Golden Oldie (sort of): ADVENTURE COMICS #399

Black Canary's Golden Age solo adventures ended with the cancellation of Flash Comics in 1948.  However, the Canary's creators produced two more tales of the Blonde Bombshell that would not be published for over two decades.  The second of those stories appeared in Adventure Comics #399 in 1970.  In addition to Black Canary's story, this issue starred Supergirl and featured a cover by Mike Sekowsky and Dick Giordano.

"Television Told the Tale" is written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino.  I don't know when the story was created; it might have been intended for Flash Comics #105 or it might have been produced months earlier and just fell between the cracks.  I don't know if there is any significance to the fact that the story is only six pages; maybe this wasn't meant for the regular run and was conceived just as a fill-in should the need arise.

Dinah Drake tells Larry Lance that Mrs. Landall hired her to deliver the floral decorations for when the woman's prized jewels are shown on television.  Larry drives Dinah to Landall's lakeside estate where they notice the mansion's perfect view of the motorboat races happening later that day.

Dinah sets up the flower display around Mrs. Landall and her jewels, but she doesn't stay for the taping.  She leaves Larry and returns to her shop to watch the show on her TV set.  However, as Landall shows off her jewels, Dinah notices that the camera man is focusing on the drapes behind the woman.

Suspecting something's wrong, Dinah changes into the garb of the Black Canary and returns to Landall's estate.  She finds the old woman tied up and Larry just barely regaining consciousness.  He tells her that the cameraman and some thugs stole the diamonds.  Then Black Canary hears the sound of motorboats outside and springs into action.

Black Canary manages to swim and catch up to the robbers' boat.  When the leader pulls a gun, she reminds him that they're cruising right into the highly photographed motorboat race and they're sure to be identified if they kill her.  This stalls the goons long enough for the Canary to take the advantage.

Black Canary struggles with the pilot and manages to crash their boat right in front of the crowd gathered for the race's finish line.  The pilot pulls a gun, but she hits him before he can fire.

Another thrilling adventure where Black Canary doesn't get knocked unconscious!  I'm suspecting the editor may have thought these were too unbelievable to be published in the '40s.  Nevertheless, this was another great little story that showed Black Canary kicking butt like a serious crime fighter.  She takes out three armed goons, and she doesn't rely on props or surprise; she just beats their asses with her fists and her feet.  Plus, it's always great when the woman in fishnets ends up in the water!

Well, that's it for Black Canary's Golden Age adventures, that is until I get copies of her Justice Society appearances in All-Star Comics, and I don't know when that'll happen.  And that means that's all for the Golden Oldie feature.  I hope you enjoyed Kanigher and Infantino's run on Black Canary as much as I did!

Golden Oldie (sort of): DC SPECIAL #3

Black Canary's Golden Age solo adventures ended with the cancellation of Flash Comics in 1948.  However, the Canary's creators produced two more tales of the Blonde Bombshell that would not be published for over two decades.  The first of those stories appeared in DC Special #3 in 1969.  In addition to Black Canary, the all-girl issue featured stories of Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and Star Sapphire with a beautiful cover by Neal Adams.

"Special Delivery Death" is written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino.  I don't know when the story was created; it might have been intended for Flash Comics #105 or it might have been produced months earlier and just fell between the cracks.  What I do know is that the eight-page yarn both looks and feels a little more mature, a little more sophisticated than Black Canary's previous chapters.

Infantino's artwork, particularly the character design, has so much more definition in this story that I wanted to share the entire chapter.  Enjoy!

Unlike any of Black Canary's previous adventures, Kanigher puts real life and character into the villains, Bobo and Nifty, and Infantino's renditions of them have just the right flair of caricature.  There's great coloring and inking on the two in the last page.

More than the richness of Bobo and Nifty, I love how Kanigher portrays Black Canary in this story.  For one thing, she never gets knocked unconscious, which is a first, I believe, and maybe the reason this didn't get published in the Golden Age.  There are two chances where the killers could have taken her out, but both times she proves resourceful and gets the drop on them: first when she swing-kicks Nifty, and then when she drops him in the garbage can in the alley.

Come back next Sunday for the final solo adventure of Black Canary by the original team of Kanigher and Infantino in a story from Adventure Comics #399.

Golden Oldie: FLASH COMICS #103

Black Canary's ongoing adventures continue with seven thrilling pages of mystery and suspense in Flash Comics #103.

