Episode 21: Black Canary Goes Hardcore

Reviewing Black Canary (1993) issues #9, #10, and #11. Black Canary takes on Symitar to save hundreds of women from slavery. Guest starring: The Huntress and Rightwing.

These are the final issues illustrated by Trevor Von Eeden.

Flowers & Fishnets is available for download on iTunes by clicking here, or you can check out the show's RSS feed right here.


Sample pages of Black Canary #9, #10, #11 written by Sarah Byam and illustrated by Trevor Von Eeden.

Music this episode:
"Hold Your Head High"
Heartless Bastards
Partisan Records, 2009.

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Birds of Prey #8 (Aug 1999)

Previously in Birds of Prey...

Birds of Prey #8: "On Wings" is written by Chuck Dixon with pencils by Greg Land, inks by Drew Geraci, and colors by Gloria Vasquez.  The cover was done by Land and Brian Stelfreeze.

The issue begins with Black Canary trying to contact Oracle only to hear a man's voice pick up the communicator.

Dinah has picked up on the stranger's reference to "Babs", the closest thing to a name she has for Oracle.  She asks the man we know is Nightwing if he's friends with Babs, or "more than friends".  It turns out, the answer to that question isn't so simple.

Nightwing thinks back to the last time he saw Barbara Gordon.  She came to visit him in Bludhaven and they got dinner and a show.  Not a movie, though; this is Dick Grayson.  When he takes someone to a show, he means the circus.  For Dick Grayson, revisiting Haly's Circus brings back all the joyful sights, sounds, and smells of his childhood.  But for Barbara, the circus brings back much darker memories.

Barbara teases Dick as much as she can, but he knows she's having a good time.  Though Dick is the owner of the circus now, he introduces her to Mr. Haly, the manager and one-time surrogate uncle.  Haly tells Dick about the hardships they've had lately and then bids them goodnight.

Barbara asks Dick if it's painful for him to return to the place where his parents were murdered.  He says no; he still thinks of the place as a second home full of good memories.  Dick says he's at peace, maybe because the man who killed his parents met justice, unlike the man who killed Bruce's parents or the Joker who shot Barbara.

Barbara tells Dick that she has dealt with her pain and she's moved on.  She won't dwell in the past and feel victimized like she thinks the "Batguys" want her to.  She has a new life and a new direction; it's different but it fulfills her.  Dick respects her words, but asks what's the one thing she misses most about having full mobility.  She describes swinging from a rope as Batgirl.

Dick can make this particular wish come true.  After the bigtop has been cleared out, he changes into his Nightwing costume and puts her in a leotard.  They swing from the acrobatics bars and he runs her through the routine that The Flying Graysons used to perform.  Then Dick drops away from her, bounces off the trampoline and grabs a ladder.  He climbs up to the next platform leaving her to swing alone.  She has to swing and let go for him to catch her--a flying transfer he's performed hundreds of times.

But she hasn't done this, certainly not since she was paralyzed, and she's scared.  And angry.  But she trusts Dick, and she swings alone and let's go at the right moment.

Alone on the platform after their death-defying tricks, Barbara and Dick kiss... and perhaps more.  When he takes her to her car, he asks if they can see each other again and often.  Barbara says she had a great time but she doesn't want to date him.  Their relationship can never work because of the lives they live.

Dick ends his reminiscence thinking of how much he loves her when Dinah presses him for more details.

So... this was an issue of Birds of Prey in name only.  Really, this was a Nightwing story.  Nightwing narrated it and it was about Dick's feeling for Babs.  Black Canary appears in the first and last pages, but doesn't do much.  Barbara Gordon is a major character in the story, but she's not being Oracle, she's being Dick's ex-girlfriend.

Apparently this is an important issue because of what happens in the Nightwing series after this story.  That should be further evidence that this story was misplaced.  The only thing of significance for Black Canary in this issue is that she realizes her boss is dating Nightwing and Nightwing called her boss "Babs".  Will she be solve the mystery of Oracle's identity on her own?

One other note: the first panel on page 8 where Barbara says circuses are corny and goofy... Greg Land has drawn her face many times since then.  He's a tracer and frequently reuses the same poses and pictures for other stories.  I can't find the exact image, but I know he's used that shape for a woman's face since then.

Come back next Tuesday for a review of Birds of Prey #9.

