The Hawkeye team set to break hearts and faces in Autumn 2023!
6th June 2023
By Paul Dunne
Kelly Thompson, the Eisner-Winning writer of Black Widow, set comics Twitter alight not once but twice in the last couple of days with a surprise announcement: She's going to be writing a brand-new, possibly ongoing, Birds of Prey series, starting this Autumn. Leonardo Romero, who did stunning work on The True Lives of The Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem, and of course on Hawkeye with Thompson, will be on art duties with Jordi Bellaire (surely the favourite colour artist of today's comic readers?). The new series will be part of the Dawn of DC initiative.
Kelly tweeted: An all-new era begins! Thompson, @Leo__Romero & #Bellaire... breaking hearts & faces over @DCComics this fall! Black Canary is building the most dangerous #BirdsOfPrey team yet... who do YOU think will make the cut? #BOP
Otto Schmidt’s Black Canary
Although Thompson wouldn't be drawn on the series length, she did tease that 'she wouldn't change her socials for a mini'- and sure enough, her social images now show artist Otto Schmidt's rendering of Black Canary, leading many to speculate this will be an ongoing title. Thompson's most recent ongoing title, Captain Marvel, is due to end this month with its 50th issue.
The Gail Simone era.
During her days as a comics blogger, Thompson had been a very vocal fan of the series as written by Gail Simone, which became one of DC's most popular Batman spin-offs. The team, led by Oracle AKA Barbara Gordon and featuring Black Canary, Huntress, and others in a revolving line-up of badass, has been missed, with only the occasional revival, including recent minis and one-shots by Brian Azzarello, Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti.
Conner and Palmiotti’s Black Label mini-series
Birds Of Prey was originally conceived by Jordan B. Gorfinkel and written by Chuck Dixon, with early series art by Greg Land and Gary Frank, among others.
Like most good, fan-favourite series, it remains only partially collected, with only a few of it's 127 issues (from the first runs, minis and one-shots) in print currently. The teams name was coined by editor Frank Pittarese, although not used in the book until issue #86.
The team was first named in #86
On Twitter and her newsletter, Thompson shared some news about the characters as well as Romero's designs for the lead character, Dinah Lance – Black Canary! She also stated that she wouldn't be bringing back the exact team that existed previously, but invited her fans to guess at just who would be joining Canary on the roster. Huntress? Batgirl? Dove? Or... Harley?
Design by Leonardo Romero
According to Thompson, the team Dinah will be building would be 'the most dangerous Birds Of Prey.' yet - but here reasons for doing so would be clouded in mystery. Strong words from someone who has shown an incredible talent for beautifully dangerous characters!
Birds of Prey is trending again today, too! Kelly announced the first team member to be joining Dinah would be Cassie Cain / Batgirl, another fan fave. Thompson wrote: I mean, have you even MET me? Of course she's on the team. Cassandra Cain. Three spots left on the most dangerous #BirdsofPrey yet, who will join her?! I know I said I wasn’t going to post about this today, but who am I kidding? I’ve been waiting most of my life to get to write this character — I’m just gonna NOT talk about it? No, no, I AM gonna talk about it, if only because people should ALWAYS be talking about Cassandra Cain. ;D Seriously, she is one of my favorite characters in all of comics and this has been a dream come true. Let’s hope I don’t fuck it up!
Batgirl design by Leonardo Romero
Thompson is also currently working on the creator-owned series 'Black Cloak' and the upcoming 'The Cull', which releases 16th August 2023 from Image Comics. Kelly won an Eisner along with Elena Casagrande and the rest of the team for their Black Widow series at Marvel. The response so far to the news that BOP would be making a return has been pretty big. As Kelly wrote on her newsletter: We legit trended on Twitter — a thing I don’t think has ever actually happened to me before — I mean, CAPTAIN MARVEL trends quite a bit, but it’s typically not primarily about the comic when it happens.
Black Canary
Give us your picks for BOP!
Birds of Prey by Kelly Thompson, Leonardo Romero, and Jordi Bellaire is awaiting solicitation and is due in Autumn 2023. Buy back issues and complete sets of DC Comics here.