"Mystery On Ice" is written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino.

Nevermind why Larry Lance's client would ask to meet him on a frozen lake, he tells Dinah to sit back and watch him with his fancy skating moves.  And then promptly falls on his butt to much amusement.  Dinah changes into her Black Canary costume and displays her own fancy footwork.

At that point, Larry Lance's client arrives, having fled for his life from crooks trying to steal a valuable element.  Fled for his life... to an iceskating park... with is own skates...

Black Canary kicks one of goons, but the other (you guessed it!) pistol-whips her unconscious.  When she wakes up, she and Larry are tied to an ice sailboat and set adrift down the frozen river.  As the boat nears the falls and their certain death, Black Canary and Larry shift their weight causing the boat to list one way then the other.  They manage to steer the boat off the river into the snow bank and down the other side.

The boat skids down the snow slope and crashes right into the criminals' car preventing their escape.  The goons make one more desperate escape attempt, kicking out the door, but Black Canary takes the leader's ice-skate.  She throws it back at his face, but lucky for him, the boot hits him instead of the blade.

After this issue, there would only be one more issue of Flash Comics in its original print run.  The end of this era would net Black Canary an extra two pages in her adventure, but see the last of her solo adventures for more than a decade.

Come back next Sunday for another Golden Age adventure of Black Canary in Flash Comics #104.

Golden Oldie: FLASH COMICS #102

Black Canary's ongoing adventures continue with seven thrilling pages of mystery and suspense in Flash Comics #102.

"The Riddle of the Roses!" is written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino.

A short time after Nelson Lang orders every rose in Dinah Drake's flower shop, Larry Lance comes by the store to tell her that millionaire Charles Lang has hired him to recover a stolen emerald.  Dinah and Larry mull over the coincidence that her customer, Nelson, is the elder Lang's nephew.

Later that day, Dinah convinces Larry to help her transport all the roses to Lang's mansion.  When they arrive, they're stunned to see an impressive rose garden in full bloom on the property.  No one answers the door, so Dinah and Larry bring the packed roses around to the back of the house where they discover a pair of criminals rummaging through Lang's rooms.  When they see Dinah and Larry skulking around outside, they draw weapons.

Larry shoves Dinah out of the way and tells her to get the police while he tries to disarm the crooks.  Dinah, miffed at his noble-yet-sexist behavior, changes into the Black Canary and joins the fray.

Yet again Black Canary is struck in the head by a pistol, but she feigns having brain damage to fool the criminals, whereas in reality she would have had actual brain damage long, long ago for the number of times she's been pistol-whipped.

Black Canary and Larry Lance find Nelson Lang dead in the house and chase the crooks back to Charles Lang's summer home.  There Black Canary overhears the criminals, with the millionaire at gunpoint, explaining that his nephew stole the emerald for them but then hid it somewhere.  Black Canary and Larry are captured by an unseen criminal and then tied to the outdoors stairway that leads down the cliff from the house to the water.  Then the criminals set fire to the stairs so the heroes will either burn or fall into the water and drown... because why not just shoot them?

Black Canary sneaks up on the crooks and hits them with an umbrella from Lang's patio furniture.  The millionaire is saved, the crooks are captured, but the emerald is still missing until Black Canary reveals that she's had it on her person, hidden in the rose she placed in her hair.

"The Riddle of the Roses" follows the same basic formula as all of Black Canary's other adventures in Flash Comics.  Kanigher and Infantino must have been hard up for deathtrap ideas by this point, though, because how they came up with the idea of tying Black Canary to an outdoor staircase over water and setting fire to it... boggles the mind.

Come back next Sunday for another Golden Age adventure of Black Canary in Flash Comics #103.

Golden Oldie: FLASH COMICS #101

Black Canary's ongoing adventures continue with seven thrilling pages of mystery and suspense in Flash Comics #101.

"The Day That Wouldn't End!" is written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino.

When Dinah Drake and Larry Lance deliver the flowers to James Taylor (probably not that one), they meet his lawyer, Mr. Crane, who tells them Taylor is returning from the hospital.  When the lawyer leaves, Larry accidentally knocks over a desk calendar in which every date is labeled May 16th.

