Black Canary #12 - A Review

Black Canary #12 brings the series to an ending. It is not a satisfying ending but there is far more closure than I'd anticipated. I will give Brenden Fletcher that little credit.

Most of the issue is concerned with Dinah starting a career as a solo musician, ignoring the pleas of the superhero community in joining their battle against something called Ravedeath. She finds time in the middle of all this to meet and marry Oliver Queen (whom we are told died in space in the most forced reference to David Bowie's Space Oddity ever) and gave birth to a daughter who might be Ditto - the time-manipulating McGuffin child.

Oh, and it turns out Dinah's mother taught her some secret reality-breaking punch when she was a baby, but she doesn't remember it until she's on her deathbed, where her lifelong study of music and chords allow her to understand how to use said technique to undo what her mom did and beat-up an 1980s rock-and-roll vampire demon thingy.

Maybe I need to be on a higher quality of medication for any of this to make sense?



Personally, I'd much rather see the Justice League fighting some evil alien invaders than watching Dinah Lance sit around a studio and conducting interviews about her upcoming album. But whatever. At the end of the issue, Dinah abandons her singing career, trades her thigh boots for army boots and goes off into the world freed from the baggage of her previous life. Her husband is dead. Ditto has magically been erased from the memories of everyone but her. And Amanda Waller seems content to leave her be... for now.

Annie Wu returns to do some of the artwork for this issue but even she can't disguise what a convoluted train-wreck this book became as Sandy Jarrell continues to apply the minimum amount of effort in everything. Lee Loughridge, at least, continues to color everything expertly but even a prettily-painted turd is still a turd.



And so Black Canary ends - not with a bang but a whimper. It was a tale told by a idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.Thankfully, based on what we've seen of Green Arrow and Batgirl and The Birds of Prey, Dinah is in much more capable hands now.

Black Canary #6 - A Review

I honestly want to like the DC You Black Canary series. Dinah Lance has always been one of my favorite heroines but I don't think The New 52 has served her very well as a character. And after six issues, I don't think this series is doing her any favors either.

The centerpiece of this issue is a literal battle of the bands between Dinah's band, Black Canary, and a new group fronted by Dinah's self-styled rival, Bo Maeve. Bo has a grudge against Dinah's band, who ditched her in favor of a lead singer who was less of a diva. And now, with the assistance of Amanda Waller, Bo is back with sonic superpowers to rival Dinah's and a bad-girl group with powers of their own.

This should be awesome and taken in terms of pure visuals, it is.  The artwork by Annie Wu is amazing and the strongest aspect of the series. The action of the issue flows smoothly throughout and the color art by Lee Loughridge is as vivid and wild as a punk rock guitar solo.

The effect is not unlike the band battles in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, save that we don't get any lyrics for the songs here. And I find myself wondering if the lyrics were left out so as the reader could imagine Black Canary's sound for themselves?  Or if writer Brenden Fletcher just didn't bother to write them?  This is just one aspect of the script that seem incomplete and I fear it's because this may be because it's easier to pass a lack of explanation off as mystery than to write a proper plotline.

For instance, I originally thought Fletcher avoided discussing Dinah's past with the Birds of Prey and Team 7 in the early issues of this series to make it more accessible to new readers. Now that the series has referenced that past without answering various questions about it, I wonder if Fletcher just wanted to milk the mystery out long enough to decompress the story to trade-paperback length. The end of the issue suggests some answers may be forthcoming but at this point I'm skeptical of a satisfying resolution.


Ironically, for all my complaints about the series not telling us enough about what is going on in its world and backstory, the book simultaneously violates the "show, don't tell" rule.  We're told that Dinah loves her band-mates but there's little to indicate that.  Dinah is a generic strong female protagonist, who doesn't display any emotions beyond anger.

The supporting cast is even worse in this regard. I can't even remember any of character traits or names apart from Ditto, and Ditto is a MacGuffin rather than a character!  Come to think of it, there's no real definition to any of these people apart from Bo, whose character can be summed up as "jealous diva".

That's my problem with Black Canary in a nutshell. It's got visual style but there's no substance to the writing or characters.  And the only reason I'm picking up the next issue is the hope that there will finally be some kind of resolution to this drawn-out opening arc.

Black Canary #3 - A Review

Dinah Drake and the rest of the Black Canary band are still on-the-run from government agents that seem unusually interested in their guitarist, Ditto. It's shocking enough when D.D. finds out that one of the agents is her presumed-dead husband, Kurt Lance, but shocking is too weak a word to describe the revelation that Ditto was involved in the government program that gave Dinah her sonic scream! Worse yet, the government aren't the only ones after Ditto...


The artwork by Annie Wu and Lee Loughridge remains this book's strongest selling-point. Wu is an amazing artist with a true gift for artistic fight choreography and the opening car-chase sequence would not look out of place in a Mad Max movie.  Her art is further enhanced by Loughridge's colors, which subtly enhance and emphasize key panels with sudden palette shifts and tints.



This is not to say that the scripts by Brenden Fletcher are not as god as the artwork. They are good though they are more subtle in their brilliance. Fletcher has spun an engaging tale around Dinah's mysterious past, slowing unveiling it to the readers who might not be familiar with Black Canary. Or at least not with the New 52 version of her. The fake magazine articles reporting on the band offer further details as well as insight into Dinah's character.