Back in Action: ACTION COMICS WEEKLY #634

Previously...

For the last couple of months, I have reserved Wednesdays for reviews of Action Comics Weekly issues featuring a backup story starring Black Canary.  Each installment of Back in Action has looked at Dinah's story and touched on my favorite or least favorite moments from the rest of the strips in these issues.  That ends this week, however, as Dinah's second and final story arc comes to a close.  Her next appearance in the comic--the very next issue, as it happens--will be covered at a later date as a team-up review where she partners with Superman, Green Lantern, and the Blackhawks.

I'm not familiar with George Freeman, the artist behind this week's cover, but it looks to me like a convention sketch given full colors.  Sometimes ACW delivers utterly amazing covers, like the two featuring Black Canary, for instance.  Other times, they appeared rushed and lackluster.  Hal Jordan's face looks awkward, his smile strangely forced.  I think he's drunk and trying to sell a smile without laughing or throwing up.

Black Canary

"Knock 'Em Dead" Part 11: written by Sharon Wright, pencilled by Randy Duburke, inked by Pablo Marcos, lettered by Steve Haynie, colored by Gene D'Angelo, and edited by Robert Greenberger.  The final part of Dinah's story is printed third out of the six features in this issue.

At long last, Black Canary has traced the killer back to the theatre where she--the killer, not Dinah--starred in a stage production of Peter Pan.  Black Canary sneaks up to where Cat holds her ex-husband, Ken Glazier hostage in the rafters, ready to drop him to his death.

Black Canary dives for Cat and Ken, but the creaky wooden platform gives her approach away.  Easily sidestepping the Canary's attack, Cat orders Ken to tell the story of what precipitated her murderous quest of vengeance.  She tells him to explain why he and his old associates have been targeted for death over the last couple days.

Ken tells Dinah that the story of his contacting AIDS from Deb was true, but the way he discovered his affliction was when he needed to give his daughter, Dannie, a blood transfusion after an accident.  Dannie got AIDS and died when she was eleven years old.  For cheating and effectively condemning their daughter to a horrible death, Cat will kill Ken.

Canary has one desperate play to save Ken's life.  She taunts Cat with a bag of ashes--Dannie's ashes--that she took from Cat's hideout in the sewer.  Black Canary dumps the bag, spilling the ashes over the platform and down onto the stage.  This defilement of her daughter's memory is enough to make Cat forget about Ken and lunge at Black Canary like a wild animal.

Cat is fast, acrobatic, and full of righteous anger, while Dinah is both sleep- and blood-deprived.  For all her training, Black Canary is exhausted and the killer is fighting with the fierce conviction of a mother protecting the memory at least of her child.  So Black Canary changes her strategy and the battleground.

She grabs a rope and swings to one of the other platforms beside a heavy klieg light.  Cat chases her, but when she nears the second platform, Black Canary turns on the stage light.  Blinded by sudden, harsh light, Cat swings directly into the klieg, dying in an explosion of glass and light.

In the aftermath of the fight, Seattle Police Lieutenant Cameron tells Dinah that Ken Glazier is safe.  He tells her to check in at the hospital to treat her wound.  Dinah gives the lieutenant an urn full of Dannie's ashes.  She back she dumped earlier was a fake to provoke Cat into attacking her.  "A flare for the dramatic," Dinah calls it.

[Click the images below to enlarge.]

And so ends the "Knock 'Em Dead" story.  Eleven chapters.  Seventy-seven pages total.  Possibly the best standalone Black Canary story ever published when taken as a whole.  I still can't get over the difference between this tale and the story that proceeded it in ACW #609-616.  "Bitter Fruit" was a solid, fairly conventional mystery with heavy corporate, racial, and political overtones.  But it was a bad comic.  The script was ill-suited for graphic storytelling, the art ill-suited for the ambiguous characters and plot twists.  And it wasn't about Black Canary.  She just happened to be there, and she could have been any private investigator.

"Knock 'Em Dead" on the other hand gets personal early on when a friend of Dinah's is murdered, drawing her into a straightforward murder mystery.  The whys may be kept vague and mysterious until they need to be revealed, but the characters are all pretty well-defined as early as necessary.    Sharon Wright introduces themes of theatricality, disguise, and illusion early on and stays true to them throughout the story.  And Randy Duburke's art just gets better with each chapter.  The panels and character layouts during the action in the final chapters is frenetic, stylistic, and just insane-looking.  But it works.  The battle between Dinah and Cat is all over the place, but never confusing.

