

Birds of Prey Volume 2: The Death of Oracle collects issues #7-15 of Birds of Prey (Vol. 2), written by Gail Simone and Marc Andreyko, with art by various artists.

Following a shaky start in End Run, Gail Simone settles into familiar territory writing the characters that made her a fan-favourite. The espionage-tinged stories collected here feature the Birds doing what they do best – saving the world and kicking plenty of ass while doing it. The four-part “The Death of Oracle” helps to re-establish Oracle as the powerhouse she is. Though initially introduced as a mysterious benefactor to the superhuman community, the former Batgirl eventually became just about everyone’s personal hacker to the point where it was a farce to imagine that she had any free time. This completely diminished her cool factor, as well as her overall impact as a character. It also makes her a big target. The solution to this problem? Oracle needs to fake her death, of course.

The execution of this plan leads to many surprising twists and turns. Simone writes the characters involved with such conviction, showing them not only as capable hand-to-hand combatants but also as fantastic improvisers. Throughout the course of the story, Simone plays with the power struggle that happens between heroes and villains. The Calculator, the arc’s primary antagonist, constantly appears to be one step ahead of the Birds. He kidnaps them, leaves Canary to die while trapped in a state of mental disarray and seemingly succeeds in killing his nemesis Oracle. Even still, Simone manages to flip the script, showing that our heroines are in complete control and that everything has been pre-planned. It’s brilliant and it highlights just how incredible these characters are. What is most satisfying, however, is the fact that the whole story is a set-up for Oracle to give the superhero community the finger. After years of taking advantage of her help, she rips the crutch from under them and teaches them all a valuable lesson – be your own hero. Perhaps even more pressing is just how prophetic this story was. After all, just a few short months later Oracle was "killed off" to make room for Barbara to return to her roots as Batgirl as part of the New 52.

Simone concludes her time on the book with a Huntress-centric arc that sees her reuniting with her off-and-on love interest Catman and teaming up with the Question. “Hostile Takeover” is truly brilliant and features all the earmarks of what makes a Gail Simone-penned story so fascinating. It’s funny, witty and has plenty of electric moments between the characters. The Huntress and Question moments are so fun, in fact, that it makes me wish there could have been an ongoing starring those two. We get some great moments with Dove as well, who had been vastly underused prior to this. Simone also infuses the story with her trademark dark twists, introducing an utterly terrifying villain that leaves an imprint on the readers.

Andreyko takes over the reins for the final two issues that close out this volume of Birds of Prey. The story is filler and feels a little too familiar, but his focus on characters like Manhunter, Lady Blackhawk and the original Phantom Lady make it worth it. Like Simone, he excels at writing character interaction and he completely nails the sass these heroines are capable of dishing out. It also proves that Andreyko would have been perfectly capable of being a permanent writer for this team.

There’s not a whole lot of bad stuff to say about The Death of Oracle. Simone and Andreyko both pull out all of the stops with their writing, giving us plenty of memorable moments. Still, the art is a bit of a distraction. More specifically, how inconsistent it is. As Birds shifted into its final stretch, it became a host to rotating artists. Meaning, each issue featured a different penciler. This makes it rather jarring for the reader and makes it that much more difficult to actually be able to view this collection as one seamless narrative.

The Death of Oracle is all about new beginnings. Barbara gets a newfound lease on life without the burden of being Oracle to everyone in a cape, Black Canary has come to terms with her impending divorce and Huntress has rightfully earned her place as the field leader of the Birds of Prey. Sadly, all of these exciting developments were swept away in order to make room for the New 52. As a supporter of that particular initiative, I will admit that the loss of Gail Simone’s Birds continuity was a casualty of the New 52 that I took pretty hard. It’s still a shame that after really hitting her stride with this collection that she had to switch gears. I’m not too mad though, since she ended up penning one hell of a run on Batgirl.

RATING: A-