Sunday Splash Page #83

"Dinah Can Use a Sidekick, Right?" in Birds of Prey #40, by Chuck Dixon (writer), Rick Leonardi (penciler), Jesse Delperdang (inker), Wildstorm FX (colorist), Albert T. de Guzman (letterer)

I only own about a dozen issues of Birds of Prey. Nothing against the book, it's just that none of Oracle, Black Canary, or Huntress are characters that really move the needle for me. They're in that large subset of "don't got nothing against them, don't got nothin' for 'em, either" characters. Basically all the issues I do own involve other characters making guest appearances. During the Dixon run, that boils down to Power Girl, Ted Kord, or in the case of this issue, Spoiler.

This is from a stretch where one of those three seems to show up fairly regularly, but there's also a lot of event tie-ins. This issue, for example, is part of Bruce Wayne: Murderer, where, if I remember right, Cass Cain's dad killed Vesper Fairchild and made it look like Wayne did it, because. . . reasons. He was trying to get Cass back? Someone paid him to do it? I can't remember.

Oracle has Canary helping her with the investigation, without explaining why exactly she's so interested in proving Bruce Wayne's innocence (although I think it's implied Dinah figures it out). Which is one of the things that bugs me about Oracle, Dixon's version of her at least. She plays a lot of double standards. She gets to know everything about you, but you're lucky if you know anything about her. She sends you on a job, she only tells you what she thinks you need to know, regardless of how little of the full picture that is. It's amazing to me anyone puts up with that, but they do.

Beyond that, the other two threads are that Ted Kord finds out he's had a bunch of heart attacks, and then get attacked by a little robot sent by some dude who wants to take over his company, and Canary helping Spoiler by kicking Steph's dad and the Riddler out of her house. Which is admittedly pretty cool, when Canary Crys the Riddler's gun to pieces. I think this starts a brief stretch where Steph tries to get Canary to teach her the ropes, since Batman's off on his bullshit again, but it never really goes anywhere.

Rick Leonardi had taken over as penciler the issue prior to this, and I think Jesse Delperdang is a really good inker for him. The two seem to have worked together on several Batbooks around this time (Nightwing and Batgirl being two where I've seen them), and it's what I'd call Leonardi's strongest work. It avoids that common trait of his work where the lines are so faint figures and faces are almost impressionistic at times. Just a hint of facial features and your mind fills in the rest. There's none of that here, but maybe having Dixon or Kelly Puckett as the writer leaves an artist more room to work than Chris Claremont (although that wouldn't explain some of the stuff I've seen the last few years).