I really want to love Birds of Prey. I’ve read a fair amount of the Gail Simone run in trades, and loved them. This run is really testing my patience though.

The first arc was a little too long, but Jesus Saiz and Javier Pina) on pencils/ink was a great combination. Travel Foreman is, unfortunately, not so great. His art style worked on a book like Animal Man, with grotesque monsters and a horror theme. Birds of Prey doesn’t really need that style. Sure, ‘The Perennial’ (monsters of The Green) look suitably scary in this issue, but Travel Foreman’s style makes all of the women look a bit off, particularly Batgirl.

Also, Travel Foreman cannot pencil to a deadline. He had a lot of fill in artists do pages on Animal Man, and here Timothy Green II fills in, with surprisingly decent results. I didn’t know who Green was, but his style is somewhere between Kenneth Rocafort (Red Hood) and the Aspen Comics house style. This means that his women look pretty, if a little cartoon-ish, while still having great action scenes, almost hitting the sweet spot for this book.

The story itself is pretty solid, with Poison Ivy attacking a board room, and this tying in to what was happening in the giant greenhouse with the other team members. The last few pages were the most exciting in a few issues, and I’m tentatively back on board for more Birds of Prey.