DC Teases the Return of a Surprising Villain

Velvet Tiger plays an unexpected role in DC's Birds of Prey #10.

By Jenna Anderson

A DC villain just returned to the fold for the first time in over two decades. Spoilers for Birds of Prey #10 from Kelly Thompson, Robbi Rodriguez, Gavin Guidry, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles below! Only look if you want to know! The issue sees the Birds continue to stumble through the mysterious void, which has now transformed itself into an idilic suburban setting thanks to the mind of Big Barda. While there, the group is met by Cela, a young woman who calls the void (or really, a pocket dimension) home. As Cela explains, she is one of seven sisters born to Lani Lockhart, the villainess known as the Velvet Tiger.

According to Cela, Lani will be killed in the future by Barbara Gordon / Batgirl, which sends one of her other daughters, Maia, on a vengeful and reality-warping killing spree. Maia proceeded to kill nearly all of her and Cela's sisters, absorbing their powers so she can enact her revenge against the Birds of Prey.

Who Is Velvet Tiger?

Created by Barbara Kesel and Trevor von Eeden in 1982's Detective Comics #518, Lani Gilbert is an extortionist initially introduced as an antagonist of Barbara's. Clad in a tiger-print jumpsuit and armed with the ability to distort time and space, Lani is shown as a power-hungry criminal who blackmails people to move up in the criminal underworld.

As Velvet Tiger, Lani goes to-to-toe with Barbara, and later Hawk and Dove, before appearing to be killed off in 1999's Lobo #62. She then returned in 2001's Wonder Woman #175, and later in the "Batgirl of Burnside" Batgirl run of the 2010s. This makes her involvement in this Birds of Prey run especially interesting — both for the future fight between her and Barbara that is in the cards, and for the impact her legacy had on her surviving daughters. There's also the question of Lani's last name changing from Gilbert to Lockhart, and who exactly the children's father — who is described by Cela as "mysterious, rich, and more often than not absent" — might be in the larger story.

Who Are DC's Birds of Prey?

Since its launch in the fall of 2023, this new Birds of Prey volume has been led by Dinah Lance / Black Canary, with the initial roster consisting of Harley Quinn, Cassandra Cain / Orphan, Big Barda, and Lady Zannah / Zealot. Meridian, an older version of Mia "Maps" Mizoguchi from a potential dark future, has also tagged along for a number of the team's adventures thus far. The first Birds of Prey arc involved the rescue of Cynthia "Sin" Lance from Themyscira, an experience that left her bonded with the ancient entity Megara, and she has been a part of the Birds ever since.

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"A big cast can be a nightmare—it's happened to me before—and you don't make that mistake a second time if you can avoid it," Thompson told ComicBook in an exclusive interview last fall. "Knowing some of the guest stars and locations we had planned—I knew I had to keep the "core team" small. And if I start with three mainstays that HAVE to be there…now I only have a few spots to play with and suddenly I'm out of options for a lot of the things I need to do. But letting Dinah build an all-new team for a very specific targeted mission gave me so much freedom to do what we needed to do and to bang some new characters against one another in interesting ways.   "

Birds of Prey #10 is now available wherever comics are sold.

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