Black Canary Digital Sale on ComiXology

ComiXology is having a seven-day sale on DC comics related to Green Arrow and the characters appearing in the CW Network's Arrow this season.  This includes current and past Green Arrow comics, Roy Harper stories from Secret Origins and Titans, Deathstroke miniseries, the first Huntress series featuring Helena Bertinelli, some Suicide Squad issues, and, of course, a ton of Black Canary books that previously were not available digitally.

For the rest of the week, you can pick up Black Canary's "New Wings" miniseries from 1991, her twelve-issue ongoing from 1993, and her miniseries from 2007 that led up to her marriage to Green Arrow.  There are also a couple of issues of Birds of Prey and The Brave and the Bold included in this sale.

This sale is awesome because it means DC have finally gotten hip to the fact that Arrow is making Black Canary a high(er) profile character than she has been in forty years.  I've spent months tracking these comics down so I can blog about them in the future--and I will--so I was a little mad that now they're all cheaper and easier to buy digitally, but this will at least save me the time of scanning the pages I want to use for my reviews.

Anyway, quit reading this post and click over to ComiXology and go shopping!

Brotherhood of the Fist Part 5: GREEN ARROW #135

The Brotherhood of the Monkey Fist cult is out to kill the current Green Arrow, Connor Hawke, but Batman, Robin, and Nightwing have his back.  Lady Shiva has come to Gotham to challenge Connor to single combat, and she'll kill any Monkeys that get in her way.  Meanwhile, ex-CIA spook Eddie Fyers has traveled to Southeast Asia to the headquarters of the Monkey Fist, where Black Canary and Bronze Tiger are being held captive.  Fyers is there to stop the cult, but the hired gun Deathstroke has their back.

Green Arrow #135: "Brotherhood of the Fist Part 5: The Borrowed Life" was written by Chuck Dixon, drawn by Doug Braithwaite, inked by Robin Riggs, and colored by Lee Loughridge.

In the wreckage of a luxury hotel knocked over by the Gotham earthquake, Connor and Nightwing come face to face with Lady Shiva.  She is in town because, like a shark attracted to the scent of blood in the water, she heard that the Monkeys were taking out martial arts masters and she wanted a piece of the action.  Specifically, she wants Connor Hawke, whose status as a Master has risen since he defeated the Silver Monkey.

Shiva incapacitates Nightwing fairly easily, and then she and Connor square off.

While Nightwing, as well as Batman and Robin battle Monkeys in other parts of the hotel, Shiva tells Connor that she will kill him to secure her place as the greatest fighter in the world.

In the headquarters of the Monkey Fist, Fyers and Deathstroke draw down on each other and open fire.  The chaotic shootout in the temple is overheard by Black Canary and Bronze Tiger, who are trapped in a cell below.  Fyers is wounded, but he sets off some shaped charges and the explosion traps Deathstroke on the other side of the temple.

Back in Gotham, Shiva praises Connor's ability even as she escalates her attacks to kill him.

In the Monkey cages...

The original Silver Monkey is also locked up and pleads for Fyers to release him.  Fyers doesn't.  He escapes with Canary and Bronze Tiger, while the Sensei of the Brotherhood saves Deathstroke, but admonishes him for his failure to stop Fyers.

In Gotham, Shiva is about to kill Connor.

Lady Shiva grants Robin's request, and takes off, leaving Connor and the rest alive.  Robin and Nightwing help Connor recover while pumping up his self-esteem by talking about how few people have ever come that close to defeating Shiva.

Batman's praise is more dire and dreadful than the youths.  He tells Connor that his new credentials as a master fighter is going to paint a target on his back.

Connor accepts the inevitability and circle of events: "Win, lose, or tie -- another enemy will be there to take the last one's place."

This was a fun rock 'em, sock 'em little crossover.  I don't think the story needed to be five chapters--three or four could have sufficed perfectly well.  As much as I love seeing Black Canary and Bronze Tiger teamed up, they didn't accomplish anything and their entire part in the story could have been reduced to a couple panels in one issue.  Since I don't care about Eddie Fyers and I've never been a big Deathstroke fan, that whole subplot was uninteresting to me, as well.

I read Green Arrow #0 as part of the Zero Hour even back in the '90s.  That was the first time I saw Connor Hawke, and I was intrigued enough to read a few more GA issues after that.  At the time, I liked that Hawke was younger and "greener" than Oliver Queen; that made him feel like my generation's Green Arrow, the whole purpose for the Legacy heroes that DC kept churning out decade after decade.  I'm glad Oliver Queen is back, because I've since read more (and I've grown up) and I want him to be the Emerald Archer.

Is there a place for Connor today?  Not in the New 52, not when Ollie and the rest of the heroes have been de-aged to their early/mid twenties.  I guess Connor and Wally West and Donna Troy will have to exist on a parallel Earth somewhere.  Maybe we'll see them again someday.

Brotherhood of the First Part 4: NIGHTWING #23

When Green Arrow Connor Hawke defeated the deadly Silver Monkey in combat, the Sensei of the Monkey Fist cult sent waves of warriors after Connor, Batman, and every other martial arts master in the world.  Connor is now working in Gotham with Batman, Robin, and Nightwing to defend the city from the various Monkey assassins, while Black Canary and Bronze Tiger are tracking the cult back to its headquarters in Asia.

Nightwing #23: "Brotherhood of the Fist Part 4: Paper Revelations" was written by Chuck Dixon, drawn by Scott McDaniel, inked by Karl Story, and colored by Roberta Tewes.  Like Will Rosado's line work in the previous chapter, I think McDaniel's art is a little too cartoonish for the content of this story, but it's not bad.  The inking and coloring keep it from looking too much like an all-ages or junior readers comic.

Gotham's police force is called in to deal with the corpses of two dozen Obsidian Monkeys.  Batman tells Commissioner Gordon that it's not a matter for the police to investigate, that the cops would only put themselves in danger by chasing leads on the assassins.  Connor, Nightwing, and Robin speculate on who could be killing the Monkeys if it's not Eddie Fyers or King Snake, both of whom are out of the city.  At that moment, the Bamboo Monkey challenges Connor to a fight.