And the craziest thing is it's the exact same creative team.  Same writer, same artist, inker, colorist, letterer.  The only difference is in the editor, which is why Robert Greenberger deserves the M.V.P. award for this story.  I don't doubt former Editor Mike Gold's fondness for Black Canary.  He edited her appearances in Green Arrow for years, her first miniseries, and the first issues of her ongoing title in the early '90s.  But she didn't always receive the most flattering treatment in those books, so maybe Greenberger had a better handle on the character.

Or maybe his involvement was minimal after all, and this was just a case of Wright and Duburke finding the story that just worked best for all of them.  Whatever the reason, "Knock 'Em Dead" was a classic Black Canary adventure that deserves to be reprinted and shared with more fans.

The Rest

In Green Lantern by James Owsley and M.D. Bright, Hal Jordan squares off against Lord Malvolio of the Green Flame, who looks like the Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott if Frank Miller drew him for The Dark Knight Strikes Again.  We learn that Malvolio's father was a Green Lantern centuries ago, but Malvolio killed him and took his power.  They fight for several pages and Hal gets the better of him, beating him down and down.  But Hal shows mercy and refuses to kill Malvolio.  When he turns his back, though, the villain draws a gun and shoots Hal's ring, destroying it.

In the final part of The Phantom Stranger's "Cat and Mouse" by Paul Kupperberg and Fred Carrillo,  the Stranger is captured by Tannarak and Tala, servants of the Lords of Chaos.  Doctor Thirteen races to the Empire State Building where Tannarak and Tala are using Phantom Stranger's magics to open a doorway to Chaos.  The giant cat beast is going to kill the Stranger as a sacrifice, but at the last minute, Doctor Thirteen rushes in with a broom... and effectively shoves it up the cat beast's ass, startling it enough that it leaps off the edge of the building.  Phantom Stranger throws Tannarak over the side and the dark sorcerer collides with the cat beast, causing an explosion, because yeah.  Then the Stranger saves Cassandra Craft from the Chaos realm.

In the two-page Superman strip by Roger Stern and Curt Swan, the Man of Steel was transported to some unknown place while trying to stop an energy beam coming from space.  Now, in a bright, airless space, Superman flies toward a strange machine.  He punches through the side of the machine, fighting off tendril-like defenses and removes something "hot" from inside, all while apparently suffocating.  I'll admit, I'm not sure what was going on in this chapter.  It didn't feel like it connected with anything that had previously gone down in this story.

In the finale to Cherie Wilkerson and Tom Mandrake's story of Nightwing and Speedy, all of the bad guys face justice of some kind.  Sepulveda, the bureaucrat in charge of the CBI who framed Roy Harper is sentenced to prison for working with Lord Danvers, who escapes criminal charges but ends up hanging himself to avoid other scandals.  The fedora wearing Detective Hunter writes a bestselling book about the whole ordeal, and the two Irish orphans, Moira and Button, are adopted and happy.  For their part, Dick and Roy beat up some military police.

Marty Pasko and Rick Burchett wrap up their Blackhawk story in fine, action-packed style.  In the nick of time, Jan snaps out of his LSD-induced hallucinations and saves the plane from crashing.  They track the sexy Nazi woman back to an island fortress.  There is some cool action with the Blackhawks fighting Nazis on plane, on jeep, and on foot, before Jan shoots the lady in the head while ripping a Nazi flag down the center.  Nice symbolism, and a nice climax for this adventure.  There is a caption announcing the upcoming Blackhawk monthly book hitting stands soon.

That's it for Back in Action.  If you want to read the continuing adventures of Superman and Green Lantern I guess you'll have to dig up those issues yourself.  But next week I'll take a look at Green Arrow Annual #2, which features a special Black Canary story written by Sarah Byam, and after that I will finally, finally start reviewing Black Canary's solo comics beginning with her first miniseries!

Back in Action: ACTION COMICS WEEKLY #633

Previously...

Every Wednesday, I review an issue of Action Comics Weekly featuring a backup story starring Black Canary among others.  Each installment of Back in Action will look at Dinah's story and touch on my favorite or least favorite moments from the rest of the strips in these issues.