Larry suspects a mystery and needs to get rid of Dinah to investigate.  Dinah, at the same time, needs to shake loose of Larry so she can change into Black Canary and find out what's going.  So they ditch each other, and when Black Canary sneaks around the Taylor mansion, she finds a group of hoods hiding outside.

Inside the mansion, James Taylor is aghast about the date on the calendar and today's newspaper.  Everything, the paper, the radio, even Taylor's lawyer, Mr. Crane, says today is May 16th, and Taylor has been reliving the same day over and over again.  He feels like he's grown crazy.

But Black Canary discovers that the radio broadcast is only a recording, but before she can confront Crane, the goons from outside return to the house.  Black Canary and Larry are knocked unconscious and placed in this month's elaborate deathtrap.

Black Canary and Larry Lance race from the house figuring that Crane went to hide in the flower conservatory.  Inside the greenhouse, Crane tells the goons that he'll frame Taylor for killing Black Canary; Taylor will have no credit what with his complaining about time stopping.

I really don't know what Mr. Crane's plot was or why he chose repeating dates to drive James Taylor crazy.  At this point, the formula for Kanigher and Infantino's stories was so obvious there could have been a table of contents for it:

Pages 1 and 2 - Opens the mystery with Dinah Drake and Larry Lance
Page 3 - Black Canary fights some thugs
Page 4 - The mystery deepens and Black Canary is knocked unconscious
Page 5 - Black Canary and Larry Lance wake up in someone's bizarrely conceived deathtrap
Page 6 - Black Canary uses her locket to escape the deathtrap
Page 7 - Black Canary and Larry Lance stop the bad guy, and Larry explains it to Dinah Drake, not realizing it's the same woman.

This is how the last couple stories have played out, and this will be how the next five stories proceed. Yeah, we only have five more Golden Age Black Canary stories to review!

Come back next Sunday for another Golden Age adventure of Black Canary in Flash Comics #102.

Golden Oldie: FLASH COMICS #100

Black Canary's ongoing adventures continue with seven thrilling pages of mystery and suspense in the milestone 100th issue of Flash Comics.  Hmm... I would've expected something a little bit more milestone-y for the cover.

"The Circle Terror!" is written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino.

Bizarrely, the Pierrette model on the music box raises a gun and appears to shoot Pierrot.  Dinah Drake and Larry Lance go inside the music store, where a surly looking man passes them on his way out.  At once, Dinah and Larry notice that the store clerk looks just like the Pierrot figurine on the music box.  Then they notice he's fallen down dead, almost as if the figurine's death was replicated in real life.

Suddenly, the skylight gives way and Black Canary falls down into the bad guy's hideout.  But the ever-graceful Mistress of Judo lands on her feet.  She scoops up some diamonds and throws them at the henchmen.  Then Black Canary corners the bad guy leader, but he doses her with a gas from the flower on his lapel.

Black Canary wakes up tied to a post on a giant music box.  And she's not alone; Larry Lance is tied up, too, having tracked the music box back to the enemy hideout.  The bad guy starts the music box, telling them that when the posts spin to the point where they face each other, the box will explode, killing them.

After freeing themselves, Black Canary and Larry Lance trace the bad guy back to a jewelry store he's in the process of robbing.

That's a hint, Larry.  Dinah is the Black Canary!

Come back next Sunday for another Golden Age adventure of Black Canary in Flash Comics #101.

Golden Oldie: FLASH COMICS #99

Black Canary's ongoing adventures continue with seven thrilling pages of mystery and suspense in Flash Comics #99.

"Time Runs Out!" is written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino, who breaks up the title page layout with a splashy cover image that runs lengthwise rather than take up the top portion of the page.

Larry Lance, doing his best Dick Tracy impression with the yellow trench coat, tells Dinah Drake that he's working a case about stolen radioactive vinium, which not any kind of element or compound that I've ever heard of.  Dinah then is accosted by Danny Deake, the florist from across the street, who angrily takes his package from Larry Lance.

Just then, a car speeds up to the curb and two men in the car open fire on Deake.  The rival florist is shot dead, but Larry pushes Dinah into the cover of her own flower shop before challenging the gunmen himself.  Dinah sneaks into the back of her store and changed into the costume of her secret crime-fighting alias, Black Canary.  When she comes out of the store, though, Larry is being thrown into the car with the two gunmen, who also picked up the package that Deake wanted so badly.

