Black Canary Poster by Steve Garcia

My best friend, Shag Mandelbaum from Firestorm Fan, recently alerted me to the artwork of Steve Garcia, whose Deviant Art page is filled with mock posters of DC hero and villain silhouettes.

I love this image of the Black Canary.  I love the outline of her leather jacket and her gloves.  I love how Garcia uses white to line her fishnet stockings and her choker and locket, as well as the inner silhouette of Dinah Drake or Dinah Lance inside.

Garcia headlines each character portrait with a word that's supposed to embody some aspect of the character.  I think by the time he got around to Black Canary, most of the good words were taken because progression isn't all that interesting or applicable.  I suppose it could be in reference to the passing of the heroic identity from mother to daughter, but that's stretching a bit.

Here, too, are Garcia's posters for Green Lantern...

...and Batgirl/Oracle...

...and Huntress.

But these three are hardly the only silhouettes designed by Steve Garcia.  For even more iconic DC heroes and villains, check out the veritable Justice League of Bloggers listed below.

• Firestorm and Killer Frost at Firestorm Fan!
• Aquaman and Mera at Aquaman Shrine!
• Wonder Woman at The New Wonder Woman!
• Wonder Girl at The New Wonder Woman!
• Batman, Robin, Alfred, Nightwing, Batgirl, Batwoman, and Villains at Riddle Factory!
• The Flash and the Rogues at Speed Force!
• Green Lantern at Indigo Tribe!
• Martian Manhunter at Idol-Head of Diabolu!
• Black Lantern Martian Manhunter at Idol-Head of Diabolu!
• Supergirl, Lois Lane, and Vibe at Comic Box Commentary!
• The Atom at Power of the Atom!
• Hawkgirl at Power of the Atom!
• Zatanna at Justice League Detroit!
• Captain Marvel at DC Bloodlines!
• Steel at DC Bloodlines!
• Plastic Man at Eeyow! It's Plastic Man!
• Red Tornado at Red Tornado's Path!
• Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) and Blue Beetle & Booster Gold at Kord Industries!
• Booster Gold at Boosterrific!
• Captain Atom at Splitting Atoms!
• Ambush Bug, Beast Boy, Metamorpho, Power Girl, and Deadman at My Greatest Adventure!
• Cyborg at S.T.A.R. Labs Detroit!
• Swamp Thing at The Blog from the Bog!
• Daredevil, Hulk, and Captain America at Daredevil Podcast!
• Thor at The Hammer Strikes!
• Strange Tales at Comic Boxxx Trot!

You can see Steve Garcia's work at his Deviant Art page, his Facebook page, his Tumblr page, and his Instagram page.

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.

Birds of Prey: The Ravens (June 1998)

In June of 1998, DC Comics did something fun and creative, albeit with a slightly patronizing vibe.  They christened the fifth week of the month GirlFrenzy! and published seven standalone female-driven comics derived from their ongoing books.  From the pages of the Superman comics, for example, came a Lois Lane one-shot.  From the Batman books came a Batgirl special, from Wonder Woman came Donna Troy, and from JLA came Tomorrow Woman.  There were a few others, and then there was The Ravens, supposedly spinning out of the pages of Birds of Prey.

The thing is... Birds of Prey wasn't an ongoing series yet, and wouldn't be for another six months.  And this team had never appeared anywhere before this comic.  Also, and perhaps most obvious, Birds of Prey was already a female-led title.  Why did DC create an off-shoot comic staring female characters we didn't know for a quarterly publication starring female characters we did know?

Well, whatever.  Birds of Prey: The Ravens: "S.I.M.O.N. Says...Armageddon" is written by Chuck Dixon and drawn by new artist Nelson DeCastro.  That completeS the set of putting a different artist on every Birds of Prey story up to this point, but for the first time we get a cover by someone other than Gary Frank.  This time, Leonard Kirk and Karl Story provide the chromatic cover art.

