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Abandoning Gotham City after the destruction of the Clock Tower, the Birds are off to Dayton, Ohio, of all places, the first stop in Oracle’s hunt for metahumans and vigilantes acting beyond the bounds of the law. Using Huntress’ cover as a substitute teacher, the Birds track down a teenage girl with three main interests: magic, her boyfriend and revenge.

Borrowing magic from a variety of sources, the girl—calling herself Black Alice—preys upon drug dealers. Black Alice deals with Black Canary easily in their first confrontation, but when Alice finds her boyfriend with another girl only Canary stands between her and killing an innocent.

Though the Black Alice plotline contains some abrupt turns, there are some gems in the story—like seeing from whom Alice borrows her magic, a mini who’s-who of DC’s magic users. As always, writer Gail Simone’s dialogue is pitch-perfect, especially her account of a babbling voice-mail message from Dick Grayson to Barbara and Huntress’ amusement at having to free Canary from her first meeting with Black Alice. Simone continues to seamlessly integrate the development of each character into action-filled plots, although this issue focuses primarily on Oracle and what—and who—she has left behind in Gotham. The parallels Simone has built between Black Alice’s reaction to tragedy and Oracle’s own coping with recent life-altering events is striking. As she has on her entire run on Birds of Prey, Simone builds the story on the relationships between the characters, and her developments resonate like she really gets who these characters are.

Of course, getting who these characters are means letting them kick some tail from time to time. Ed Benes realizes these situations in knockout fashion (with assistance from Joe Prado). Thankfully, Benes seems to have gotten over the fact that he is drawing attractive women in spandex and fishnets, which seemed to dominate the first several issues on his run. Here his art is clean and expressive; I am continually impressed by how he makes Barbara look vital and potent even in a wheelchair. The last confrontation between Canary and Black Alice is achieved without dialogue but does not lack for impact.