The goons from the car take the package as well as the captives Black Canary and Larry Lance to the Modern Glass Company factory.  The evil boss wears a protective suit and hood while he works with the dangerous chemicals and elements.

The boss quickly dumps... something on the molten glass to make it harden instantly, trapping Canary and Lance.  The heroes are then knocked unconscious--not pistol-whipped this time, but still knocked out, so Dinah's still making her monthly brain damage quota.

Black Canary and Larry Lance wake up in the bottom part of a giant hourglass.  The villain tells them they have one hour--because that's how hourglasses work--before the sand from the top half fills their compartment and kills them.  But after the villain explains his deathtrap, he leaves the room assuming everything will go according to his plan and there's no reason at all to confirm the deaths of his foes.

Outside, the leader has his men load glass vases onto a truck.  He drops the vases off at flower shops which he plans to use as a front to distribute the illegal vinium.  But he and the rest of the crooks are shocked when Black Canary and Lance crawl out of two of the vases.  Black Canary explains that she used the diamond beak of her canary locket to cut through the glass of their hourglass prison.

Poor Larry.  So in love with Black Canary and oblivious to Dinah Drake standing right next to him.

Come back next Sunday for another Golden Age adventure of Black Canary in Flash Comics #100.

Golden Oldie: FLASH COMICS #98

Black Canary's ongoing adventures continue with seven thrilling pages of mystery and suspense in Flash Comics #98.

"The Byzantine Black" is written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino.

The story begins with Dinah Drake hurrying back to her flower shop, having forgotten to put a shipment of orchids in the refrigerator.  When she returns to her store, however, she is shocked to discover that the outside signage and inside contents have been replaced to look like a small grocery store.  She's in the right place, but her business has been completely changed.

Sneaking through the store, Dinah overhears men in the back room talking about pulling a scam on a millionaire named Roger Steele.  Wasting no more time, Dinah dons the disguise of her crime stopper alter-ego, the Black Canary.

She rushes into the back of her shop to foil the crooks.  They take shots at her, but she avoids the bullets.

Outside the shop, Black Canary finds the body of Roger Steele, thankfully still alive.  Larry Lance arrives and tells Canary that he was hired to bodyguard Steele after the Byzantine Black was stolen.  Lance tells her the Byzantine Black is an extremely valuable stamp.

Black Canary and Larry Lance bring Roger Steel back to his mansion, where the millionaire's niece, Elaine, helps him recover.  She mentions her uncle meeting the crooks at a grocery store, which rings an alarm bell in Black Canary's mind.  But before she can inquire, Canary and Lance are pistol-whipped unconscious because that happens every month.

When the pair of heroic investigators awaken ,they are on a precariously balanced teeter-totter above a pit of quicksand.  Should either of them move too much in any way, the other or both will surely fall into the sand and die.  But Black Canary has a plan.  She dislodges a boulder with a rope vine and pulls it down on her side of the plank.

Black Canary and Larry Lance rush off to pursue the crooks while she makes fun of Larry's clothes.  In no time at all...

Upon reading this story, I'm confronted by one burning question: was this whole contrived plot just a means to encourage kids and readers to collect stamps?  Have stamps ever really been worth anything or is that just a myth?  I don't get it.  The Byzantine Black could have been anything--the whole point of a McGuffin--but why a stamp?!!

Anyway, the plot and Larry's place in the story are pretty thin, but it's nice seeing Black Canary use her mind to figure out traps and the identity of the real criminal mastermind in this story.  Not only is she a superb fighter, she's a smart detective.  She's a better judge of character--by a thousand--than Black Canary in the New 52's Birds of Prey.

Come back next Sunday for another Golden Age adventure of Black Canary in Flash Comics #99.

Golden Oldie: FLASH COMICS #97

Black Canary's ongoing adventures continue with seven thrilling pages of mystery and suspense.  Carmine Infantino's pencils get better every month as he experiments with bold new panel layouts that make the action in Flash Comics #97 some of the best yet.

"The Mystery of the Stolen Cloth" is written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino.

The story opens with millionaire CEO Donald Swain being dumped from a moving car.  Swain rolls to a stop at the feet of Larry Lance.  The dying Swain recognizes Lance and gives him a piece of cloth, claiming that it's worth millions and the mob is willing to kill for it.  Then Swain dies.

At the Eastern Textile Mills warehouse, Black Canary spots the car used to kidnap Larry.  She slips inside where she finds Larry tied up by some low-level thugs answering to a known gangster named Threads.