The story opens with a splash page of some mercenary soldier holding a detonator threatening to press the button and potentially rule the world.  Then there's a double-page splash of the so-called Ravens, a team of four deadly ladies led by Cheshire, who seems pretty confident that the merc won't press the button, activating whatever it is he's threatening.  Then we see another sort-of splash panel showcasing Cheshire and her history as an assassin, squaring off against the Teen Titans, and surrendering her daughter, Lian.

That's a lot of big splashy images in the first four pages without a lot of story.  What's happening?  Cheshire explains that her mission--which we don't yet know--was in preparation for months before tonight when her crew goes into operation.

By my reckoning, Cheshire and Pistolera are the only established characters in the quartet.  Pistolera was created by Chuck Dixon in one of his Batman stories.  Vicious and Termina were created for this issue.

The Ravens jetski to the coast of Rheelasia, which had some trouble back in the first Birds of Prey special.  Dixon establishes tension in the team by having Vicious make fun of Pistolera's name.  I guess this is like characterization, because they're like villains, so they're nasty to each other, and Vicious is the "wild one".

Cheshire hired them to help her do a job but she hasn't told them what the job is.  I guess the advance she offered was pretty tantalizing because they're in the middle of the operation and don't have the foggiest clue what the objective is.  And Cheshire ain't telling them either.  The Ravens climb up the coastal bluffs and march through the jungle where they discover an unsettling fact about Termina.

Yeah, anything that touches her dies.  Damn.

As they approach the target, which again, only Cheshire knows, they find a soldier and kill him.  Cheshire identifies him as S.I.M.O.N., part of an international crime cartel that's been trying to take over Rheelasia in the two years since everyone in power got blown up by a nuclear power plant explosion.

The Ravens continue their mysterious mission with Cheshire choosing to think about the nuclear destruction of Qurac and giving up her love child with Roy Harper instead of focusing on the mission or even telling her teammates what they're up against or what they're looking for.  Along the way, they kill some more S.I.M.O.N. soldiers.  Cheshire reveals to the readers but not to her teammates that Termina is dying of the same disease she secretes to poison her victims.

When they get close to a heavily fortified facility, the ladies steal an armored assault vehicle and blast their way inside.

This is about where we catch up to the issue's opening scene.  This S.I.M.O.N. soldier grabs the detonator and threatens to push the button.  It's not a nuclear bomb, however, but a neutron generator. Apparently, activating a neutron generator in any given location would create deadly levels of radiation without the destructive capability of a normal bomb.  So, if you wanted to take over an entire city, the neutron generator would disperse the population in one way or another without causing structural damage.  Cheshire's plan all along was to steal the thing, although why that needed to be a secret I don't know.

Termina walks up to the mercenary and kills him by sheer proximity, but before Cheshire can prepare the generator for transportation, Termina threatens to do exactly what the soldier planned.

So Termina turns on the neutron generator to bombard herself with the kind of radiation that will kill her disease, and likely herself.  Cheshire tells her that if she does survive, she'll kill her for this betrayal.

Then we have a sighting of our heroines as Oracle makes Black Canary aware of the radiation spike in Rheelasia.

After that, Cheshire leads Vicious and Pistolera away from the facility as the neutron generator goes off.  Also, Cheshire says she doesn't know what S.I.M.O.N. stands for.

Okay, so this comic sucked.

I can't prove that Dixon wrote this comic in twenty minutes, either during his lunch break on on the toilet, but that's about how much thought went into the plot and characterization.  I'm convinced the reason Cheshire didn't reveal what the mission was about until the end of the story was because Dixon hadn't thought of it when he scripted the earlier pages.  Since we don't know what the mission is, we don't know what the stakes are, and without that, we have no tension or drama.

There is nothing worthwhile about the characters.  Cheshire could have been replaced by anyone and the story wouldn't have changed much.  Pistolera and Vicious' feuding isn't catty or interesting.  The only kind of intriguing character is Termina, who I'm pretty sure dies off-panel.

