Review by Frank Plowright

Duane Swierczynski’s Birds of Prey introduced a revised team membership and got off to an excellent start with Trouble in Mind, most of which was equally excellently drawn by Jesús Saiz. Sadly Saiz is only around for the opening chapter here, which is only the beginning of a drastic dip in quality.

That’s partly due to the jerky storytelling required to incorporate a Batman crossover, but Swierczynski’s also to blame for chapter endings suggesting one path, following which he takes the story somewhere completely different. An example ends the opening chapter, suggesting we’re going to learn why Black Canary’s wanted for murder, except we don’t. That would be okay if the results were interesting, but they’re not. Your Kiss Might Kill follows a disciplined seven chapter thriller, but swerves all over the place, illustrated by multiple artists, all of whom draw the cast differently.

Three of the six chapters are connected, starting with a jungle trip to revive an injured Poison Ivy. They do lead somewhere very interesting, fully compromising Birds of Prey, but before the surprise drops they’re just action filler. Despite the disappointing plot, though, Swierczynski’s characterisation is good and consistent, yet balance that against one of the cast suddenly displaying a new super power at a very convenient moment.

Travel Foreman draws more pages than anyone else (sample art), but at this early stage of his career he’s a promising artist who needs to work on his storytelling and anatomy. Saiz maintains his standards on the opening chapter, and Romano Molenaar’s art is a cut above on the final story, which takes a look at how Black Canary first met Sparrow, with Batgirl also involved. It’s the sort of origin of this version of Birds of Prey, and while Swierczynski’s bigger plot is a neat idea, this single chapter holds together far better. Overall, though, Your Kiss Might Kill is poor, all the more surprising considering how enjoyable the previous volume is. Let’s hope for a leap back up the quality scale in A Clash of Daggers.