After a run of truly inspired issues tackling everything from the macabre tale of a disgruntled Joker henchman seeking revenge on Harley to a Poison Ivy story that courted the depths of the book's inherent moral ambiguity, issue #9 of
GOTHAM CITY SIRENS eases back to basics -- and that doesn't turn out to be a bad thing at all.
It's such a fun concept for a monthly book -- Selina, Ivy, Harley, and The Riddler have all had their brushes with the law, so fashioning them into a dysfunctional Charlie's Angels-esque team with the Riddler as Charlie has been pretty brilliant. Eddie Nygma gets center-stage this time as he tries to help the girls solve the murder behind the body of the dead woman dropped unceremoniously through their skylight while Harley took her teeny-weeny-bikini-clad afternoon swim. The killer made it look like each of the girls had a hand in the dastardly demise, but who's really behind the frame-up job?
The Riddler sets off to find the culprit, but there's something not quite right about his behavior ...
It's another home run for the SIRENS team. Writer Paul Dini constructs a mystery story that creates a new storyline but also allows for developments in each of the girls' (and Eddie's) lives. Poison Ivy has a new job, we find out more about the condition of Selina's heart after Hush gutted her like a fish (in the HEART OF HUSH storyline that I highly recommend), and of course there's the mystery involving Eddie's odd behavior on top of the mystery of who killed the girl. Dini also brings in another of his creations by issue's end to tie things even more tightly into his own little "Dini-verse" he's been building since his tenure on DETECTIVE.
Guillem March's art is back to being more “cheesecakey” than it had been in the last few issues, and in this story it works really well. Yet another fun, sexy issue of a fun, sexy book that remains interesting because it cares as much about what's going on under the girls' skin as much as it enjoys showing us as much of that skin as it can get away with. And I have no problem with that. - John Bierly