After the Batgirl one-shot that came out a few months earlier, we were promised another story called "Siege", but instead we get this.  A month later, however, Oracle and Black Canary would pop up in the Green Arrow/Batman crossover story, "Brotherhood of the Fist".  And a few months after that, the first issue of Birds of Prey, the ongoing series, would debut.  Come back next Tuesday for that review!

Golden Oldie: FLASH COMICS #94

What a difference a page makes.  Once Black Canary's solo feature kicked off, creators Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino gave her recurring strip a seventh page and the story quality soared with added real estate for twists and turns.  By the time Flash Comics #94 came out in April 1948, Kanigher was cementing the playful relationship between Dinah Drake and Larry Lance, and Infantino was stretching his legs in some of the panels to create better action shots.

"Corsage of Death" is written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino.

I love that Larry Lance's private detective business is run out of Dinah's flower shop.  It's a nice way of acknowledging that he's good but not so successful that he can afford his own private office space. It's also a convenient way to get them together talking every issue since they're not a romantic couple at this point.

Dinah and Larry rush back to the scene of the explosion and discover the customer is dead and the woman missing.  But the woman didn't go far, only to a pair of nearby beat cops responding to the sound of the blast.  The woman tells the police that Dinah and Larry killed Mr. Van Nell.

Sensing the frame-job coming down, Larry grabs his special lady friend and bolts from the cops.  He tells Dinah to sneak back to her flower shop and stay hidden while he investigates the crime.  Dinah does, in fact, return to her flower shop, but not to wait for Larry.  She changes into her Black Canary costume and heads out.

Arriving at the victim's home, Black Canary finds Larry tied up.  The other woman is waiting and her goons spring on the Canary, but the "Mistress of Judo"--that's actually what the caption calls her--flips them over with ease.  Then the woman pistol-whips Black Canary, knocking her unconscious.

Last time Black Canary was in a jam, she released a smoke pellet from the canary-shaped locket on her choker.  Now it's just a mirror, but so convenient--truly her utility belt wrapped around her neck!

Out in the street, the woman and her crew use the Photon Smasher flashlight on an armored car, wrecking its tires and undercarriage and sending the truck into a light post.  As she and her crew begin unloading the valuables inside, Black Canary and Larry Lance arrive... via helicopter that was just lying around and now hovers above the action.

As Canary and Lance beat down the thugs, she explains how the mirror sent the light of the Photon Smasher back at the device, destroying it.

Notice the last panel of this story is the same visual gag, and practically the same drawing of Larry, as the last panel of the previous story in Flash #93.  It seems like Dinah Drake is always dangling clues as to her dual identity in front of the detective, who never seems to put the pieces together.

This was another fun adventure for Black Canary.  Even though every one of her cases involves her getting knocked out and captured, she always springs back and fights her way out.  Though explained away as nothing more than judo, Black Canary's hand-to-hand combat skills are always on display under Carmine Infantino's pencils.  She's physically strong and resilient and quick-thinking.  She doesn't ever take a backseat to her male counterpart.  She is the hero.

Come back next Sunday for another Golden Age adventure of Black Canary in Flash Comics #95.

Pretty Bird: "Stickum Shaft"

I didn't have the time this week to do a full review of a Black Canary and Green Arrow story for Pretty Bird Friday, but I wanted to give my readers and fans something to think about.  Below you'll see a panel from Justice League of America #75, dated October 1969.  The panel popped up on my giggle-radar because Ollie uses a "stickum-shaft" on Black Canary, and the innuendo laden in that concept makes the little boy in me fall down in fits of laughter.

From Justice League of America #74, art by Dick Dillin.

But this moment in the characters' history is more than an example of visual irony and juvenile sexual humor.  This is basically the first time the characters ever interact.  They both appeared previously in the pages of Justice League of America #21 and #22, but they never had any dialogue or action together.  They stood beside each other in one panel in #22 but that's all.

For all intents and purposes, this "stickum-shaft" scene is the first meeting of Green Arrow and Black Canary.  And it's almost uncannily perfect as a predictor of their relationship.  Take the innuendo of the Ollie's word choice and the visual imagery of the arrow together as sexual implicit; Ollie and Dinah do become lovers within a year or so of this meeting.

