Thursday, October 3, 2013

Super-Team Family: Black Canary and the Beast


It's Thursday and that means I get to lazily graciously repost one of Ross' custom DC/Marvel crossover covers from the Super-Team Family blog.  Almost a year ago to the day, Ross depicted Black Canary struggling to free herself from captivity at the hands of my favorite mutant, Hank McCoy, better known as Beast.

Courtesy of Super-Team Family: The Lost Issue blog.
The Black Canary image originated as a black and white John Byrne sketch, but I don't know who colored it--Ross?

While researching (re: Google Images) where the image came from, I made the following discovery:

Why, hello there, every woman designed between 1983 and 1990!

Read the description on that page from Modern Masters 7: John Byrne.  Yes, Byrne pitched a Black Canary series post-Crisis on Infinite Earths!  I never knew that, and now that I do, I'm not sure how I feel about it.

A Black Canary series helmed by John Byrne would have elevated her status immeasurably, especially at the time when Byrne's star was maybe burning brightest thanks to his rebooting of Superman.  I don't think anything could have boosted her popularity more than that.

On the other hand, I hate that costume design.  Hate it.  I'm also very hot-and-cold, hit-or-miss when it comes to John Byrne.  I loved his stuff on Uncanny X-Men, but his Fantastic Four is highly overrated. I liked his work on Superman, but the Man of Steel miniseries that launched right after Crisis was pretty underwhelming.  And was Byrne going to write and draw the issue?  Because I'm a lot more cold/miss on his scripting than his pencils.

And really, I hate that costume design!  But there's no denying he can draw an exciting classic Black Canary.

Check out Super-Team Family: The Lost Issues for many, many more DC/Marvel crossover covers!

5 comments:

  1. A Byrne spy-oriented series would have been pretty interesting with Black Canary!

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  2. Interesting, yeah. The Byrne name connection makes it intriguing, just as Christopher Nolan associated with any superhero movie makes it intriguing, if not completely appropriate. And that design could just as easily have been Black Widow during the '90s when every Avenger wore brown jackets.

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  3. for many of us long-term Fantastic Four fans, Byrne has his critics but many of us think his run was second to the legendary Lee and Kirby.
    It was his Wonder Woman run that things went bad for many, plus his endless messing with continuity. Still, Id have liked to have seen his version of Black Canary just for the thrill of it.

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  4. There were things about Byrne's FF that I liked, and stuff I really didn't. I prefer Lee/Kirby, Waid/Wieringo, and even Jonathan Hickman's recent run to Byrne's.

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  5. I'll second Drunkula's position. Neat that Byrne had the idea to play with Dinah, but cold on the manifestation seen here.

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