Birds of Prey

With DC putting out Birds of Prey I think it's important to take a look at the comic book history of this all female team. Starting in 1996 (my birth year) around the characters of Black Canary and Oracle were originally based in Gotham City (the only accuracy I can find in the Birds of Prey movie trailers). In addition to Black Canary and Oracle the team regularly consisted of Huntress and Lady Blackhawk, more recent iterations of the team have included Poison Ivy (who does not have a place in the upcoming film, which makes a grand total of 0 sense to any fan of Harley Quinn). I want to pause to say that any solo Harley Quinn expedition that doesn’t include Poison Ivy is just the worst idea anyone has ever had and it shows me that the decision makers at DC have no idea what the hell they're doing.

Anyone the most prosperous era for the Birds of Prey women was when Gail Simone took over writing the series in 2003. It was her who added Huntress to the team, she wrote a team of unapologetically strong, sexy, badass women and when she departed from the series after issue #112, she described leaving the series and characters as “physically painful” (though she did leave to bring her brilliance to another important woman, Wonder Woman). Forgive the overt feminism but after Gail left the series, Sean McKeever and Tony Bedard took over writing the series for a short time before the series was cancelled. The series picked up again after Gail returned to write in January of 2010. Birds of Prey has been an on and off series since it's inception but the team depicted has been consistent with recurring characters, none of which included Harley Quinn.

Now lets move to the source material that would have actually made sense, and actually has more to pull from, Gotham City Sirens. This group consists of Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy and Catwoman, launched in June of 2009 and concluding in August of 2011 Gotham City Sirens ran for 26 issues and the core team remained consistent. With 5 main story arcs (Union, Songs of the Sirens, Sister Zero, Strange Fruit, Division) all of which explore the relationships of these women would have been excellent places to start (but what do I know they’ve only had like 1 and a half successful movies since concluding the Dark Knight series).

They could have taken one of Harley Quinn’s very many solo story line from comics, animated movies and cartoons (but that’s a different article), they could have focused in on arguably one of DCs most well known relationships, Harley and Ivy (that’s another article still), I am clinging to the simple hope that this movie is not gonna suck but all signs point to exactly that. My hopes were so very high for a solo Harley Quinn movie, perhaps the next one will be better (provided the women of DC are given the budget to make another movie after this one inevitably flops)

I apologize that this article mostly turned into, how could the DC writers possibly be this stupid? My big question remains Why Did They Choose Not To Do Gotham City Sirens? DC and Birds of Prey have always had a place in my heart and therefore I am more concerned than anything else about this movie coming out. The reality is if they wanted a Harley Quinn led movie they should have centered it around the Sirens of Gotham City, ya know a team Quinn was actually apart of. Clearly no one in production at DC has ever even looked at a comic book, but I am still cautiously optimistic about how this movie will turn out.