In the jungles of Southeast Asia, Black Canary and Bronze Tiger are closing in on the temple of the Monkey Fist.  Unbeknownst to them, though, is that the Monkeys are closing in on them.

Back in Gotham, the Bamboo Monkey fights Connor, Robin, and Nightwing.  He nearly kills Nightwing when...

Robin and Nightwing praise Connor's fighting prowess, then the three of them go to Oracle to get more information.  They figure that the different schools of Monkey assassins--Silver, Bamboo, Bronze, Steel, Obsidian, Emerald, etc.--have to do with matching the properties of the element involved to the fighting style and skill of the warrior.  They continue to press what Eddie Fyers suggested before, that the fewer members of a particular group of Monkeys, the more deadly they are.

Speaking of Fyers, he chartered a helicopter and gets dropped off in the jungle near the Monkey headquarters.  Black Canary and Bronze Tiger are already at the temple, though--as prisoners!

In Gotham, Batman has found the signature of the Paper Monkey who is killing off the other assassins, and he knows who she is.

Eddie Fyers arrives at the Monkey temple and angrily calls them out so he can start killing.

Nightwing discovers the location of the Monkey's Gotham base of operations, an old hotel that went down on its side during the Earthquake.  Batman, Connor, Nightwing and Robin split up and search the hotel.

Connor and Nightwing find the assassins a battle of their own.  The Paper Monkey is killing off the rest, and Nightwing knows that Batman was right about Paper Monkey's identity.

She unmasks and reveals herself to be Lady Shiva Woosan and she tells Connor Hawke it will be the greatest honor of his life to die at her hand.

This issue was okay, but repeated almost everything that happened in Part 3.  The Monkeys haven't felt like a serious threat for a couple chapters now, because Shiva is taking them out for herself before she attacks Connor.  As such, it feels like the heroes are in a holding pattern, just waiting for the time when the enemy strikes.

I was disappointed to see Canary and Bronze Tiger get captured, mostly because it was off page.  I would have loved to see the two of them do some actual fighting, especially if they went up against Deathstroke, but that didn't happen.

The story wraps up tomorrow in Green Arrow #135.

Brotherhood of the Fist Part 3: ROBIN #55

The deadly Monkey Fist cult has dispatched assassins all over the world to kill Green Arrow and basically anyone with a martial arts background.  Connor Hawke and Batman barely survived an encounter when an avalanche buried them in the mountains outside Gotham.  Former government agent Eddie Fyers related what he knew about the cult to Nightwing and Robin, and Bronze Tiger saved Black Canary from a Monkey attack.  The two are now working together.

Robin #55: "Brotherhood of the Fist Part 3: Monkey Fist" was written by Chuck Dixon, with art by Will Rosado, inks by Stan Woch, and colors by Adrienne Roy.  I can't read the signature of the cover artist, and it's not credited inside so it might be Rosado.  It looks nothing like the interior art, though.  The cover is awful.  Any comparisons I can think of feel like insults to Bobble-Head Dolls or whatever else.  I would look at this cover and never, ever, ever buy this comic except that it's part three of the crossover.

Anyway, Batman and Connor Hawke are stranded in the snow-covered wilderness.  At least, Connor thinks they're stranded.  Batman doesn't get stranded; he's always prepared, right?

How does Batman know the Monkey Fist is targeting every martial artist?  He's been incommunicado with all of the other characters that were attacked.

Far from Gotham, the Sensei of the Monkeys is dismayed that Eddie Fyers is killing so many of his warriors because Fyers uses guns.  So the Sensei hires someone with a gun--Deathstroke, the Terminator--to take out Fyers when he comes for the Sensei.

Later, back in Gotham, the titular hero of this comic, Robin, is on patrol with Connor Hawke, who has taken up with Batman's circle of crime fighters until the monkey business (couldn't help it) is sorted out.  Robin and Connor save a hostage from some street thugs, and then they discuss the damage the earthquake caused to the city, unaware that more Monkey cultists are following them.

Batman goes to see Oracle to find out what she's learned about the Monkey Fist.  She offers the data, but won't tell him where she's getting it from.

Right after Batman leaves, Oracle makes contact with her source--Black Canary.

Black Canary doesn't tell Oracle she's working with Bronze Tiger, but doesn't tell Ben who she was talking to either.  Keeping both of her worlds separate, perhaps?  Bronze Tiger recalls his adjacent connection to Oracle from his Suicide Squad days.

This little scene tickles me.  I accept and expect that Dinah is just playing the part of good intel operative and compartmentalizing her worlds.  Oracle and Bronze Tiger don't need to know of each other right now; this is a security measure for her.  On the other hand, there's a little part of me that wonders if--between the pages--something sexual was going on between Dinah and Ben during this little continent-jumping search for answers.  I've always thought that Canary and Tiger would make an interesting and exciting couple.  Maybe not in the long term, but they have enough in common that a romantic dalliance wouldn't be unexpected or unwanted.

Batman, Nightwing, and Connor meet with Eddie Fyers so Batman can tell the man to get the hell out of his city.  Before leaving, Fyers reveals something he knows about the organizational structure of the Monkeys.  There are different schools and disciplines, and different numbers of members based on how skilled and masterful the school is.  This explains why there is one Silver Monkey who is one of the deadliest fighters in the world, but the Emerald or Bronze Monkeys get mowed down effortlessly by the heroes.

Elsewhere in the city, the mysterious Paper Monkey declares her intentions to fight Connor Hawke in single combat to restore the honor of the Brotherhood.  She tells her underlings to keep Batman and his partners distracted, but insists that no one is to harm Robin else she will kill him.

Speaking of Robin--since this is supposed to be his book--he and Connor are out patrolling again, talking about learning to drive and things like that.  Connor asks Tim if Batman is his father.

Obsidian Monkeys are stalking Connor and Robin, but before they can attack, the Paper Monkey backs up her previous declaration.

