Creative Staff:
Story: Marguerite Bennett
Art: Sandy Jarrell
Colors: Kelly Fitzpatrick
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Alysia and Felicity head for Hawaii to investigate the mysterious radio signals causing trouble across the world, but they find a new voice for the revolution!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the Batgirls leading into events here, the time spent exploring touches of Hawaii and knowing how Black Canary is going to be central to this arc has me very keen on it. While the Batgirls material didn’t do much, particularly with the two characters that are on the move that I’m mostly unfamiliar with, Marguerite Bennett set things in motion well enough. What helps is that we’re getting some great pages out of Sandy Jarrell once again, especially with Kelly Fitzpatrick’s color work in all of the Hawaii sequences, that just kicks it up a few notches. This issue brings a lot of fun things to life all while bringing in a new character as well that lets Jarrell do some defining work on.
The main focus initially is on Karen, a young woman going to a special academy on the island where she’s having to hide who she is from the outside world. While doing some research for a book they’re reading in the academy, which has her checking out quite a lot of flowers, she finds herself coming across the legendary Black Canary. It’s cute how tongue-tied she gets but also just in seeing how Dinah manages to smooth that down a bit and connect with her over the book, which leads to her actually talking about how she’s researching the lotus that seems to be impact the Batgirl and Wonder Girl groups out there in the world. It helps to draw another into it, expose us to how much of an impact tha happy-happy stuff is having, and puts her and Dinah largely on the same page.
Where things pick up is when the pair discover Alysia and Felicity along the beach nearby as they flee some flowing lava. Ignoring that element for the moment, it’s a fun sequence as we get Karen letting loose with her bumblebee wings to swoop down and save them in a busy busy talking tone and quickly becoming friends with them even as she exposes herself, simply because they are Batgirls. There’s an ease in which this group forms, even momentarily, to catch up on things a bit and it’s nice to see that instead of them all fighting with each other as we often do in comics. Of course, we get an element of that in the offing as the ending brings the Suicide Squad into the story as they’ve come looking for Dinah…
In Summary:
As this arc gets the core components put into place, Bombshells: United draws in a few different characters and introduces a new one. I’m not a huge Bumblebee fan and just got done with an extended run with her over in the Titans book but I’m curious to see how Bennett handles and tweaks her for this time period. Sandy Jarrell gets to work up some really good stuff for the Hawaii locations and I like seeing this group that’s come together with the variety that the represent. And that’s even before the Squad drops in at the end that adds even more style and diversity to the designs.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: February 16th, 2018
MSRP: $0.99
