Sirens: Love Hurts #3: Kill the Bachlorette

Sirens: Love Hurts has continued to be my secret delight each and every month that it’s been running, delivering a gonzo, relationship-driven adventure that is incredibly easy to escape into. Issue #3 continues to work within this mold, emboldening a focus on the dynamics between our core cast and their personal lives more than the murder mystery that kicked this whole book off. For some readers, that may be frustrating, especially with how over-the-top Horoscope’s character and plan are. For myself, I find it to be the best possible decision this team could have made.

The appeal of this book has always been about its slice-of-life, somewhat unorthodox characterization of the relationships between Dinah, Selina, Pam, and Harley. Their friendships, their personal lives, and the developing tension between the four of them have driven me back to this title every month, and this issue is where those developments start to get really satisfying. The messy, complicated, yet wholesome love developing between Harley and Ivy is the beating heart of this book. As Dinah and Selina struggle with what it means to be someone’s partner, especially Selina, these two grow and showcase a natural companionship that is far removed from attempts to characterize their pairing as toxic in other continuities.

The little details in how they interact also extend to how Howard approaches the smaller character dynamics throughout the book. Something I love about this book is how Howard writes the men who play as background characters to our main cast. The difference in how she characterizes Dinah and Ollie’s relationship compared to Selina and Bruce’s speaks to what she has to say about them. Bruce is constantly playing a character, whether he is a vigilante or a billionaire playboy. Selina, who struggles to commit, has a strong distaste for both of these things, making it difficult for her to let her guard down and see the person between the personas who loves her.

Ollie, on the other hand, is unabashedly himself no matter what, supporting Dinah with trust and flair in any situation. Dinah is constantly pushed and pulled by this grandiose image of a “good person,” leaving her to be the straight man even in situations where she would rather be anything but. There is a subtle idea that she is as “by the book” as she is because that’s what is expected of her—not just as a hero, but as someone’s partner. Horoscope has shaken her belief in systemic good, which the book mostly aims at the likes of Gotham’s police force, but also extends to her quiet anxiety surrounding her wedding. Seeing her change through working with the Sirens, alongside the aforementioned trust Ollie has in her decision-making, showcases her growth throughout this story extremely well. Selina’s belittling of their relationship—and Dinah “settling down” with the billionaire playboy type—comes from a lack of self-assurance in both her partner and herself, which makes the finer details in their partners’ characterization so enriching for our main characters’ agency.

As for the major set pieces of this book, they’re both paced extraordinarily well and drawn with the same excellence that Babs Tarr has become known for. More than in previous issues, she’s able to flex not just her great cartooning skills when it comes to character expression, but her action pacing as well. Harley and Ivy’s break-in at Horoscope’s lair is genuinely pulse-pounding, rife with kinetic movement and show-stealing character beats from Harley. There isn’t much more I can add to my reviews of Tarr’s art without sounding repetitive. It’s fantastic, and has come a long way since Batgirl, which was the book that I first discovered her through.