Before killing the last of the Obsidians, Paper Monkey makes clear that she is not in Gotham at the behest of the Brotherhood's sensei.  She is here on her own with her own agenda.  Who is this woman?  Why does she have a personal beef against  Robin?  And what will happen when she faces Connor?  Maybe those answers will be revealed in Part 4 tomorrow!

Overall, this was another good issue, but not as strong as the previous two.  Will Rosado's art is too cartoonish for the heavy themes and seriousness of this story.  For all that this is an issue of Robin, Tim Drake only appears in like five and a half pages.  When he does appear, though, he offers some nice insight into Batman and how Batman respects Connor Hawke's ability even if he would never say it.

Two more major players were introduced in this issue: Deathstroke and Paper Monkey, whose identity will be revealed later for anyone who couldn't guess who she is.  But Deathstroke's inclusion feels more or less like an afterthought, and assigning him the role of bodyguard and waiting for a nobody like Eddie Fyers to show up looking for the Sensei feels beneath his character.  And I'm not even a Deathstroke fan.

I love the pairing of Black Canary and Bronze Tiger, but they only get two pages and not much to do in this issue.  I wish there was more of these two together in the future.

Come back tomorrow for Part 4 in Nightwing #23.

TEAM 7 #8 (Final Issue)

Previously...

The last issue either jumped months of time in the series without explanation... or it jumped the logic train.  (I would say it "jumped the shark", but c'mon, that was in issue #1!)  Team 7 has assaulted the palace of Kaizen Gamorra, who is in possession of the dreaded Pandora's Box.  The team's resident Superman, Majestic, creates a massive tidal wave that is sweeping away the entire island.

Team 7 #8: "Mission 2.4: The Doom That Came to Kaizen" is the final issue of this unwanted, ill-conceived and worse-executed comic book series.  Like the previous issue, Tony Bedard wrote the script over Justin Jordan's plot.  Jesus Merino does the pencil and ink art all himself.  Gary Frank and Cam Smith slum for one more month to provide this issue's cover.

Team 7's founder and leader, John Lynch, narrates this issue in another one of his after action reports. This will be...confusing later on.

The wave of death crashes over the island, destroying the city and killing millions of people while Amanda Waller stares out the window in shock.

The Kaizen's palace is destabilized but not flooded.  Lynch orders Steve Trevor to get the chopper so they can exfiltrate before the building collapses on them.  Even though Trevor stayed on the drop ship when the rest of the team entered the palace last issue, he is here with them now.  I would try and explain this continuity gaffe, but I give slightly less a crap about this comic than the creators did.

Anyway, Lynch tells Slade Wilson and Cole Cash to get Trevor to the chopper while the rest of the team hangs back to fight the super-powered Kaizen.  Lynch then says, "Take Higgins with you."  Dean Higgins then appears in the next panel running beside the others.  That's all for Higgins in this issue.  He's presumed to have died but we never see him again and nobody mentions him.

When the Kaizen threatens to use the power of Pandora's Box, Kurt Lance encourages his wife, Dinah Drake-Lance to use her newfound sonic scream against Kaizen Gamorra.  Kurt apparently has the power to boost or amplify Dinah's powers.  If you were reading Birds of Prey, you kind of knew that already, but this is its first mention in Team 7.

Trevor, Slade, and Cash find a Gamorran helicopter to steal.  Then Majestic comes out of the water and starts attacking the Kaizen.  Majestic accuses Kaizen of killing his family, but I thought the Spartan cyborg did that before turning James Bronson into Majestic.  Wait, did Gamorra create the Spartan cyborg?  That sounds kind of familiar... But wait, Lynch says "we created Majestic".  Who is he talking about?  What the hell is happening?

Majestic picks up Pandora's Box, feeling the lure of its power.  Dinah has a dumb blonde moment where she actually needs Amanda Waller to explain why Majestic using Pandora's Box is a bad thing.  Then Kurt talks to Majestic while "leaching" some of his power.  So Kurt doesn't just affect Dinah, but he can boost or siphon anyone's powers?

Dinah - representing the "boob window" in Power Girl's absence.

Okay.  Dinah joins hands with Lynch, who has telekinetic powers, and Waller, who has... I don't know what powers she has, if any, and then Kurt, who boosts all of their powers.  The result is Dinah's Canary Cry turns into a white that swallows up the palace, the Kaizen, Majestic, and Kurt (maybe).  Dinah, Waller and Lynch are left wandering through the rubble, Dinah looking for her husband, Lynch looking for Pandora's Box.

Lynch grabs Pandora's Box, which immediately begins to corrupt him.  Amanda Waller beats him down and throws the box to Dinah, telling her to get on board the chopper with Slade, Cash, and Trevor.  Lynch starts to pull the chopper down with his telekinetic powers, so Amanda Waller shoots him in the head.

That ends Lynch's after action report.  Because he can't continue reporting if he's dead.

But wait!  First of all, it's an after action report.  He would need to have survived and gotten off the island in order to debrief the situation.  Second of all, he does survive somehow.  We know he's alive in the current time period, so this execution isn't shocking or dramatic, it's just confusing and unnecessary.  Why did his report end so abruptly?  Why was he narrating at all?

Anyway, the last page is narrated by Steve Trevor, who says Team 7 was shut down.  Based on the title of this issue, they were only on their second mission.  Some of the dialogue corroborates that number, but most of Lynch's narration over issues #7 and #8 contradicts it.  Trevor's report says that Waller is believed dead, even though we see her there at the end.

Why did they fly away and leave her there?  She was obviously still alive?  Why didn't they come back for her?  Why didn't Dinah try to find her husband some more?

The Characters

• Dinah Drake-Lance gets a lot of focus on her powers this issue.  She uses her Canary Cry once to knock down Kaizen Gamorra, and again the put down Majestic, with the unexpected effect of leveling an entire building.  Her powers are affected not only by her husband, but by all of the members of Team 7.

• Slade Wilson gets shot but otherwise doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Amanda Waller might have a power but it's not clearly established or confirmed.  She has become a much more hard-edged character throughout this series, willing to kill to her boss to save the world.

