It’s like Beto wanted to show he could still deliver concisely after spending an issue of bombastic pornography. It helps the art’s phenomenal on the two or three panels. Thanks to the route, the ending’s more than fine it’s nice. Beto goes an entirely different route-taking a healthy jaunt through what appears to be a tie-in to the finale of the previous series-and ends up on a simple, visually evocative (but not at all pornographic) epilogue. Because the story’s got nothing to do with them. But all of Beto’s beefcakes and cheesecakes look the same, just with different hairstyles and bra sizes, so keeping track of the many participants would be time-consuming and not really worth the effort. The new psychiatrist might be a Palomar or Luba, like, she looks familiar. There are scenes in the psychiatrist’s office and a different doctor using the magic necklace from the last series.

Nearby, a couple of cave people get it on, then they become another set of people-straight to the modern age, Beto doesn’t keep with it and go through all three ages–and then another set of people and another set of people and so on. Beto opens the comic the dawn of time, zooming in to Earth, where a couple dinosaurs are getting it on, and you find out what a T-Rex with a dong looks like. The last series ended winking at profundity, and the mood cares into this issue. Birdland Volume Two is a comic for all the people who thought Gilbert Hernandez couldn’t do an entire issue of people screwing and still have it land with some kind of deeper impact.

Birdland by Gilbert Hernández