This week's cover by Swanderson, that is the art team of Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, delivers one of the classiest, most iconic covers of the whole series.  The Blackhawks form up in the skies as their leader appears majestically, almost ghost-like in the heavenly clouds.

Black Canary

"Knock 'Em Dead" Part 10: written by Sharon Wright, pencilled by Randy Duburke, inked by Pablo Marcos, lettered by Steve Haynie, colored by Gene D'Angelo, and edited by Robert Greenberger.  Again, Black Canary's story is printed second out of six features in this issue.

The penultimate chapter to the mystery of the actress hunting her ex-husband and his friends opens with a shocking and bloody image of Ken Glazier.  It's hard to tell if he's alive or dead, but either way he doesn't look good since he was captured by his ex-wife, Cat, last time.

While Black Canary receives treatment for her wounded arm, Seattle Police Lieutenant Cameron tells her that his men searched the theater and found no trace of Cat.  She escaped somehow.  Canary refuses to see a doctor or get actual stitches until the killer is found.  An officer tells Cameron that a boat team found a body dumped in the water that matches the description of Deb, the prostitute who was the police's original suspect in the killings.  Since Canary actually saw Deb a week ago, Cameron asks her to come with him to identify the body.

When they arrive at the waterfront, Black Canary confirms that that the dead woman is Deborah.  Cameron and the police speculate how the body was dumped since it was found in an unusual location, the type that would have left plenty of witnesses.  This leads Black Canary to suspect the body may not have been dumped into the water from the dock or a boat at all.

She walks along the sound until she comes to a sewer outlet.  Then she realizes that Cat escaped the police cordon at the theater by slipping into the sewers.  She follows the tunnel past rats and other vermin with blood on their teeth.  At the edge of the tunnel, she finds a lair, what she describes as a shrine or altar constructed by the killer.  And the altar was dedicated to Cat's daughter.  Her dead daughter, apparently.

Then she learns that Ken Glazier didn't make it to a hotel.  He's caught and hurt bad, but still possibly alive.  She anticipates that Cat will return to the theater with Glazier.  Canary doesn't have much time to save him, but she does have the will to see this to the end.

[Click the images below to enlarge.]

This chapter is mostly about setting the stage for the grand finale.  Deborah is dead.  The true killer, Cat, is revealed, but she has a hostage, her real target all along.  Black Canary knows where she is, and what's more, she may know how to defeat the killer.

Other notes of interest: In case anyone is unsure about Black Canary's public identity, Lieutenant Cameron calls her Dinah.  While she didn't really have much of a secret identity for a lot of her Bronze Age appearances, at least her police liaison knows who she is at this point in the game.

Something else: Dinah looks tough as hell on page two when she's getting her arm treated by the paramedic.  She doesn't always need a black jacket to look badass, which is reinforced during the Ed Benes era of Birds of Prey when she mostly went sleeveless.  But this is added confirmation.

The Rest

Green Lantern by James Owsley and M.D. Bright features a lot of Hal Jordan fighting Malvolio, Lord of the Green Flame, who looks a lot like early Image Comics' version of Alan Scott.  Hal and Malvolio fight a lot and Malvolio is so obviously overpowered that he punches Hal into the center of the planet, where Hal discovers a gold space station (?) full of Malvolio's followers.  Then there's more fighting.

Cherie Wilkerson and Tom Mandrake finally bring Nightwing & Speedy back to the United States as--hey, wait!  What happened to Roy's daughter?  Did I miss something important a couple issues ago? Where the hell is Lian?  Anyway, they head to Washington with the C.B.I. jackass who fired Roy a while ago.  They're also being followed by Hunter, the mysterious cop in the fedora, who is captured by agents of Lord Danvers, who seems to be the evil power behind the drugs and guns going through Northern Ireland.  Nightwing and Speedy make a deal with Sepulveda, who then seems to betray them and it looks like they're getting arrested.

In the two-page Superman strip by Roger Stern and Curt Swan, two armies clash in the desert as the super-powered Followers who believe Superman is a god wage holy war against the super-powered bad guys who believe Superman is the Devil.  Superman can't stop them, but he figures he can knock out their power source if he can find the object that is emitting radiation to both groups.  He flies to space looking for it, then appears to be atomized by something.