• Cole Cash doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Dean Higgins is believed dead but that's never shown.  Why did this character exist?

• Kurt Lance has the power to amplify the powers of others, but it works particularly well with his wife Dinah, because of their love and trust.  He disappears for some reason, believed dead.

• John Lynch uses his telekinetic powers a little.  He gets corrupted by Pandora's Box and then Waller shoots him in the head.  Sadly, that didn't kill him.

• James Bronson/Majestic, after murdering an entire nation, fights Gamorra and takes Pandora's Box.  Note: he has already destroyed an entire nation and killed all those people, the vast majority of them being innocent civilians, but the team is worried about what will happen when he gets possessed by the evil of Pandora's Box.  He disappears.

Impressions/Questions

Lynch is shot in the head by Waller at the end of this issue.  But back in issue #5, we saw that Lynch was very much alive in the present day DC Universe.  Slade went to kill him, but Lynch used his powers to defend himself.  Lynch was searching for Majestic in the ruins of Gamorra at the bottom of the ocean.  And we saw Majestic's hand coming out of the cracked ocean floor.

None of this is every addressed in this issue, and it left unresolved.

Kurt Lance disappeared when Dinah used her scream to create a white hole.  Then Amanda Waller was left stranded on a piece of rubble in the middle of the ocean.  But we know that Amanda Waller makes it back to the states, becomes a very powerful player in the military, and creates both the Suicide Squad and Justice League of America.  In Birds of Prey #0, we saw that as of four years after the end of Team 7, Waller has Kurt Lance preserved in stasis, so at some point she found his body.  Dinah probably could have found it, too, if she hadn't runaway so easily.

And back to Dinah and Birds of Prey.  The first two years of that series were bogged down by this underdeveloped mystery that Dinah killed her husband.  The awful, awful, dreadful writer who shall not be named created the impression that Dinah used her powers to kill her husband, that it was face-to-face and personal.  She was wracked with guilt and emotionally lost.  Here, Kurt's disappearance is almost incidental, and unexplained; she ought to be more curious and desperate than guilty.

Also, at the beginning of Birds of Prey, Black Canary is wanted for murder--the implication being that she's wanted for the murder of her husband, but that's a little vague because the writer did such a shitty job.  But here, Kurt's "death" is an accidental casualty of war.  That only one other living soul witnessed!  So if Dinah was wanted for murdering Kurt, the charge had to come from someone very high up in the military, someone who would have known better and not wanted to expose any information about Team 7.

I'm assuming Tony Bedard never read an issue of Team 7 or Birds of Prey before he wrote issue #7 and this one.  He may not have even read issue #7 before he wrote this one.  The questions and contradictions raised by the stupid and aborted series are too numerous and unfulfilling to spend any more time on.  I hate this.

Grade: F

TEAM 7 #7

Previously...

Team 7 went to the Advanced Prosthetic Research Center where Doctor Henshaw's pet project, Spartan turned everyone into robo-zombies.  Two members of the team were killed.  Henshaw was turned into a robo-zombie, as was his intern, Caitlin Fairchild, who also appeared to die, but will years later appear in Superboy, so I don't know what's up with that.  Also, team member James Bronson was transformed by Spartan into a superman-level metahuman called Majestic.

Team 7 #7: "Mission 2.2: Majestic" was plotted by series writer Justin Jordan, but scripted this time by Tony Bedard.  The first eight pages were drawn by Jesus Merino with the rest of the issue done by Pascal Alixe.  Ken Lashley drew the cover which sports a foldout in the style of all of DC's so-called WTF covers from the month of April 2013.  Here's what's stupid about the cover: the text on the front page reads "Pandora Against..." with the foldout page revealing "...The Rage of Majestic".  Aside from how misleading this tag is, they've completely screwed up the surprise element.  Any reader following the series ought to know that Majestic would be in this issue because that was the cliffhanger from last month.  The bigger shock is the fact that Pandora, whom we have never seen or heard anything about in this book, appears in this issue and is fighting Majestic.  See, whoever thought up this design for their WTF teaser... was stupid.

Let's proceed to find out what else is stupid about this comic.  C'mon, it'll be fun!

The issue opens up five years ago with Majestic invading the island nation of Gamorra, which we've been told is a bad place.  We've never really seen any evidence of that, but we keep being told that it's bad and that the leader of Gamorra is bad.  And they have Pandora's Box.  That's bad, I know, from Trinity War.  If you open Pandora's Box a bunch of dumb ideas come out that make me stop reading DC.

Way back in issue #0, we were told that James Bronson didn't have the meta-gene, but something else that made him special.  Well, whatever he had, the Spartan project activated it and turned him into a superhero.  And now he's a Superman-level military asset, flying around and blowing stuff up for Team 7.

According to John Lynch's narration, it's still five years before the current era in the comics, but obviously some time has passed, because Majestic has scared the crap out of America's enemies on a number of occasions.  Wait, though... According to the issue's title, this is still Team 7's second mission!  That doesn't make sense; their mission to the APRC shouldn't have even been the second mission, but speaking of that: what happened there?  What happened to Henshaw?  What happened to Caitlin Fairchild?  How did the team exfiltrate and stop all of the mindless robo-zombies that were killing their teammates?

Why does every book I review leave me pounding my head in frustration trying to figure out what's going on?

Anyway.

Team 7 follows Majestic to Gamorra because, whatever, they're invading an entire island.  Since the team's pilot died last issue, Lynch recruited Steve Trevor to fly them in their ridiculous looking ship.

While Gamorra's dictatorial ruler, Kaizen Gamorra, powers-up for battle with Majestic by siphoning off the powers or life-forces of some teenagers, Trevor pilots the team to the back of the royal palace or wherever.

First, Lynch says this was "the last time Team 7 operated as a unit", but again, according to the chapter title, this is only their second mission!

Second, Gamorra's army is called Basilisk, or made up of Basilisk soldiers, or Basilisk supplements Gamorra's army, or...something.  I remember that Basilisk is a terrorist organization like Cobra and Hydra, except with a different serpent name that wasn't already taken, but I don't remember if I knew that from this series or from Birds of Prey.  Nothing about either of these books leaves a lasting impression.

