Creative Staff:
Story: Marguerite Bennett
Art: Aneke
Colors: J. Nanjan
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Surrounded by submarines, will the Squad and the Batgirls escape a terrible fate?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Everything went topsy turvy the last time around with Ollie showing up with a lot of submarines and a sense of darkness behind him. This arc has had some fun moments to it but it’s also mixed in some of the usual shenanigans of characters acting in the wrong way upon meeting and more forceful approaches, which isn’t a surprise considering the nature of the world at this point in time. While Marguerite Bennett moves events forward a bit here the winner for me is what Aneke gets to put to page, which is the image to the right here of Black Canary surfing while using her canary cry to take down the enemies and save the day. It feels so utterly 70’s Brady Bunch in a way that I can’t properly express and it makes me stupidly happy.
Ollie’s arrival is something that at least clears up some confusion as there were those that figured Dinah had killed Ollie even though she had done the opposite. Her attempt to save him by locking him in the tower didn’t go well as he got caught up with this mysterious queen from the song that’s infecting people and turning them. Dinah’s able to bring more of her past to light here with Frankie in a way that gives her just a bit more depth of character while reinforcing why she’s in love with Ollie and is looking to save him as best as she can. It makes it clear in that simple “old-time” kind of way with relationships combined with her seeing him as bad off as he is and not wanting him to be under the control of someone else.
There’s a good bit of action here with the waves flowing and Ollie’s side trying to do the damage it can, but the main focus is on showing how Felicity is trying to understand the message in the song by listening to it herself and deciphering some aspect of it. While that just puts a knife in Frankie’s heart since she doesn’t want a kid doing this, it does give them some real intel. With this arc having the two groups of the Batgirls and the Squad with Dinah in the middle, it’s the events here that put the remainder of both sides on the same side and working together at long last. A long way to get there and with lots of distrust up until this point, but they’re moving forward now against the real opponent. It’s a familiar thing, a frustrating thing, but there were a lot of fun moments along the way to make it mostly worthwhile.
In Summary:
The Bombshells: United arc moves on and there’s definitely something fun that’ll be coming soon enough as we’ve got a location and hints as to who is behind all of this. It may be a bit more drawn out than I care for but each issue has plenty of fun little moments that makes it enjoyable. A lot of that this time around is just delighting in seeing Aneke illustrating a surfboarding Black Canary or the way Batgirl has to save her. The scenes with Felicity and Frankie definitely hit very well too with the way Felicity takes a hit for the team to try and get closer to figuring out what’s really going on. It’s a quick and fun read with lots of little details to make another reading very worthwhile.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: March 16th, 2018
MSRP: $0.99
