I never read All Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder but I've heard it's pretty godawful. There was a time when a Batman project written by Frank Miller and drawn by Jim Lee would have sent me into a fit of rapturous glee. But that time was fifteen years ago.
Because I haven't read it, I cannot comment with authority on the quality of the story or its characterization of Black Canary. However, I have heard that she is not treated with the level of love and care that other writers treat her. Jim Lee's depiction of Dinah is eye-catching certainly, maybe as sexy as ever in purely physical way (as "physically sexy" as a 2-D comic character can be). But I've also heard that Miller degrades her to a cigar smoking, overly sexualized, and sexually harassed bartender who takes to beating up the men who objectify her just like the writer and artist do. And then she beats up every other man in sight until she sees Batman, who she falls in love with.
*sigh*
I could look at the picture above for a long time, but what I've heard about Dinah's interpretation in All Star Batman just makes me angry.
Yes, it IS awful..so many things grate and irritate, mostly Black Canary's IRISH accent [yes, all 'begorra, begorra'] offensive stereotyping, and Dinah seemed destined here to be another Catwoman-type bad-girl crush on Batman.
ReplyDeleteI assume the writer was trying to bring back an aspect of the claasic BC from the Golden Age - the thief, the mask, the female 'Raffles' etc -but frankly the series was a hopeless mess. It seemed set in its own continuity so dosent count as canon.
But its this series treatment of my beloved Wonder Woman that really irks me like no other...writing her as a man-hating feminist and calling a homeless man a 'sperm donor' Disgraceful.
I wouldn't mind seeing those aspects of Black Canary--the mask, the ambiguous stance on the law--from her first appearance in FLASH COMICS #87 brought back in a new story as long as it was done well. Miller and Lee's version, though, well… I think you said it all.
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