The Phantom Stranger continues to fight the Lords of Chaos and their agent Tannarak in the third chapter by Paul Kupperberg and Fred Carrillo.  The Stranger fights Tannarak and his giant liger monster, then Tannarak appears to capture Cassandra Craft and hold her hostage.  But when Tannarak threatens to kill her, Phantom Stranger has an epiphany and attacks her first.  He reasons that it's not actually Cassandra Craft, but his other enemy, the sorceress Tala in disguise.

Martin Pasko and Rick Burchett have some fun in this installment of Blackhawk, as the drug that the Nazi babe slipped into the crew's coffee turns out to be the same L.S.D. that the government was developing.  After she shoots and wounds Olaf, she parachutes from the plane.  Meanwhile, Jan, Weng and everyone else aboard start tripping balls and seeing all sorts of amusing hallucinations that put them in serious jeopardy.  Olaf, despite his gunshot wound and blood loss is the only one capable of landing the plane safely.  That is, until he's attacked by Jan who has jealous visions of Olaf with Natalie Reed.  Will they all crash and die?  I guess we'll find out in a week.

Next week, I'll look at Action Comics Weekly #634, which continues Superman and Green Lantern's adventures while wrapping up the current sagas of Black Canary, Phantom Stranger, Blackhawk, and Nightwing & Speedy.

Back in Action: ACTION COMICS WEEKLY #632

Previously...

Every Wednesday, I review an issue of Action Comics Weekly featuring a backup story starring Black Canary among others.  Each installment of Back in Action will look at Dinah's story and touch on my favorite or least favorite moments from the rest of the strips in these issues.

This issue's cover by Tom Grindberg shows Nightwing and Speedy under fire from the one or more of the warring factions of Northern Ireland.  I'm not sure if the toddler in Speedy's arms in this image is supposed to be his daughter, Lian, or the Irish scamp named Button that he's taken under his wing.  Likewise, I'm not sure he's trying to protect the child or use her as a human shield from the semi-automatic weapon pointed at him.  Also, I have no idea what emotion I'm supposed to be getting from his face.  Fear?  Pain?  Shock?  Did the baby just poop on his leg?  I guess I've seen better.

Black Canary

"Knock 'Em Dead" Part 9: written by Sharon Wright, pencilled by Randy Duburke, inked by Pablo Marcos, lettered by Steve Haynie, colored by Gene D'Angelo, and edited by Robert Greenberger.  Black Canary's story is printed third out of six features in this issue, coming after Green Lantern and Phantom Stranger.

Last chapter we finally received confirmation that the killer hunting Ken Glazier's old friends and acquaintances wasn't the prostitute named Deb.  The killer is, in fact, Ken's ex-wife, Cat, a popular actress appearing as Peter Pan in a local Seattle stage production.  Part 9 opens with Cat holding the Deb prisoner in the sewer.  She claims to be doing this because Deb killed Cat's daughter.  Deb denies this, but it doesn't seem to affect Cat, who kicks her into the water, leaving her to sink and drown.

Black Canary and Ken Glazier go to see Peter Pan in order to identify Cat.  The police surround the theater and Lieutenant Cameron joins Canary to make the arrest when Ken points out his ex-wife.  They watch the show and and Ken ID's his wife playing Pan.  Cameron says they'll arrest her after the show.

Cat, however, recognizes her husband, and during the climactic sword fight between her character and Captain Hook.  They take the fight off the stage and into the audience, and when Cat is close enough, she leaps at Ken, fully attempting to kill him in front of the whole audience.  But Black Canary is there to stop her.

They fight while the audience reacts in panic, storming for the exits.  Cat slashes Canary's arm with one of her knives and runs backstage.  Cameron checks to see that Black Canary is okay, and then they chase the killer.  Canary follows Cat through the men's bathroom and out a window, but there loses track of the killer.  Cat slipped into a sewer grate and spies on her pursuers from underground.

Unsure of whether Cat escaped through the police cordon or if she's just holed up and hiding really well somewhere in the theater, Cameron agrees to send Ken Glazier out of there to a hotel.  But when Ken gets in his car, Cat is waiting for him and makes him drive away at knife-point.

[Click the images below to enlarge.]

Randy Duburke's art is immeasurably better in this issue than it was back in the first Black Canary story from issues #609 through #616.  Black Canary still looks great even wearing solid black leather pants instead of her fishnet stockings, and her hair seems to fill up the pages like Batman's expansive cape.  The action is highly exaggerated but never confusing.