And the consequence of this scene: Black Canary is pinned down by the, um, stickum, and unable to escape the path of Aquarius' deadly energy ball.  (That sentence makes sense if you've read the issue.)  It is Dinah's husband, Larry Lance, who leaps in front of the energy ball and dies saving her life.  Black Canary's husband dies as a direct result of her first interaction with Green Arrow.  In essence, Ollie kills her husband in order to take his place as her lover.

The "stickum-shaft" panel, while silly in its verbiage, is symbolic of this superhero couple as it represents their sexual connection and the fact that Ollie will always hurt Dinah.

Black Canary by Amy Reader Part 2

I wish my name was Phil so I could pretend this autographed convention sketch by Amy Reeder was done just for me.

Back in Action: ACTION COMICS WEEKLY #630

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.

John Severin's cover to ACW #630 includes the flashy logo of "The Man of Steel" and boy how I wish last year's film of the same name would have included Superman lifting a circus elephant.  Scratch that.  I would have preferred Superman lifting a circus elephant for three hours to what I actually saw in The Man of Steel.  I love the playfulness of this cover.  It reminds me of something from the Wayne Boring era of Superman and Action, or even further back to Joe Shuster.

Black Canary

"Knock 'Em Dead" Part 7: 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 comes second out of the six features in this issue.

Picking up where the last chapter left off, Black Canary follows Deborah, the prime suspect in at least two murders to a warehouse where the Deb is hoping to score heroin.  But the Deb walks into a police ambush, and the cops aren't looking to arrest her.  These corrupt Seattle cops want her dead for killing Rich and ruining their drug dealing scheme.

Deb sounds pretty surprised to hear that Rich is dead, but the cops don't buy her innocence.  They move in for the kill, but Black Canary springs into action.  She takes down two of the cops and the other is wounded by friendly fire, but in the chaos of the fight, Deborah escapes.  Canary follows but loses Deb, and now Deb knows that she's being targeted.

The police have Deborah's apartment staked out but they're not the only ones.  Cat Maddox, the actress starring in a local production of Peter Pan and a woman who has had a keen interest in Deb since before the killings began is in a diner waiting for the prostitute to return.  A former acquaintance named Anna recognizes her in the diner and expresses her condolences about a loved one of Cat's suffering from a horrible disease.  Hmm... Disease?  We've heard AIDS pop up in the periphery of this story a couple times.

Cat excuses herself from the conversation and jumps an a bus as it arrives.  As she does so, she prevents Deborah from getting off the bus and thus getting caught by the police.

The next day, Ken Glazier meets an old friend at an outdoor basketball court.  Ken shares a newly arrived death threat from the killer he believes is his old flame, Deborah.  He admits to phoning in the anonymous tip to the police that pointed them in Deb's direction, but now that she's running scared she doesn't seem to be halting her quest for vengeance.  Ken warns his friend to stay away from her, but as the unnamed friend is gay, he doesn't believe Deb will get to pick him up in a bar.

Later, Lieutenant Cameron takes his daughter to see Peter Pan at the local theater.  He sees Dinah Lance ushering for the show and they talk about the case.  Cameron admits that Deborah is in the wind and he must pull some of his men off the investigation.  He thinks she was killed by drug dealers and they'll be lucky to find her body.  Unbeknownst to either of them, Deb is still alive, tied up somewhere underground.

[Click the images below to enlarge.]

This chapter showcases the best and worst of Randy Duburke's artwork.  The woman named Anna who talks to Cat in the diner? She looks exactly like Dinah when she's not dressed as the Black Canary.  And the gay man that Ken Glazier talks to looks exactly like Walt Sarno looks exactly like Dinah's friend from Sherwood Florist.  On the other hand, the action in the first three pages looks terrific in his stylized way.

