We have a shelf full of bird guides in our house, but this is the book we grab first, and 99% of the time, the only one that is needed. Also one of the few out there with good pictures of BOTH sexes. Would we rather they had photos instead of drawings? Probably. But it's a small price to pay for the best identification book we've ever had.

Outrageously hilarious! But be warned: once you have seen the Supreme Court naked, there is no way to UNsee it.

Do not under any circumstances take any of this seriously, or you will break your brain. As long as you're willing to do that, then you will find bucketfuls of awesome in this series.

Thankfully, the story and art is significantly better than I've come to expect from the Supergirl series. Having said that, this collection is kind of all over the place, with some stories that seem to only tangentially touch on Supergirl herself. A minor quibble, really. Alas, my biggest beef with this book has nothing to do with quality; I just find Kara utterly unsympathetic as a protagonist. She's self-absorbed, whiny, arrogant... a very accurate portrayal of a gifted teen, I suppose. Still, I can't help but wish she'd start growing the hell up.

Very exhaustive, and very nicely laid out. Lots of gorgeous photos. I'm a bit spoiled by online encyclopedias, so it's nice to see paper versions actually making use of their strengths. I do have a few issues with this book, but they're fairly minor.

Firstly, it's a bit annoying that the larger articles are placed out of order so as to fit them onto pages without interruption. Second, the photos should be captioned, or at least referenced in their respective article; there are some photos I simply cannot identify for certain. And finally, there is a notable shortage of LISTS. Say I want to find out about the a Torchwood member who appeared in one episode, but I don't know her name. I should be able to check the Torchwood entry and find a list of their members. I understand that there is a premium on space in any book, but I think these additions would be very useful nonetheless.

This story arc takes a funnier turn than recent events might have suggested. It was also nice to get away from the increasingly over-reliance on Revise. Unfortunately, the writer accomplished this by creating new villains that appear, on the surface, to be simple clones of the Revise group, leading to rather predictable outcomes. Having said that, the zombies are fricking hilarious.

Like Preacher, this book is turning out to be a highly entertaining "road trip" book largely featuring protagonists who are likeable jerks. Also like Preacher, I actually find the ongoing plot something of a distraction. Still, as long as the "bad guys" are enjoyable in their own right, I am more than happy with this situation.

There's a trope known as "Villain Decay", in which villains appear to be nigh-unstoppable at the beginning, but then turn out to be pushovers. Unfortunately, Ellis's insistence that Nextwave be formatted into 2-issue story arcs essentially forced him to rely on this trope repeatedly. Which was funny and forgivable in the first half of the series, but began getting more glaring by the second half.

A second issue I had was with the self-referential humour. In small doses (the various captions alongside the titles, for example), it's hilarious. But devoting an entire 2-issue arc to it? That just felt uncomfortable.

Finally, it felt like Ellis was just running out of jokes. I think he used his best ones right off the bat, and by this point, he was starting to recycle stuff he saw on TV.

However, even with these gripes, I still found this book very very funny. Even the otherwise sub-par Branch Echs storyline gave us the hilarious depiction of Aaron as an insurance adjuster, and Tabitha's IM-speak, both of which were among the funniest moments of the entire series. In fact, if you're one of those people who have the enviable ability to ignore the plot completely for the sake of humour, this would probably be a 4.5 star book. But I can't entirely do that, so for me, it's a 4-star book. As it turns out, I'm glad it ended when it did, on a high note, but with signs of fatigue showing.

Another highly entertaining read by Gail Simone, who writes witty banter and genuine-feeling relationships like no one else. The intro story with Calculator was good, albeit nothing special for this series. However, one must eventually address the impact of the One Year Later event in DC, which forced all the books, like it or not, to suddenly advance by 52 weeks without warning. While some series, like Teen Titans, used the opportunity to give the reader one WTF moment after another, Birds of Prey kept it fairly simple. Huntress grew into her role on the team, and Black Canary traded places with Shiva. So instead of the story wasting a lot of pages catching up, we were able to hit the ground running, and this book gave us a wholely satisfying tale involving the Crime Doctor.

Well, this is the book that got me hooked onto a long and expensive series! Obviously, the show-stealer here is Bigby, formerly the Big Bad Wolf. And what a cool character they've made him into. Snow White also got an interesting upgrade, and boy is it fun after you finish reading it, to go back through the book and figure out who all the minor Fables you never heard of are. Though the premise of the series, introduced here, is the predicament of the Fables who have to live in our mundane world, this story arc is pretty much entirely focused on a whodunnit mystery. Which is fantastic, because the plot, solid as it is, plays second fiddle to the characterization and dialog. This book is every bit as charming as the childrens' tales it uses, sometimes very liberally. Just be warned: if you read this, you'll probably want to read the next 12 (and counting) as well!

McKeever gets off to a fair start on this book, but seems to be relying on familiar plot devices to help the transition. This time it's Superman chewing out Oracle instead of Batman. This time Oracle's obssessed about something else while pushing away her friends and then ultimately having to eat crow and apologize. But either way, we've been down that road before, so hmm.

The handling of Misfit is particularly problematic, as we sort of get into this "we love her so much that we don't want her to be sad so we'll absolve her of guilt even though she is clearly responsible for one, if not both, things that we blamed her for earlier" logic that drives me up the wall. Sorry; pet peeve.

I enjoyed the Killer Shark story for the most part, as it finally gave some much-needed face time for Zinda (albeit much of it as a victim... sigh). Still, at the end, I couldn't help but feel a little weirded out that a pair of tough women wouldn't be just a teeny bit more pissed at the idea of a guy using *roofies* on them, for the love of... I mean, it's essentially just a technicality that he hadn't raped Zinda.

Finally, does anyone really buy that Barbara is willing to intentionally snap a child's ankle in a practice match, no matter how sure she was that it would heal up immediately?

Anyway, high points: more airtime for Lady Blackhawk; development of Zinda/Helena relationship. Low points: Oracle; rehashed plot devices.