Canary throws a bucket of chemicals at some of the gangsters, blinding them, and jumps around, dodging Threads' gunshots.  But when she leaps onto a conveyer belt, Threads turns on the belt, causing Black Canary to loser her balance.  She's pistol-whipped, because that has to happen in every issue, and tied up beside Larry.

Threads puts Lance and Canary on turning bobbins and has them wrapped in cloth until Larry will reveal what he did with Swain's piece of cloth.  When the detectives refuse to cooperate, Threads leaves them to be wound with cloth while he leaves the room, presumably to go to the bathroom or something.

Wow, it seems like Black Canary always has exactly the right tool in her choker for whatever perilous situation she finds herself in.

And she managed to start a fire with flint and steel using only her chin!

Black Canary and Larry Lance escape, fight their way past Threads' goons and kick open the door to his office.  He drops a giant blanket on them and bolts, but they're quickly on his back again.

Another simple but funny story, a bit more wild than most with the action beats.  The reason this story feels so much more fun is that Black Canary seems to have a real villain to oppose.  Threads is newly created for this story, but their dialogue suggests a previous encounter.  He could have been her first recurring rogue if they ever used him again.

Black Canary has never had a real rogues gallery of her own.  Most of her most interesting enemies are borrowed from other characters.  In her ongoing series from the '90s, she maybe had two baddies who would qualify as super-villains.  But most of her solo stories involved unnamed or unknown street-level crooks.  It's not a bad thing, but when heroes are measured by their villains, Black Canary has never measured up.

Come back next Sunday for another Golden Age adventure of Black Canary in Flash Comics #98.

Golden Oldie: FLASH COMICS #96

Last month, Black Canary's regular strip received a three page promotion, bumping the story up to ten pages.  It must have been a one time trial, though, because her story is back to its now usual seven pages in Flash Comics #96.

"The Riddle of the Topaz Brooch" is written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino.  As you can see from the teaser page, this story marks the first occasion where Black Canary is shown riding a motorcycle that would become her signature vehicle for most of the character's publication history.

When Larry Lance jumps over the counter, however, he finds the druggist dead.  Larry sends Dinah Drake to call the police, but when Dinah slips away, she changes into the costume of her alter-ego, the Blonde Bombshell called The Black Canary.

Black Canary returns to the drug store where Larry finds a newspaper clipping in the dead man's hand.  The article refers to the precious Gorham Brooch, which will make its final public appearance at a horse show that day.  But then the hired guns who murdered the druggist return to find Black Canary and Larry Lance there.

They trade gunfire for pies and ice cream, eventually pistol-whipping the heroes because Black Canary gets pistol-whipped in every damn issue.  When Canary and Larry wake up, the police arrive, assuming the fishnet-wearing vigilante killed the druggist.  So she's been framed yet again...

Black Canary and Larry Lance run from the drug store, eluding the cops, and heading toward their only clue--the horse show.

Carno and the Masked Riders naturally reveal themselves to be the killers from the drug store.  They steel the Gorham Brooch and ride toward the stadium's exit.  But not without pursuit!

The Masked Riders cause enough traffic congestion to prevent the police from following them, but Black Canary and Larry Lance have no trouble following on the motorcycle.  They trace the bandits to a private airstrip where the bad guys are taking off in a private jet.  Following no one's advice ever, they manage to grab onto the plane before just as it takes off.

The criminals send the plane into a trajectory certain to crash, and then they all abandon the plane with parachutes.  The heroes have only one play, to leap toward the crooks and float safely down on their parachutes.

At this point in her solo career, Black Canary's adventures are getting to be predictable.  It seems like every issue involves Dinah and Larry stumbling onto a body, Dinah changing to Black Canary, then getting framed for the crime, then going off and finding the real villain, then getting knocked unconscious, then saving herself (and Larry) at the last minute and stopping the criminals.

It's a good, classic hero tale for Golden Age storytelling, but repetitive as all get-out seeing as how the creators and publishers weren't banking on a lot of repeat readers.  Continuity wasn't so important at this time, which is good, because the number of times Black Canary gets knocked out would reduce her to nothing but a drooling vegetable.

On the other hand, it is great to see her on that motorcycle where she belongs!

Come back next Sunday for another Golden Age adventure of Black Canary in Flash Comics #97.