The past and present that haunts.
Creative Staff:
Story: Christian Cooper
Art: Alitha Martinez, Mark Morales
Colors: Emilio Lopez
Letterer: Rob Clark Jr.
What They Say:
Jules, a Black teenager, is given a pair of old binoculars as he heads out for a morning of birdwatching in Central Park. He soon learns the binoculars show him a lot more than birds, and maybe they keep him safe, too.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This year has been a constant flow of terrible news with some bright spots here and there. One of those bright spots is this new series from DC Comics that will get fully underway next year but has dropped its first issue for free here. Written by Christian Cooper, it leans into some of his experience while birding in Central Park earlier this year that blew up headlines for a bit. The tale is illustrated by Alitha Martinez and Mark Morales with Emilio Lopez handling the color work and it all comes together well. This is more a kind of in-Memorium issue in a sense and a light retrospective on what happened without being exactly for expected reasons. But it’s done in a way that reaches to some of the heart of the matter of experiences that are often just lightly touched upon in a few books as a minor scene and little more than that.
The focus is on Jules, a young man who is heading out to do some bird watching in Central Park and is given the binoculars of his grandfather, which was with him when he served in the military decades ago. While it’s amusing that his father makes a claim of his own father that they have magical properties, Jules isn’t much interested in something so old even if they do get the basic job done of helping him to do his birding. What’s surprising is that there is some element to it that’s not natural as when he looks through at a particular bird, flashes of those killed by police violence in the past come up. It takes us through four birds that represent Amadou Diallo, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Eric Garner with associations to the birds that I’ll leave to birdwatchers to say if they’re trying to align to certain traits there.
His journey through the area taking in the birds is also dealt with problems by those he comes across. While on public land that’s open to everyone, one nearby homeowner thinks he’s casing his house that abuts the parks. Another plays into the author’s encounter with the woman who had her dog unleashed in the park so it could get exercise while he tells her that it’s against the rules and endangers the wildlife. That leads to threats that reminds him of the inherent danger of simply living while black and it’s just a hard read. We see these stories practically daily at this point and the constant nature of it is overwhelming to many – and they’re/I aren’t even the target of the invective. And I can’t imagine how it must feel nor can the story here really bring it to life in a way that you can get only by living it. But hopefully getting the story out more will make it more embedded and educational as to why it’s bad to be this way and why there is so much distrust.
In Summary:
I’m not sure this is a book you can “like” in the conventional sense but it’s a solid start to what could be an interesting series that explores a lot of things that DC Comics isn’t telling in the rest of its books and possibly incorporate or explore more. It’s making good use of your publishing reach and exploring talent in order to tell something that you haven’t been doing over and over for decades. I’m curious to see where the rest of this will go when it gets underway and will definitely be there for it because I read comics and books and watch movies and TV for a whole range of stories across as many cultures as I can reasonably see. This adds a welcome piece to the DC library.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via | ComiXology | Kindle
Release Date: September 9th, 2020
MSRP: Free