In case there was any doubt, Deb is not the killer we're looking for.  She's a patsy and the most likely killer is actress Cat Maddox.  But what is Cat's motivation?  What's her secret history?  Me thinks it's tied into Ken Glazier; maybe she's his ex-wife.  The suspense builds as lairs of mystery are pealed and newly folded.

The Rest

Green Lantern spends most of his eight pages fighting Captain Atom in the latest chapter by James Owsley and M.D. Bright.  Hal Jordan calls Cap reckless, always prematurely assessing the situation and too eager to fight.  Pot calling the kettle black, in this case, because that sounds more like how Green Lantern has been written for most of the modern era.  Then again, I feel like Captain Atom has been used as a reactionary straw man for anti-military sensibilities ever since DC brought him over from Charlton.

The latest story in the adventures of the Secret Six by Martin Pasko and Frank Springer comes to a close as the mysterious Mockingbird explains how he survived a long time ago only to die at the end of this story.  And then someone else dresses up as Mockingbird at the very end.  Never ends.  Except this feature does, and the next issue will have Phantom Stranger in its place!

In the two-page Superman strip by Roger Stern and Curt Swan, Clark Kent gets a tour of the underground complex housing the spiritual fellowship that reveres the Man of Steel like a god.  The high priestess of the order can move the earth with her powers, and other Followers of Superman display other abilities as well.

Clark Kent discovers that some form of external radiation is granting them their superpowers, that someone or something is manipulating them.  Meanwhile, the nefarious Consortium is sending an army of tanks and helicopters to destroy the compound and kill all of the cultists.

The fifth chapter of Nightwing & Speedy by Cherie Wilkerson and Tom Mandrake is the... third or fourth that does not show or even mention Nightwing.  Roy Harper is trapped in a burning house with his infant daughter Lian and the two Irish squatters, Moira and Button.  He gets Button outside, but she overhears the police say they firebombed the house, so the cops kidnap little Button.  Roy gets the others outside and confronts the mysterious private detective-looking guy who always shows up when Roy's in a tight spot.  Later Roy gets an anonymous tip telling him where to get Button back from the Friends of the Empire.  At the train station, there is a shootout between F.O.E. and Sanas, the rival faction in Northern Ireland.  Button is taken onto a train that is heading straight for a car full of explosives, 'cuz that's how you do a cliffhanger!

Martin Pasko and Rick Burchett's latest installment of Blackhawk drops a few historical context bombs as Jan Prohaska is called into the Oval Office to talk to the President of the United States about the still-forming C.I.A.  Meanwhile, there's some other mysterious business popping up about the creation of the hallucinogenic drug, L.S.D.  Also, that sexy Nazi chick.

Next week, I'll look at Action Comics Weekly #631, which kicks off a Phantom Stranger story to replace Secret Six, and furthers the adventures of Black Canary, Superman, Green Lantern, Nightwing, and Blackhawk.

Birds of Prey: Batgirl (Feb. 1998)

After Revolution and Wolves, the quarterly Birds of Prey one-shots continue with the third installment teaming Black Canary up with Batgirl.

Wait.  Whaaaat?

Birds of Prey: Batgirl is written by Chuck Dixon with Gary Frank once again providing a knockout cover that reveals Black Canary in an updated version of the costume he had already updated for her in the original Birds of Prey special.  Now her legs are fully covered in what looks like a mostly-solid gray jumpsuit, further cementing her transformation to DC's Black Widow.  On the other hand, she now has a jacket over her jumpsuit, which harkens back to her more classic look.  That's a nice touch.  Also, uh, Batgirl is on the cover looking buff and beautiful and fully upright.  On Batgirl, we meet Greg Land, the fifth interior artist in as many Birds of Prey stories, but unlike the others, Land will hang around for some time.

Land's artwork is on full display from the start with lots of big action-packed images.  In the first five pages, there are only eight panels.  Dixon and Land throw the bang-pow spectacle of Black Canary and Batgirl wailing on some brainwashed thugs of the Mad Hatter--

Wait, why is Batgirl there?  Barbara Gordon is paralyzed, now functioning as the cyber-hacker and information dealer known as Oracle!  What's going on?