Third, Dinah is identified by her maiden surname "Drake", but last issue Cole Cash made an offhand remark that suggested she had already married Kurt Lance.  We know that she does take his name eventually, so is this an oversight on Lynch's part, or did Dinah not take his name yet, or are they not married yet, or did Tony Bedard not read/care about what happened in the last issue?  I kind of think all four possibilities are the right answer.

I've grown out of my adolescent craving for blood and gore in entertainment, but I confess to getting really excited when members of the team started getting shot.  I'm still crossing my fingers that everyone will die in the next two issues, even though I know that can't happen.

Of course, seeing her boyfriend/husband/man-toy wounded activates Dinah's super-human ability, her sonic scream, and in the next page we get an explanation that doesn't explain it.

So, according to Lynch, Dinah was born with the meta-gene, and the genetic technicians activated it during her medical checkups between missions.  But then, what was the trigger?  It seemed to come out of her because of stress or panic or some strong emotional reaction.  Why would the geneticists "switching her on" make something so random and uncontrollable the catalyst for something so deadly?  Also, why didn't Lynch tell her about it?  Why would he go into the field with a soldier who was capable of doing damage that hadn't been field tested or studied yet?  What a horrible goddamn operation he's running!  Lynch is a moron, and I hope he dies, even though I know he doesn't.

So then the team finds a group of precognitive children who show everyone a vision of the future that includes Majestic fighting Pandora, Slade Wilson looking like Deathstroke, Dinah looking like Black Canary, and Cole looking like, well, he always looks like Grifter, but yeah.  Lynch makes it sound pretty bad but I don't really get it from the art.

This is what will happen if Kaizen Gamorra opens up Pandora's Box.  Majestic don't like that none too much.

He flies up into space and then comes back down rocketing at super speed, crashing into the ocean next to Gamorra, creating a huge tidal wave that threatens to wipe out the entire island and everyone there, including Team 7.

The last page says, "To Be Concluded".  Somehow I doubt many of my issues will be resolved.

The Characters

• Dinah Drake (or Lance?) has activated her superpower.  She was born with the meta-gene, so there wasn't some special thing that gave her the "Canary Cry", unless you count unseen, unknown scientists performing unseen, unknown procedures to activate the power... even though it seems like it was turned on because of her emotional state.

• Slade Wilson doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Amanda Waller doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Cole Cash gets shot but otherwise doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Dean Higgins gets shot but otherwise doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Kurt Lance gets shot but otherwise doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• John Lynch narrates the story and takes part in his first field operation that we've seen.  Still doesn't feel very noteworthy.

• James Bronson/Majestic flies around destroying stuff that we never really see or care about until the end when he creates a deadly tsunami.  For a character this powerful, who was just activated in last issue's cliffhanger in such a traumatic fashion, I would be curious to know more about how he thinks and feels, but we never get any insight into his state.  He doesn't even speak in this issue.  He certainly doesn't display any "rage" as the cover text would suggest.

Impressions/Questions

The first thing I noticed was that Tony Bedard wrote this issue over Justin Jordan's plot.  I haven't been very enthusiastic about Jordan's writing up to this point, so I was hoping for a stronger finish from Bedard.  Unfortunately, I had a whole new group of problems.  Clearly, this story had to rush to the finish because of its pending cancelation, but it does feel like we just skipped over two or three issues to get to this point.  It also feels like Bedard was brought in tell a particular story that the editors wanted told that hadn't been adequately set up by the previous seven issues.  There are a lot of splash pages and a lot of time spent with Kaizen Gamorra and the pre-cogs and Majestic and Steve Trevor, all characters that we've never spent any time with before, and the result is that we don't get much from the actual Team 7.  Is that because Bedard didn't feel comfortable with the characters, or he didn't care?

Issue #5 was framed by a meeting between present day Lynch and Slade.  We still haven't gone back to that situation.

This is the issue where Dinah finally experiences her sonic scream for the first time... but of course that doesn't make the big game-changing foldout cover image.

This book is dead and it knows it.

Grade: D

TEAM 7 #6

Previously...

In the present day, Deathstroke hunts down his former boss, John Lynch.  Five years earlier, Alex Fairchild's daughter Caitlin is interning at the Advanced Prosthetic Research Center under the direction of Dr. Henshaw.  Project: Spartan goes haywire and lots of little cyborg monsters start killing people at the lab and hunting Caitlin.

Team 7 #6: "Mission 2.2: Birth of a Superman" is written by Justin Jordan with art by... hoo-boy, Pascal Alixe (pages 1-5), Cliff Richards (pages 6-15), and Gui Balbi and Juan Castro (pages 16-20).  Once again, Gary Frank and Cam Smith provided a cover for a book that is well below their talent level.  By the time Jordan was scripting this issue he had to have known the series was cancelled, so the text on the cover confirms that this final arc is just cleaning house.

The issue opens up with most of Team 7 racing toward the Advanced Prosthetics Research Center in their ridiculous looking ship piloted by Summer Ramos, who we haven't really seen much in this series.  Ramos tells the team they're nearing the APRC, and that no distress calls are emanating from the facility.  Strange... How did Team 7 know there was a problem?

Alex Fairchild is understandably distressed because his daughter is down at the facility, but he doesn't know what kind of situation they're walking into.  Again: how did Team 7 know there was a problem and yet not know anything about the problem?

There's a bit of banter from Cole Cash and Amanda Waller revealing that James Bronson did not come on this mission, but rather went to visit his family.  Cash also mentions rather flippantly that the Lances didn't even get a honeymoon.  Really, Dinah Drake and Kurt Lance got married between issues?  We didn't see or hear anything about it before this mention?

As the stupid drop ship approaches the APRC, uh... $#@% goes down.

Ramos, we hardly knew ye.

As the ship comes under attack from little robot drone monsters, the Team fight back while Ramos pilots the ship to a safe landing before she dies.

