Kelly Thompson’s Birds of Prey Vol. 3: Bird Undercover seems unusual for Birds' DC All In debut. That might signal that the Birds team didn’t know, couldn’t adjust, or didn’t choose to adjust to this narrative jumping on point — their prerogative, surely. But I wonder at the choice of a “down” trade at this narrative inflection point (also essentially the start of the book’s second year); that is, to run with a story that’s small, relatively, and without a lot of consequence.

I believe at this point Birds of Prey is one of those DC stalwarts like Flash or Green Lantern; the series may be relaunched, but hard to believe DC won’t have a Birds title on the stands almost always. And if Birds were just loose action story after action story, well written and cameoing characters from across the DCU, that wouldn’t be a terrible fate for the series ad infinitum. But I was expecting more, some semblance of what this iteration is trying to say or where it’s going. If Bird Undercover delivers that, it feels to me it’s only in the most minor of ways.

[Review contains spoilers]

The first issue is entirely Batgirl Cassandra Cain infiltrating a corporation conducting illicit experiments while Oracle and Black Canary Dinah Lance worry and Big Barda, Onyx, and Outsiders' Grace spar. That is it for the first 22 pages — Batgirl has a two-page spread of fighting some assassins, but no one’s endangered, no choices have to be made.

It is the quiet and inauspicious start to the “Bird Undercover” four-parter, which itself might’ve been a three-parter. Only toward the end of the third part is the rest of the team compelled to get involved to save Batgirl. She has, it turns out, been drugged and transformed into a behemoth, but curing her is not particularly fraught. With a chip removed from under her skin, Cassandra returns to normal, and there’s no concern, for instance, that the team might have to kill Cassandra to save an innocent or any other suspenseful turn you might enter here. I noted almost a full page by Sami Basri devoted just to Dinah using her Canary Cry, like perhaps there were more pages here than material to fill it.

Given three issues largely devoted to Cassandra Cain, maybe I’m underestimating the audience’s appetite for her adventures (she is the only Bird with her own separate series). To be sure, Cassandra has a fan base, not to mention that a sizable component of the storyline involves the Birds avowing how Cassandra can take care of herself but also how dedicated they all are to her. At the same time, Thompson’s story involves Cassandra out of costume and more “done up” than normal, in the guise of a stylish assassin, and also Basri draws her virtually indistinguishable from teammate Sin — it is a Batgirl spotlight story that didn’t feel to me all that germane to this Batgirl as people enjoy her.

The second story, “Divide and Conquer,” reveals ninjas are hunting Sin, so Dinah and Sin pretend to vacation in the woods to bait them while Barda and Batgirl complete a side mission. Here, we maybe approach the barest of Birds' forward action, the question of whether Sin might be continually hunted for the Megaera entity with whom she shares her body, but Sin and Canary dispatch the nondescript ninjas so handily that this hardly seems like a serious threat. I left Bird Undercover feeling that the draw to return is simply for more of the same, not out of strong desire to find out what happens next.

I did have to laugh that the wheel has turned so far for DC Comics that we’re in a place where John Constantine(!) calls up Oracle to ask for the Birds of Prey’s assistance (if Alan Moore could see us now!). Absurd as this all is, I appreciate that Thompson has picked up and run with Alyssa Wong’s Spirit World partnering of Constantine and Cassandra Cain, and it’s nice to see the two together with callbacks to that other series. But as B-plot to the Sin story, there’s not much more here than artist Juann Cabal boisterously drawing Barda smashing golems, entertaining as that is.

Of course, I’m still inclined to look favorably on a title that, if nothing else, guest-stars Grace from among my favorite Outsiders run. We haven’t seen Grace in a while, and while in DC’s “everything happened” era, it’s likely her Outsiders membership is back in continuity, essentially Thompson is plucking the character from limbo to declare she still exists. Those kinds of cameos are as good a reason as any for Thompson’s Birds of Prey to continue, and I hope she leans into that — largely female-presenting heroes, of course, but as we see with Constantine, not absolutely. I still think Hawk and Dove are a good match for the Birds; might be interesting to see what Cynthia Reynolds is up to, too.

Following Birds of Prey Vol. 3: Bird Undercover, released June 2025, the fourth volume doesn’t come out until April 2026; compare with July and December for the DC All In Catwoman debut. Which is to say, for a book where “nothing happens,” it’s also going to be a while until we see if “something” happens in the next one. Of course, single issues come out month after month, but for a book still finding its footing, I wonder if the lack of momentum will hurt it in the bookstores.

[Includes original and some variant covers]