Batgirl tells Black Canary to let the other hat-wearing hoods run for their lives.  The ladies shouldn't pursue them with undo force because the hoods are not in their right minds.  Every one of the Mad Hatter's entourage have been brainwashed by the unique microcircuitry transceivers in the hats.

Black Canary asks Batgirl's help in taking the Hatter down.  She seems a little uncertain, a little green, like she doesn't have much experience in this.  The women also sound like they don't know each other all that well.

After shaking out her dizzy spell, Batgirl sees to the one remaining henchman who'd been brainwashed by the Mad Hatter.  They discover that the henchman is actually a district judge who tells them he was at the Homburg Club when the Mad Hatter came in and put hats on everyone.  It's the lead they need to chase down the Hatter, even though Batgirl hadn't heard that he'd escaped from Arkham Asylum.

As crazy and inexplicable as it is that Barbara Gordon is up and around swinging from rooftop to rooftop in her old Batgirl garb, Black Canary is the one behaving strangely.  When they arrive at the Homburg Club, she refuses to split up, citing the dangerousness of Mad Hatter as reason to stick together.  Sure...

Together, they break in through the roof and sneak up on Mad Hatter's meeting with a newly brainwashed Jeremiah Arkham.  The Hatter wants Arkham to release all of the inmates so madness can run rampant on the streets of Gotham.

Batgirl gets nauseous at the thought of all those Arkham inmates running lose.  Well, one specific inmate to be exact.  And it ain't Two-Face or Poison Ivy or Scarecrow.

Black Canary can see that Batgirl is mentally and physically upset and asks her for help contacting Batman.

Black Canary presses the matter and the more she insists they bring Batman in, the more Batgirl senses that something is wrong about this whole situation (no kidding!).

Then Mad Hatter's hat-wearing hoods are upon them.  Batgirl and Black Canary take on the brainwashed Gothamites while Hatter escapes with Jeremiah Arkham.  Canary continues to insist they call Batman for reinforcements while Batgirl persists they can handle the situation themselves.  They argue and bicker and Black Canary seems to whine more and more as they chase their prey from the city to Arkham Asylum.

They arrive too late, however, as Dr. Arkham has already freed the patients.  The Mad Hatter, Two-Face, the Riddler, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, Killer Croc, Bane, Mr. Zsasz, the Ventriloquist and more ambush the heroines.  Black Canary escapes somehow, but Batgirl is knocked out and captured.

Batgirl's memories are flooded with the horrific images of the Joker shooting her, paralyzing her, leaving her in a wheelchair.  Memories that don't make sense because, well, she's not in a wheelchair now, is she?

The Joker torments her for a few seconds, but then all of the inmates leave her to search the hospital for Black Canary.  No sooner do they leave, then Black Canary slips out of an air vent and comes to Batgirl's aid.  But she's not really there to rescue Batgirl, is she?

That's an odd reaction for Black Canary to give...

Well, it would be if this was Black Canary.

Lady Spellbinder--who does not wear pants, it seems, although who am I to talk, running a Black Canary fan blog?--reveals that she has been projecting the entire issue's worth of scenes into Barbara Gordon's mind.  That's Spellbinder's power, to hijack the sensory perceptions of her victims and force them to experience what she wants.

More than that, Lady Spellbinder seems to know that Barbara is Oracle, claiming that she was hired by someone who wanted to use Barbara's knowledge of Batman to find access to his secret lair.  Whoever her boss is has been aggrieved by Batman enough times that he wants some payback and targeted the "crippled nerdette" as the weak link his the Dark Knight's defense.  Spellbinder also scoffs at Barbara's pathetic fantasy that she would be Batgirl.

Lady Spellbinder and a team of mercenaries head out to find the entrance to the Batcave behind the Zesti Cola sign on VanMeer.  They leave Barbara tied up in the warehouse.