Ramos' death might have felt meaningful if we knew here, or even entertaining if it wasn't such a blatant ripoff of this other scene.  (Man, Justin Jordan rips off a lot of movie material for this book.)

After the crash, Slade Wilson takes charge and leads the team through a crowd of cyborg zombie monsters that don't present much of a threat.  Once inside, they find a whole bunch of corpses messed up by the cyborg monsters unleashed by Project: Spartan.  From the carnage, Caitlin Fairchild emerges to the joy of her father.

Uh oh, that ain't a good look...

Slade chases the cyborg monster Caitlin and executes her/it for killing his best friend.  Dinah thinks these cyborgs are too easy to kill and that it must be part of a setup.  Her fears are confirmed when what's left of Hank Henshaw shows up.

Henshaw reveals that this whole chaotic mess was just to lure Team 7 to the Spartan robot or program (again, we don't know how they found out so we don't know how it lured them).  Also, the Spartan robot or program was created by Gamorra, a rogue nation or the name of its leader... maybe.  Also, Gamorra and Spartan wanted Team 7 member James Bronson specifically for reasons unknown.

Cut to James Bronson having dinner with his family at someone's apartment.  His mom is attacked in the kitchen by Spartan, who then... does something... transfers its core programming into Bronson, I suppose.

This causes an explosion.

The final page shows somebody who looks like the WildStorm character Mr. Majestic flying out of the wreckage.  I guess we're to assume that Bronson combined with Spartan creates Majestic.

Last issue involved a frame device with present day Slade/Deathstroke and John Lynch.  That sequence doesn't appear in this issue.

The Characters

• Dinah Drake is apparently Dinah Lance now.  She doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Slade Wilson is sad that his friend dies and murders the friend's daughter, but she was a cyborg zombie so it's probably okay.

• Amanda Waller has a line about never losing an operative in the field.  Throughout this series she has had the most consistently ironic dialogue, which is only interesting if you know they're ironic because you know the character in other comics.

• Cole Cash doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Dean Higgins doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• James Bronson becomes Mr. Majestic.

• Kurt Lance doesn't appear in this issue.  I guess married life is too smothering for him, or more likely he was separated from the team since marriage violates all sorts of laws and regulations of the military code.

• John Lynch doesn't appear in this issue.

• Alex Fairchild dies in this issue.

• Summer Ramos dies in this issue.

Impressions/Questions

Given the gleeful death and destruction and the cyborg zombies, this book should have at least felt fun, but it was pretty boring.  Last week I said the new threat of Spartan and the robot monsters was a lot more interesting than the Eclipso zombies from the first arc.  Yeah, I called that one too early because this is just more of the same.  Despite the body count, these things aren't interesting or dangerous; they're just so much cannon fodder.

Also, there are two pages devoted to a building exploding.  Nothing really interesting about this double-page splash, just a building getting blown up--a building full of people we don't know or care much about.  Two pages is a lot of real-estate in a twenty page comic.  Ten percent of the story is just a big anticlimactic boom.

The series is winding down, so you can tell that Justin Jordan is rushing to tie up... just ends.  The deaths feel arbitrary and hollow.  I'm expecting Higgins to die next issue, and maybe we'll see how some of the survivors, like Dinah, got their superpowers.

Grade: C-

Black Canary on ARROW S2 E4-6

The fourth and fifth episodes of the Arrow's second season are all about Black Canary and she plays a pretty substantive part in the flashback sequences of the sixth.  Needless to say, these were among my favorite episodes of the series.

Season 2, Episode 4: "Crucible"

Because why should Ollie and Malcolm Merlyn
and Shado and the Huntress and Roy be the only
ones who get to have fun with bows and arrows?
I mean, seriously, share the love!

While Oliver has to deal with a sudden flood of military-grade weapons onto the streets of his city, Felicity has an epiphany regarding the woman in black leather.  Both times the Canary appeared--to rescue Green Arrow from a police ambush and to stop the Dollmaker--Laurel was there.  Maybe the Canary isn't following Oliver, but rather Laurel (Katie Cassidy).

So Ollie stakes out Laurel's apartment to find Canary (Caity Lotz) watching her.  He captures Canary in a nifty snare trap.  She drops a sonic grenade like the kind she used to get them out of the police station, but this time, Ollie had the foresight to wear earplugs.

Canary speaks to Oliver very familiarly, even calling him by name, and warning him that her identity will rock his world.  He removes her mask to discover the Black Canary is... Sara Lance, Laurel's sister, long thought drowned on the boat that marooned Oliver on the island six years ago.

Ollie has plenty of questions, but she doesn't want to answer yet.  Her sonic grenade explodes into a smoke cloud; when it evaporates, Ollie is alone on the roof.  When he regroups with Diggle and Felicity, Ollie reveals that he knew Sara didn't drown on the Queen's Gambit, but he still thought she was dead because of something that happened a year after the shipwreck.

Back at her clock tower hideout, Sara talks to her young friend Sin.  They exchange a few cryptic remarks about their past.  Later, Sara goes to Ollie's club, Verdant, to find out if he's revealed to her family that she's still alive.  She stays vague about her whereabouts for the last couple years, only hinting at the kind of rough crowd she fell in with to learn how to fight the way she does.  Before they can say much more, Sara's father, Detective Quentin Lance, shows up to ask Ollie for help with his daughter.  Of course, he means Laurel, who has been having problems with drugs and alcohol since Tommy Merlyn's death and her capture by the Dollmaker.  Sara slips away, unnoticed by her father.

Wait, why is her hair different?  Oh, damn --
 I think this screen grab is from the wrong show!

Ollie recruits Canary to help him take down the episode's villain, a gangster called The Mayor who is running guns into the Glades.  Green Arrow and Black Canary naturally make an effective fighting team, watching each other's back and even trading weapons at one point; he uses her bo staff and she uses his bow.  It's a nice little moment.  Anyway, they stop the Mayor and Ollie convinces Canary not to kill him.

Ollie and Sara meet again the next day when she goes to visit her friend Sin in the hospital.  Ollie thinks Sara should tell her family that she's still alive, but she tells him who she really was died on the island.  She also says everyone would hate Ollie forever if they knew what really happened.

