"One Punch Isn't Enough," in Birds of Prey #107, by Gail Simone (writer), Nicola Scott (penciler), Doug Hazlewood (inker), Hi-Fi Designs (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)
This is the last issue of the only story from Gail Simone's run on Birds of Prey I own. And I own this one mostly because a) they brought Ice back from the dead, and b) the Secret Six show up. In my defense, I think Ed Benes drew a lot of Simone's run, and there's only so much of his art a person can handle. Nicola Scott is a considerable improvement. Everyone still looks extremely pretty, but there's not anywhere near as much posing characters for maximum boobs and ass exposure.
This is basically the only appearance of the Six' brief roster configuration that included Harley Quinn. Ragdoll hints in this issue that he's going to try chucking her off a cliff like he did the Mad Hatter previously. Instead Harley wound up as a recurring character in Countdown, DC's attempt to replicate the success of 52, but without basically any of the creative talent from that one.
Might have been better off with the cliff. Man, Countdown was fucking terrible. They turned Jimmy Olsen into a giant Turtle Boy, had him fight Darkseid, and somehow made that suck. How do you even manage that?!
Ahem, where was I? Oh yeah, this was right after 52 and One Year Later, and Spy Smasher - seen getting wrecked in the picture above - has figured out Barbara is Oracle and has taken over her operation. She just fired Lady Blackhawk for disobeying orders by coming to pick them up, rather than staying at the plane. You see how that went.
Honestly, as disappointed as Huntress is in Oracle for letting this happen, I'm more disappointed in Huntress for not having Zinda's back and, I don't know, putting a crossbow bolt in Spy Smasher's eye? But Spy Smasher clearly has strong plot armor game, because when they were fighting the Six, she squares off with Deadshot, who passes up more than one opportunity to shoot her. Deadshot. Not shooting someone he's fighting when he has the chance. Right.
It doesn't matter in the long run, since Canary rallies all Oracle's friends to give Smasher the boot next month, and about three years later, during Simone's Secret Six ongoing, Spy Smasher tries to pull a power play on Amanda Waller, and the Wall basically burns her to the ground. Because Amanda Waller's the best! When she's not being the worst.
This is just kind of an odd book to look at, given the characters involved and where things go from here. Hawkgirl and the Kate Spencer Manhunter are on the team, but I don't think they stay beyond this story. Knockout and Barda have a good brawl, seem to part on good terms. Until Scandal makes a careless comment to Knockout in bed and sends the redhead off to prove something. Which never happened, because she was sacrificed on the altar of Jim Starlin's Death of the New Gods. Ice was brought back, but other than Guy kind of botching his attempt to ask her to move in, I'm not sure anyone used her until Judd Winick's Generation Lost. You also have Misfit, the teen redhead with teleporting powers who briefly called herself Batgirl. This is story where her "DARRRRK VENGEANCE!" call comes from. I can't remember what happened to her, either, other than she had a brief rivalry with Black Alice, and they got briefly tangled up in some lead-up to Final Crisis.
Anyway, future wasting of various characters' potential aside, this is a pretty good story itself. Very much in the vein of Suicide Squad, where the team goes in on a mission where they aren't being told everything, and it all proceeds to go to hell. There are other players opposing them, in this case the Six, there's a lot of tension within the group (I think Spy Smasher brought Manhunter in, so the old guard aren't sure if they can trust her). Nobody likes the boss, and it just turns into a mess. The Six turn on their employer, because he's a complete sleaze, and they don't get paid. They are really bad at their jobs.
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