Lady Spellbinder is hella pissed when she realizes that Barbara lied to her.  So pissed that she gets back in the car and drives back to the warehouse...leaving the mercenaries with their guns on the side of the road!  By the time she makes it back to the warehouse, Barbara isn't tied to her chair; she has crawled back to her wheelchair and weaponed-up.

Barbara knows that Spellbinder's power is dependent on being able to see; that's her handicap according to Babs.  So she deprives her of her sight by spraying her in the face with a fire extinguisher and then kneecapping her with a broken piece of wooden chair.

The cops show up to find Lady Spellbinder tied up and blindfolded, unable to use her powers.

Safe at home in her clock tower base, Oracle contacts the real Black Canary who is in the field on assignment.  Oracle insists she's fine but hopes Black Canary gets back to Gotham soon.  They've put their philosophical differences behind and are good friends again, even though Dinah still doesn't know who Oracle really is.

The issue ends with the mercenaries making their way back to their boss, the man who hired Spellbinder.  It appears to be Blockbuster but there's something going on with his head.  There's a tag on the last page that says next: Birds of Prey: Siege.

Of course, Siege never happened, at least not in a one-shot, although Chuck Dixon says most of the story he had planned for that were used in the Birds of Prey ongoing series that would launch one year later.  But that's getting ahead of ourselves.  What about this story?

It's... okay.  There are some fun moments, like seeing Barbara Gordon as Batgirl is always fun, and this story is really about giving her a chance to be the workhorse crime fighter that she never gets to be anymore.  Dixon makes it obvious for anyone with a brain that the Black Canary we see in the first half of the book is not the real Black Canary, and the details that punctuate these incongruities are nicely done.

Honestly, though, I'm almost never satisfied or interested in these "imaginary tales" types of stories.  The last ten pages with Babs versus Lady Spellbinder are a lot more interesting to me because it feels like a real and immediate threat, while everything before felt like an indulgence in flight-of-fancy.

And let's talk about Lady Spellbinder for a second.  When I got to her reveal in this book, all I could think about was the new character created for the New 52 BoP named Uplink.  I remember an interview where Christy Marx talked about created the character with her editor.  But really they already had a character from Birds of Prey history that they could have recycled.  Uplink and Lady Spellbinder both manipulate the sensory reality of their targets, and they both have pink as a thematic color.

I do have some questions about Blockbuster's role in this story.  I don't know how he discovered that Barbara Gordon is Oracle and that Oracle knows Batman, but this seems like a really, really big deal in terms of security.  I hope Chuck Dixon addresses it, but I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't because that's not really his jam.

I think the highlight is seeing Greg Land's protoform art style.  This is back when he actually drew characters and backgrounds and didn't just trace pictures of porn stars or whatever's been doing for the last ten years.

Next Tuesday I'll review the last and "least Birds of Prey" of the Birds of Prey one-shots: The Ravens.

Black Canary on ARROW S2 E14

This may seem like cheating once again but I don't have the time or energy to do a full-on review of last week's episode of Arrow.  Thankfully, I don't have to.  The website GreenArrowTV has a great in-depth review full of spoilers and easter eggs that's as thorough as anything I could provide here.  If you're so inclined, check out their review for the season 2 episode, "Time of Death", and then come on back!

Screen cap from "Time of Death", courtesy CW Network.

My Oh-So Brief Review

Arrow has had some good episodes, but this was a very good episode.  It introduced a classic villain with tons of potential for future appearances.  It spent a lot of time with the Lance family, fleshing out more of Laurel and Sara's relationship, as well as a few character details of their mother, Dinah.  We got to see the Canary in action and we now know how her connection to Sin originated.

Unfortunately, I think the episode tried to do too much and spread itself a little thin in the action story department.  Robert Knepper was terrific as Tockman, but we didn't spend nearly enough time with him doing anything other than talking through his radio.  GATV's review touched upon the fact that the character is dying--his body is literally counting down--but that metaphor was never explored or even truly hinted at.  Likewise, Laurel and Sara's reconciliation at the end felt like it jumped a couple of scenes.  This episode could have been two episodes, which would have allowed us to spend more time with Dinah Lance, as well as Roy and Sin.