This story has been as great as any classic suspense thriller and really reminds me of certain types of movies from the '80s and '90s like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, except without the explicit sex scenes and with a costumed vigilante.  The body count continues to rise as the story ramps up with two more chapters to go!

The Rest

From the pages of X-Force comes... BluddFire!!!

James Owsley and M.D. Bright continue the story of Green Lantern as Hal Jordan pursues the alien shrine-ship into space, reflecting on the fact that the alien only learned violence and aggression when it came to Earth.  Then something strange happens and Hal seems to be warped through time and space to a different star system with no way to find his way back to Earth.  He investigates a strange alien planet and finds its ruler, a human going by the name Malvolio of the Green Flame.

But as you can see, he looks a bit more like Alan Scott reimagined by an X-Men artist in the '90s.  Oh, and he's needlessly angry, too.

In chapter two of The Phantom Stranger's tale by Paul Kupperberg and Fred Carrillo, the titular character chases Tannarak across the skies of New York, learning that his recently deceased foe was resurrected by the Lords of Chaos.  Cassandra Craft tries to get him to stop but he doesn't listen to her because no one ever listens to women named Cassandra.  Tannarak goes to the Bronx Zoo, calling all the big cats to him.  After he summons lions and tigers and such, he draws in his energy and fuzes them all into one giant bipedal felinoid monster.

This week's two-page Superman strip by Roger Stern and Curt Swan is entitled "Holy War" and we learn that not only does the group known as the Followers believe Superman is a god, but their enemies, the evil organization determined to destroy them, actually views Superman as a devil.  They call him the Beast of the Apocalypse, which is all sorts of amusing to me to think of Superman that way.

The adventures of Nightwing & Speedy by Cherie Wilkerson and Vince Giarrano continue to deliver the action as our heroes from America find themselves beset by the Sanas and the F.O.E.s.  The girl named Moira is nearly killed in a bombing near the parade, Nightwing takes out some corrupt cops, and Speedy shoots down a helicopter gunship with his bow and arrow.  But the violence isn't limited to the streets, as even government officials poison each other to take power.

The latest installment of Blackhawk by Martin Pasko and Rick Burchett finds the Blackhawk crew
escorting a beautiful woman who fends of the flirtatious advances of Jan Prohaska.  However, when the Blackhawks let their guard down, the woman is murdered by the Nazi babe who takes her place and looks enough like her to sleep with Jan that night.  She infiltrates their group and when they take flight, she starts to poison their coffee.

Next week, I'll look at Action Comics Weekly #633, which continues the adventures of Black Canary, Superman, Green Lantern, Phantom Stranger, Nightwing & Speedy, and Blackhawk.

Back in Action: ACTION COMICS WEEKLY #631

Previously...

Every Wednesday, I review an issue of Action Comics Weekly featuring a backup story starring Black Canary among others.  Each installment of Back in Action will look at Dinah's story and touch on my favorite or least favorite moments from the rest of the strips in these issues.

Jim Starlin draws a striking cover depicting The Phantom Stranger and a tag warning us that he'll battle his greatest foes inside the pages.  I don't think I know any of the Stranger's foes, let alone his greatest, so this will be interesting to read.

Black Canary

"Knock 'Em Dead" Part 8: written by Sharon Wright, pencilled by Randy Duburke, inked by Pablo Marcos, lettered by Steve Haynie, colored by Gene D'Angelo, and edited by Robert Greenberger.  Black Canary's story is printed second out of six features in this issue.

As Black Canary pursues a lead in her search for the killer of Walt Sarno and Rich Malone, a killer that might be but probably isn't a woman named Deborah, she is nearly run down in the street by Ken Glazier.  Utilizing some handy acrobatics, Canary lands safely on top of the car and then pulls Ken out of the driver's seat when he comes to a stop.

When she questions him, Ken reveals some long-suspected but much-needed exposition on the killer's motives.  Yes, Ken cheated on his wife years ago when he came down to Seattle to do lighting for a play, and his mistress was the Deb.  He broke it off with her when the show ended and he returned to Portland, Oregon.  When he found out that Deb was a heroin user and that she had given him AIDS, he used his contacts to ruin her acting and modeling career, effectively turning her into the thieving prostitute she is.  Ken believed that Deb sent him death threats and killed the men he was friends with at that time as revenge for dumping her and sinking her acting career.