Black Canary #2 - A Review

The band called Black Canary is on the road and "D.D." is trying to teach her band-mates something about survival. They take to the gun lessons somewhat better than the martial arts, but everyone agrees they want to be ready in case more of the weirdness that seems to be following them shows up. Thankfully the only thing that seems to be stalking them now is Maeve -their jealous ex-lead-singer. But that could change...


The most impressive aspect of Brenden Fletcher's scripts for this series continues to be his ability to allude to D.D.'s past while still making this series accessible to new readers. Indeed, I envy the new readers for the wonderful mystery this series must be from their perspective, as more and more details of D.D's secret past are revealed.  Those who have read Batgirl, Birds of Prey and Team 7 already know the details, of course, but the story is also enjoyable from that informed perspective.


The artwork for this issue is equally delightful.  Lee Loughridge's color art adopts unique palettes between pages - and occasionally panels - to signal subtle differences between indoors, outdoors and club lighting. This perfectly enhances the art of Annie Wu, which looks equally amazing in black and white, as we see in a fold-out magazine in the middle of this issue.

If you aren't reading Black Canary, you are missing out on one of the most unique reading experiences in recent memory. Treat yourself immediately!  You won't regret it.  

Black Canary #1 - A Review

A hot new band called Black Canary is busting up the charts nearly as fast as their new lead singer D.D. can bust heads. Trouble seems to follow D.D. like a shadow and her past is a mystery even to her band-mates. Still, whatever their misgivings about a front woman who acts more like an MMA champion than a diva, there's a long road ahead of them and a lot of dates left to play on their tour. Assuming they don't all get killed first...

Despite this book being a spin-off of sorts, Brenden Fletcher wisely keeps this book free of any burdensome backstory. Those who followed Batgirl and Birds of Prey will know something of D.D's troubled past and what her initials stand for but such details aren't necessary to enjoy the story at hand. Everything we need to know is revealed deftly through Fletcher's script without seeming the least bit expository.


The artwork for this issue is amazing.  Annie Wu 's style is a perfect fit for the bombastic world of Indie Rock and her design for D.D. proves to be a nice twist on the classic design. This edge is further emphasized by the colors of Lee Loughridge, whose limited palettes and tints give each page a unique look.

This book is a welcome makeover for a heroine who has sorely needed a new direction. No longer a sidekick or part of the ensemble, it's time for Black Canary to take center stage!

Hawkeye #14 - A Review

There comes a time with some forms of revolutionary art where one ponders just how revolutionary said art truly is.  You find yourself second-guessing your first impressions, wondering if a unique method of storytelling was merely a mask for the artist's unwillingness to tell a story conventionally.  You start to seriously examine whether or not the artist is taking their work seriously or if they are, in the words of Mel Brooks, "just jerking off."

With Hawkeye #14, it is now clear - Matt Fraction is just jerking off.


Fraction's story here does not read like a comic book.  It reads like a section of a spec script for a movie or the script for a television pilot.  Taken on its own terms as a single comic story, one might guess after reading this issue that that Fraction decided to make a grab for some of that Netflix money and is trying to build the case for a Kate Bishop as Hawkeye series.

It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, save for two problems.  The first is that Kate is REALLY lousy at her job as a solo hero for hire under Fraction's pen.  When acting as Clint Barton's foil, she is a match for Madame Masque.  Left to her own devices, she can barely manage a campy drug dealer.

The second problem is that Fraction's acknowledgement of his own cliches in the script - while making Kate Bishop seem a perfect role for Ellen Page - does little to excite the reader.  Hell, Kate even complains about never getting to use a bow anymore and it's a legitimate complaint.  I can't remember the last time we saw either Hawkeye using their bow to help people in this series!


If Fraction is writing a film script, Annie Wu is drawing the storyboards.  The artwork of this issue fails to be anything more than inoffensive.  It gets the job done but it's fairly pedestrian and there aren't any sequences in the book that really stand out as exciting or memorable.  Then again, I suppose Wu can't be blamed for not depicting any dynamic moments when Fraction's script is so lacking in action and filled with endless scenes of talking heads.

Hawkeye #8 - A Review

Hawkeye #8 came out a few weeks too late for Valentines' Day but romance is very much at the center of this issue.  The action is broken up by a number of splash pages with art by Annie Wu, which resemble the romance comics of yesteryear.  All of these mock-up covers are excellent but my favorite is probably the one pictured below - partly because of the style and partly because it supports my theory that Hawkeye is slowly turning into Oliver Queen.


Behold... the beginnings of The Beard!
The plot centers around the return of the mysterious redhead who sold Clint a car before having a quick fling back in the hilarious Issue #3.  She's in trouble again and is ready to drag a not-totally-unwilling Hawkeye along with her.  Naturally complications abound and hilarity ensues as they only can when Matt Fraction is at the storyteller's wheel. 


David Aja's artwork is as welcome as ever.  All of the artists on this book have been good ones, but Aja's subdued style has quickly become the definitive look of Hawkeye.  The color-scheme utilized by Matt Hollingsworth also adds to the overall excellent effect that makes this one of the most distinctive and unique-looking comics in existence.

If you aren't reading Hawkeye by now, I don't know what else I can say to get you to start.  Great writing.  Amazing artwork.  What more could you ask for?