I’ve seen plenty a comic with a stellar debut fall to pieces with their second volume. I did, I’ll admit, also have that concern in the beginning of Kelly Thompson’s Birds of Prey Vol. 2: Worlds Without End, though the book’s back on an even keel by the end. Very much to her credit, Thompson attempts a big lift here and actually makes it work, which continues to be a good sign for the title’s future.

There’s a fine line being tread here between hewing to the classic Birds of Prey relationship — Oracle and her operative Black Canary Dinah Lance — and Thompson seeming to establish Canary as more of the leader than she’s ever been previously. Even as the Canary material is good, it makes for some awkward including-and-then-sidelining of Batgirl Barbara Gordon that’s maybe too obvious for its own good. Weirdly, Worlds Without End rather turns on Barbara — she’s the book’s McGuffin, essentially — but Canary’s the one who does all the work. As Thompson finishes this one plotline and moves on to another, I’ll be curious to see whether that evens out or if the issue still remains apparent.

[Review contains spoilers]

Worlds kicks off with the two-part “Undercover Animals,” the upshot of which is that the Birds end up half-naked on a modeling runway, such to supposedly suss out who’s mind-controlling people through Vixen Mari McCabe’s clothing line. There’s other stuff here — the reunion of Black Canary and Oracle, working together again, and more details about time-traveler Meridian — but it also seems an exercise in wacky, cheesecake-for-cheesecake’s sake fun. That’s fine as it goes, and benefitted by Thompson as writer and Javier Pina’s controlled, straightforward figures on art, but still, it’s the kind of plot we largely see female heroes run afoul of and almost never see male heroes encounter (Nothing Butt Nightwing being a recent exception that proves the rule).

Over the long course of this book’s seven issues, the Birds are swept into a pocket dimension, and it’s revealed that the villainous Maia, operating out of the dimension, has been manipulating time such to take revenge on Barbara for killing her mother, the Velvet Tiger, in the future. Maia is therefore responsible for everything over the past dozen issues — siccing the goddess Megaera on Sin Lance so the Birds had to come rescue her, possessing people through Vixen’s clothing, etc.

It makes, indeed, very little sense. If Maia can create a horde of weird demons, as she does, why not just send those after Barbara and avoid all the rest of this? No small amount seems to be based on coincidence, like the Birds going to Vixen for help, getting drawn into solving Vixen’s mystery, and then that just so happening to be a trap for the heroes that Barbara almost isn’t snared in. As well, the book takes four pages toward the beginning to show Vixen mind-controlled and committing a robbery, which in the end has little to do with the actual story whatsoever.

Much of what begins to redeem all of this for me is that Velvet Tiger is indeed an established, classic Batgirl villain, not particularly notable but seemingly with a bit of staying power. That is, though Thompson has surely extrapolated quite a bit from a minor villain — seven super-powered offspring, the whole of an infinitely reskinnable pocket dimension, and so on — there’s enough grounding in DC lore to make it believable. Yes, Batgirl and Velvet Tiger have a rivalry; yes, apparently something went very wrong in the future; and while that might not immediately suggest a time-travel conspiracy involving Greek gods and possessed clothing, neither is that wholly inconceivable either.

From that nugget, after what seemed a frivolous beginning, Worlds Without End began to reel me back in. The team has changed slightly — Vixen’s in, and Harley Quinn and seemingly Zealot are out — but then Meridian recruits Zealot to try to rescue the team from outside the pocket dimension, and Zealot gets John Constantine and Constantine gets Xanthe Zhou of Spirit World, and it’s a mad, mad, mad, mad Birds of Prey.

Thompson, as I mentioned, emphasizes Dinah as burgeoning team leader, and there’s some nice scenes of Dinah directing the team and figuring out the mystery. Cela Lockhart, Maia’s heroic sister, is also a good addition to the team, and her antagonism toward Batgirl Barbara Gordon while being friends with Batgirl Cassandra Cain is also interesting. Ultimately, with the reality-hopping storyline, mix of magic and sci-fi, and characters for days, I was put in mind a bit favorably of Legends of Tomorrow, if that helps contextualize it all for you. Plus a Grifter cameo, plus Thompson has Canary refer to the pocket dimension as like “a really terrible new Danny the Street,” so in the final accounting it seems Thompson has it back under control.

Barbara and Dinah’s friendship has been one of the Birds titles’ driving forces; in Thompson’s Birds of Prey Vol. 1: Megadeath, much was made of Meridian cautioning Dinah not to bring Barbara into the mission, Barbara’s subsequent upset over that, and the revelation that in other timelines, Barbara always died on the mission. All is revealed and the hurt feelings are quickly assuaged here, and it’s a nice moment when Dinah remarks that it’s nice having Oracle in her ear again.

But just as Barbara is “present” but absent in Megadeath, equally Maia whisks Barbara away to a prison here so she’s mostly separate from her teammates even as her future actions are the reason it’s all happening. (Why Maia doesn’t just try to kill her is another one of those questions.) I’m curious whether Barbara will have a greater role once Birds returns with DC All In; otherwise I might wonder to what extent Thompson really needs the character here. Thompson’s done enough with Canary over these past few volumes that Birds of Prey without Oracle doesn’t seem all that unreasonable.

Art here is largely by Javier Pina and Gavin Guidry, with a few fill-ins and guests for the various “worlds” the Birds encounter. If Leonardo Romero from the previous volume is still more refined, both Pina and Guidry are no-nonsense enough to approximate the same general tone, especially without holding the two books side by side. Some art in the book is noticeably blurry — Pina’s, but really it’s present throughout — enough that I checked previews of the single issues to see if my collection was just misprinted, but the effect is ubiquitous. DC coloring stalwart Jordie Bellaire works on the whole thing, employing the same kind of watercolor effects we saw on Megadeath; I don’t mind Birds' “distressed” look, though here it felt the creative team had less control over it than in the last book.

Again, despite coincidences and flimsy premises, in the end Kelly Thompson’s Birds of Prey Vol. 2: Worlds Without End seemed at least as workable as the last volume — or, at least, better than other Birds runs that didn’t work quite as well or weren’t at least as humorous and heartfelt. We’ve got a year of stories out of the way essentially and a new beginning coming up; in some respects what comes next is the real test of Thompson’s Birds of Prey.

[Includes original and variant covers, character designs]