Meanwhile, during the flashback sequence, a younger Ollie has been captured and taken prisoner aboard a freighter called Amazo.  He is taken to the captain's quarters where he discovers Sara alive for the first time.

Season 2, Episode 5: "League of Assassins"

After a flashback sequence revisiting Sara's last moments aboard the Queen's Gambit before it sinks, she wakes up in present day in a guest bedroom of Queen Manor.  Ollie tries to convince her to go see her family, but she still thinks it's a bad idea, that there are things from her past that she cannot reveal because they are unforgivable.

In another flashback, we see Sara lying on a piece of debris adrift in the ocean.  A canary lands beside her, chirps, and then takes off.  She follows the bird's flight path, leading her to see a ship in the distance.

While Ollie and Sara discuss Moira Queen's trial, an assassin dressed in what looks similar to Malcolm Merlyn's Dark Archer costume, breaks in and attacks Ollie and Sara.  They fight him to a standstill and he escapes, but not before showing his face, clearly revealing that it's not Malcolm or Malcolm's ghost or anyone Ollie knows.

Ollie takes Sara to the Arrow Cave where she meets Diggle and Felicity.  Ollie gives Felicity some dirt the assassin left so she can trace him back to his hideout, because you know, that's something Felicity can do.

Sara tells the others she doesn't want them involved.  She reveals that the mystery man was gunning for her, not Ollie, and that he was a member of the League of Assassins.  Diggle and Ollie thought the League was nothing but a myth, but Sara assures them it's real and that she is was a member, taken from the island and trained at Nanda Parbat.  This is why Sara cannot return to her family.  She is not the woman they remember; she is a cold-blooded murderer.

Felicity traces the assassin's dirt to an abandoned factory.  Green Arrow and Black Canary confront the man, Al Ow-Al, who claims to have trained Malcolm Merlyn.  Arrow demands that the League stay away from Canary, but that threat doesn't go over very well.  Two more assassins show up and they all begin fighting, with Ollie taking on Ow-Al and Sara fighting the other two.  One of the assassins wounds her, and Ollie breaks off the attack to escape with Sara.

There's already a lot of BDSM stuff going on with that costume, but holding
the bo staff like that just adds layers and layers of subtext.

Oliver stitches up Sara back at the hideout.  He and Diggle reason that Sara's family could become targets if the League really wants her to surrender, so Ollie goes to protect Laurel and Felicity goes to warn Quentin to get out of town... which goes horribly.

Knowing that her father won't take any warning seriously that doesn't come from her, Sara has no choice but to reveal herself to Quentin.  They reunite in a touching embrace and then go to a restaurant.  She doesn't answer his questions about where she's been, but when an abrupt noise startles her, she accidentally exposes her keen reflexes and killer instinct.  Being the good cop that he is, Quentin realizes that she is connected to the Arrow, that she's the Black Canary, and she has been back in the city for weeks.  He realizes that Felicity's warning about him being in danger was true, and that the danger is because of Sara.  He asks if she would have ever revealed herself if her family wasn't in danger.  She says no, and then they leave.

Meanwhile, in the flashback sequences, Sara has been locked in a cage in the ship and abused, until a white man calls the guards off of her.  The man introduces himself as Dr. Anthony Ivo, and claims that he is keeping prisoners in cells as part of his work to save the human race.

Sara brings Quentin to the clock tower, where they are ambushed by Al Ow-Al and the two other assassins.  The Canary has a number of traps set up that throw her enemies off their footing.  Green Arrow arrives in time to stop one of the assassins, while Quentin manages to shoot and kill another one.  Canary fights Ow-Al and kills him over Arrow's objections.  She lets the last assassin live so he can take a message back to Ra's al Ghul's daughter that her family is off limits.

Sara and Quentin have a touching father-daughter moment, but she has to leave in order to keep her family safe.  As long as she's around, the League will keep hunting for her, so she can't be close to her family and friends.  She also can't let her sister or her mother know she's alive because they would never stop looking for her.  Then Sara leaves.

Later, Quentin visits Laurel who is still sheltering an addiction problem.  He promises her things will get better, but he cannot reveal the secret.

Years ago, aboard the Amazo, Ollie is taken to the cabin where he sees Sara who has now been working with Ivo for a year.  She smacks him and addresses him as a prisoner.

Season 2, Episode 6: "Keep Your Enemies Closer"

Sara only appears in the flashback sequences as Ollie tries to understand his new situation as a prisoner aboard the Amazo.  We learn a little bit more about Ivo's plan.  He is looking for the remains of a Japanese submarine crew who were doing genetic experiments to create super-soldiers or super-humans in the 1940s.

Sara appears to want to help him, feeding him information to keep him safe and keeping his identity a secret.  However, she also betrays him, tricking him into revealing that Shado and Slade Wilson are still alive.  However again, she intervenes on his behalf when Ivo is going to kill Ollie, so her loyalty at this stage in the game is entirely unknown.

New Identity/Origin

Obviously, this is not the Black Canary of the comics.  That doesn't bother me, though, because this is not the Green Arrow of the comics.  This show is its own entity with its own rules and history and characterizations and I've grown to both accept and admire that.  So I have no problem with this twist on Black Canary.  Hell, I love it!

After watching the pilot episode, I had a difficult time believing Laurel could ever become Black Canary.  Well, problem solved: she doesn't.  Instead, it's her long-thought-dead sister who trained with the League of Assassins to be one of the best, most cunning warriors in the world.  Halle-freaking-lujah!

Each episode of this new season is as good if not better than the one before, so there is plenty to get excited about.  This mini Black Canary saga, though, has been my favorite storyline in the series.  Obviously, I'm biased about the character, but it feels like a dramatic twist that was earned instead of forced.  The shock of Sara being alive is unexpected, but not ludicrous, and making her a darker, even more tragic reflection of Ollie, adds new dimension to both of their characters.

I hope she comes back again in the second half of the season.

TEAM 7 #5

Previously...

