http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/new-52-birds-of-prey/
Description: Birds of Prey is a girl power group. It's a team that has existed for quite a while, but it seems the only relation to the past series in the new one is Black Canary. She's an original of the team, but the other characters are new to the group. There's not much to know about the history. Barbara Gordon as Oracle was the leader, Black Canary pretty much the second in command, then there was a bunch of other characters that came and went, sometimes even men. Not often, it was predominantly women. And that trend will continue now.
As for the other three confirmed characters, one is a Japan born girl with a katana, she goes by the name of Katana. The next is a classic Batman villain, you all may recognize Poison Ivy, she's sporting a nice looking redesign and it seems she'll still be considered an eco-terrorist, so it's not like she's gonna be a superhero all of a sudden. For the last character, we have Starling… wait, who? Exactly. She's a new character, we know virtually nothing about her, we'll find out how well she does.
Creative Team: First off, Birds of Prey has been written by Gail Simone for years now, one of the best comic book writers ever. So to follow her will be quite daunting, Swierczynski doesn't have a large backlog of comics, but he's apparently written a lot of books too, about half of them were fiction. So we know he's not new, he's got experience, and he's worked with a few well-known comic characters before. He may be following Simone, which means this book probably won't live up to anything the previous writer has done, but that doesn't mean it will be bad. There's certainly potential here, especially since it's practically a new team, new setting, and new adventure, plus this is the only place we'll get a fair amount of Poison Ivy exposure, which is always nice.
On that note, Saiz is a great artist, which will make Poison Ivy even better. He's got a nice comic cartoon style, and it’s spot on for these types of colorful characters.
And then he's got plenty of past work to look at, he's certainly nowhere near a bad artist, but he isn't always at the top of his game.
http://comicartcommunity.com/gallery/categories.php
Accessibility: As I said in the history, the team name has been around for a long time, but with the exception of Black Canary, it's all new characters, as well as a new writer. It's unlikely that it will be tied to the past series at all, it's unclear if the Birds even existed before in the new Universe, it certainly seems like they just meet up by chance and decide to form the group. So basically, this series should be very easy to enter without any prior knowledge.
Recommendation: I would say yes for Black Canary and Poison Ivy, who are great characters, as well as Katana, who is relatively solid, and Starling has a chance to be good. The premise doesn't sound bad either; it's definitely possible this book will be good, especially if you haven't read any of Simone's work on the previous series, you won't have any expectations.
--
~LtM
http://img.imgcake.com/AYhRdKCMAAjGS3jpggy.jpg