Reviewer: Tim Stevens
Story Title: A Fighter by His Trade
Written by: Gail Simone
Penciled by: Joe Bennett
Inked by: Jack Jadson
Colored by: Hi-Fi
Lettered by: Jared K. Fletcher
Editor: Joan Hilty
Publisher: DC Comics
B-sides. That is what issue #83 feels like. The stuff that just wasn’t quite interesting enough to make the front side of the single (in this case issue #82). It doesn’t make it bad, it makes it…different?
Plot wise, Wildcat and Black Canary get out of last month’s pickle sans scars and become the old Asian’s top dealers in the US. They encounter a bit of a problem on their way out the country, but three pages later, they are safe and on their way home. Barbara continues to get sicker and Canary finally catches on. Back home, Huntress continues her new endeavor.
Of those three plot strands, only the third packs any sort of surprise. We knew last issue that Wildcat and Canary were going to get the deal. Their brief almost encounter with the law is over too quickly to make much of an impact. We know Barbara was getting sicker and that it was only a matter of an issue or two before that would be known. This isn’t to say these developments are handled poorly, they aren’t. Wildcat has great fun with revealing his routing of the “guards” that took him into custody last issue and is amusing in his reveal of a certain package he’s just found under his car seat. The compassion Canary displays for Barbara is real and touching. How Zinda deals with both Barbara and their run from the law does a nice job of adding characterization to the newest Bird. So, it’s all good. It just feels like the left over three or so pages that should have been in last issue found their way into this one and were tripled.
The Huntress stuff, however, is new and nice. She’s still working the city in her other guise, albeit in a slightly tweaked costume (it’s not the previous one, but there is no more bare stomach either). Besides Savant and ______, who we already knew were on her team, the valet who she took on a date is helping her. In an interesting set of coincidences, it turns out that the gang Huntress is working is affected by the moves of Barbara’s team abroad. However, it does not appear that the two teams are working with one another. What exactly Huntress is planning is still quite unclear.
What isn’t unclear is who she encounters at the end of the issue. But, I’ll let you see that one for yourself.