Five years before the current DC Universe time period, the enigmatic John Lynch assembled a team of soldiers, mercenaries, and people with all-around extraordinary physical abilities to combat or contain the growing threat of metahumans.  During its first mission, Team 7 stopped the mystical entity known as Eclipso from wreaking havoc and generally doing villain stuff.  In the course of events, Slade Wilson was nearly killed and Dinah Drake has come to question the team's objective.

Team 7 #5: "Mission 2.1: The Spartan Way" is written by Justin Jordan, with art in the present-day sequences provided by Jesus Merino and Nei Ruffino, and the flashback sequences by Pascal Alixe and Nathan Erying.  Gary Frank drew the cover with Cam Smith inking.

The issue begins in present day Deathstroke, aka Slade Wilson, boarding something that looks vaguely like a gigantic, possibly military-grade airboat.  (Man, there is nothing like a good helicarrier!)  Deathstroke shoots his way into the office of his former boss, John Lynch, who doesn't look terribly concerned for his safety or remorseful for the men Slade just murdered to get to him.

We then cut to five years ago, where Caitlin Fairchild, the teenage daughter of Slade's teammate, Alex Fairchild, is working at The Advanced Prosthetic Research Center.  I loved Caitlin Fairchild as the leader of Wildstorm's Gen13 when that book first came out twenty years ago.  What the New 52 has done to her in this series and in Superboy is, well, as disappointing as all of the other character evolutions.

Caitlin, a precocious little scientist is upgrading the cybernetic arm of Maxine Manchester, who in a different universe, was the cyborg member of WildC.A.T.s known as Ladytron.  There is a nod to her previous history with Caitlin listening to a BritPop band called Ladytron during their conversation.  Of course, I didn't pick up on that reference when I first read it; I figured this girl was someone we knew because she looked familiar but I've never read those issues of WildC.A.T.s.  Thanks to ComicVine for identifying the lady in this scene.

Then Caitlin is met by the head of the research center, Doctor Henshaw.  Ah, now this bozo I know.  Henshaw is very kind and considerate toward Caitlin, almost suspiciously so much that I expected him to make a pass at her, but that doesn't happen.

Henshaw gives Caitlin some rudimentary task, and then he goes into another lab to oversee Project: Spartan.  There is a humanoid man on a lab table with cybernetic parts under the skin.  The doctors' dialogue makes it clear that "Spartan" is not their creation, they just found him after he was hurt/damaged.  Not sure how much or if any of the original Spartan from WildC.A.T.s will be represented by this character.

Then we cut to... wherever it is Team 7 hangs out or recuperates.  Slade is aggressively exercising, despite his recent trauma.  Alex Fairchild, who stabbed him last issue, by the way, comes to have a chat.  Alex tells Slade the reason he works for Lynch is to give his daughter a better future.  He wants to know why Slade joined the team.

In a different part of Team 7's base--or, more specifically, "elsewhere"--Dinah Drake pays Lynch a visit.  She ain't too happy with the way things are going for the team, and accuses Lynch of trying to destroy the team he hand picked.

That dialogue isn't as cute as the writer wants it to sound, but anyway...

Holy &@#$ing God!!!

Huh... So Lynch is trying to give the team superpowers... Okay...

Back at the Advanced Cybernetics Research Center, Caitlin is attacked by a white lab rabbit that has been fused nightmarishly with cybernetic parts.  She crushes it with a clipboard, then backtracks the rabbit's path to the Project: Spartan lab, where she finds Maxine and the rest of the doctors in--to put it mildly--a bit of a pickle.

Back in the present aboard Lynch's party yacht, Slade opens fire trying to kill him, but Lynch goes all Darth Vader on Cloud City stopping the bullets and pulling the gun right out of Slade's hand.

The last page cryptically shows a destroyed city and a hand popping up out of the ground.  Someone they thought they killed didn't die.

The Characters

Slade asks Lynch if there is anyone left from the Team who doesn't have powers?  Good question...

• Dinah Drake at some point gets her sonic scream, the Canary Cry, so we know she gets a superpower at some point.

• Slade Wilson becomes a super soldier with advanced strength, speed, healing, endurance, mental processing and such.

• Cole Cash gets some kind of special power by the time he becomes Grifter, though I don't remember what that is.  He does not appear in this issue.

• John Lynch apparently has some kind of magnetic or telekinetic power.  Not sure where that came from.

• Amanda Waller has never displayed any kind of power that I'm aware of, other than shedding a hundred and fifty pounds for the New 52, but I don't read Suicide Squad so maybe she has a power in that series.  She does not appear in this issue.

• Kurt Lance supposedly died, but we now know that's not the case.  There have been some hints and indications in Birds of Prey that he might have amplified or activated Dinah's sonic abilities.  He does not appear in this issue.

• Alex Fairchild hasn't been shown in the present day to my knowledge.

• Dean Higgins hasn't been shown in the present day to my knowledge.  He does not appear in this issue.

• James Bronson hasn't been shown in the present day to my knowledge.  He does not appear in this issue.

• Summer Ramos hasn't been shown in the present day to my knowledge.  She does not appear in this issue.

Impressions/Questions

Only half of the team appears in this issue, and if we're counting Lynch and Ramos, only 40% of the main cast appears in this issue.  It really feels more like Caitlin Fairchild's story as she is first exposed to the horrible fallout of Henshaw's Project: Spartan.

This issue didn't feel like the first part of a new mission.  It felt like a prologue--more of a transitional issue.  But it was also probably the best of the series so far.  All of the flashback scenes worked; it was the frame story with Deathstroke that I didn't care about.  Jordan gives the characters some much-needed quiet time to actually develop characterization.  We know more about Dinah, Lynch, Slade and Alex from this issue than we have learned in the previous five.  And the horrors coming out of the cybernetics lab are vastly more interesting and threatening than the Eclipso zombies the team first fought aboard the prison (which, again, was called "The Float").

At this point, there are only three more issues left of this series.  I don't think I will miss it, but I am kind of excited for the first time to read them because this setup was pretty good.

Grade: B+