Black Canary, however, suspects that Ken and the police have the wrong suspect.  She thinks the killer is Ken's ex-wife, Cat, who is performing in the local community production of Peter Pan under the name Ellen Jamerson.

Meanwhile, Ken's friend Ron Tompkins is approached in a gay bar by a man claiming to be named "Peter Barrie".  Of course, it's Cat dressed in a man's suit and wearing a mustache; the name Peter Barrie is an obvious reference to Peter Pan and his creator, J.M. Barrie.  Ron confesses that he has AIDS, but that doesn't dissuade "Peter" and they go back to Ron's apartment.

Inside, "Peter" fixes Ron a drink laced with chloral hydrate, the same poison she used to kill Walt and Rich.  Too late, Ron realizes he's been tricked.  He thought Deb was the killer so he let his guard down.  When he lashes out at Peter/Cat, she throws him off the balcony.  He falls and lands on the sidewalk just as Black Canary and Ken Glazier arrive.

They search the building, but Cat manages to change clothes and make her escape before they can catch her.  Black Canary knows who they're looking for now and plans to catch Cat at the Peter Pan show the next night.

[Click the images below to enlarge.]

If this wasn't the best chapter of the story so far it's damn close.  The chapter is cleanly divided into two character tracks that finally converge.  Black Canary displays some physical grace and agility as she avoids being run over and even flips on top of the speeding car.  Listening to Ken dish his history and answer Dinah's and our questions is a welcome relief as it puts the mystery in context.

Then we see the killer stalk her prey for the first time with full knowledge of her identity and her motives.  The race to Ron's apartment and arriving just in time to see him die is expertly paced like a great suspense thriller.  Great story construction and execution from Wright's script, and Duburke's art is sweetly stylized in the action beats, such as when Canary leaps onto the car, or when Ron falls to his death.

With three chapters left in this story, the literal and figurative stage is set for the hero and villain to meet as "Knock 'Em Dead" races toward its conclusion.

The Rest

Green Lantern finally, finally stops fighting with Captain Atom in the story by James Owsley and M.D. Bright.  When Atom can't find the alien he's been trying to kill for like a million issues, he returns to the desert where he left Hal Jordan.  Hal's power ring ran out of juice so the Cap has to fly him home.  They apologize to each other while secretly believing each of them was in the right.  Then Green Lantern goes to find his lantern, only to discover it's in a room full of armed robbers.  He takes the ring off so he can surreptitiously charge it in the battery while challenging the gang to fight him.  It's kind of funny, and eventually he charges the ring and captures them all.

Paul Kupperberg and Fred Carillo throw friends and foes from the past at the Phantom Stranger in "Cat and Mouse" part 1.  The Stranger plays chess with Doctor Thirteen hoping to learn more about human nature, while the Doctor tries not to dismiss the Stranger's powers as fakery.  Meanwhile, the Stranger's blind ex-girlfriend, Cassandra Craft, is ambushed by cats and then by a woman named Tala.  Cassandra runs to Phantom Stranger to tell him Tala is still alive, and then the Stranger is attacked by the sorcerer Tamarrak who is also still alive.

In the two-page Superman strip by Roger Stern and Curt Swan, Clark Kent finally manages to slip away from the cultists who worship Superman like a god.  With his super-vision, he sees that two different beams of radiation are coming from space; one beam is empowering the cultists with their psychokinetic power.  The other beam is pointing at an army coming to destroy the cultists.  When Superman flies out to confront them, they call him a demon and open fire on him.

Tom Mandrake moves from penciling to inking in this week's chapter of Nightwing & Speedy written by Cherie Wilkerson with pencils by Vince Giarrano.  After Roy Harper prevents the trains from colliding and saves Button, he reunites with Dick Grayson who we haven't seen since the first chapter in this story.  Together, the Teen Titans and their young Irish kids run from more attacks by the F.O.E. or the Sanas and then there's a riot at a funeral and a suitcase bomb that might have killed one of the kids.

In Blackhawk by Martin Pasko and Rick Burchett, our hero is on course to either fight or sleep with a sexy Nazi woman, which is all kinds of funny to me.  There's also more talk about LSD and some other stuff.

Next week, I'll look at Action Comics Weekly #632, which continues the adventures of Black Canary, Superman, Green Lantern, Phantom Stranger, Nightwing & Speedy, and Blackhawk.