Another thing I've noticed that has to go in the complaint section: As Team Arrow grows to include Canary and Roy, and Sin and Thea by extension, we've seen Diggle pushed more and more to the side.  I think the show found its identity once Ollie and Diggle teamed up, so it's a shame that Diggle has become more and more marginalized.  Maybe he needs to get a Green Lantern ring in order to get some decent screen time again.

There are a couple of references to Kord Industries and a very blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo of Blue Devil on a poster, as well as mention of the Oblivion Bar.  All nice bits of fan-service.

Lots of threads are coming together as we near the end of the season.  And don't forget, the episode titled "Birds of Prey" is just a few weeks away!

Golden Oldie: FLASH COMICS #93

After starting her solo adventures in Flash Comics, joining the Justice Society of America in All-Star, and popping over to Comic Cavalcade for a guest story, there was no stopping the lady crime fighter known as Black Canary!  Indeed, the Canary was becoming so popular that her adventures saw an increase from six- to seven-page stories starting with Flash Comics #93, cover dated March 1948.

"Mystery of the Crimson Crystal" is written by Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino.

Larry Lance checks his client's condition to discover that she has died.  At that point, a group of women wearing red hooded cloaks enter Dinah's flower shop demanding something called the Crimson Crystal.  Unseen, Dinah sneaks into the back room of her store and changes into the costume of her secret crime fighting identity, the Black Canary!

When she comes back into the store, however, Black Canary is alone with the dead woman.  Larry and the women in cloaks have vanished.  Canary checks the body for identification and finds her clutching a giant and quite valuable crimson crystal.  She realizes this is what the woman was killed for and what the other women must want.

At that moment, however, the local police enter and mistake Black Canary for the killer.  They try to subdue her, but Canary is far to skilled for them and escapes.  Later, she posts an ad in the personals column of the newspaper agreeing to exchange the Crimson Crystal for the safe release of Larry Lance.  She goes to the bridge that night to make the trade, or at least to find out who is behind this mystery.  There she is surrounded by the women in red cloaks.

They try to take the crimson orb and Black Canary fights back.  However...

Swami attacks but Black Canary's martial arts training proves far superior.  Even as the women of the Crimson Crystal cult rage in disbelief, Black Canary flips Swami over and throws him into the crowd.  She tells the women that the crystal is a fake and proves it.  She unscrews the orb, which has a self-generating lightbulb inside to give it its eery supernatural glow.

Wow!  As silly as parts of this story were, it was far-and-away the best Black Canary story from the Golden Age so far!

For one thing, this marks the first time she fights a villain, if you'll forgive the pun, more "colorful" than the ordinary gangsters she's been used to tussling with.  This Order of the Crimson Crystal is visually distinct by the red cloaks and the all-female membership.  'Tis a shame that it's nothing more than bored debutants foolishly duped by a conman.  This group could easily be resurrected for a modern story as a truly sinister cult of brainwashed women who actually believe some mystic object will grant them eternal life.  And maybe it will.  They just need a better leader than this racist caricature, Swami, who turns out to be someone named "Bullet" Benn.  

We get a lot of other great character moments in this story.  Black Canary uses her skills to elude the police, to fight the cultists and defeat Swami.  She also uses the canary on her choker to release smoke, enabling her to escape.  That's a cool trick that could use a comeback.  We also have her using her brains to literally unlock the mystery of the Crimson Crystal.  She doesn't solve this case by happenstance; she actually does the detective work in her mind and on her feet.

And then we have Larry Lance taking a bullet for her!  Even though he is described as Dinah Drake's "pet peeve" in the first page, you can see the admiration between the two of them that will grow into love and eventually marriage.  The extra page in this story really allowed Kanigher and Infantino to stretch out and tell a great story.

Come back next Sunday for another Golden Age adventure of Black Canary in Flash Comics #94.