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 #11 - A Review

Yes, I'm still reading this book. At this point, I demand to see how this ends in the blind hope that there will be some kind of explanation for what in the name of Odin's Ravens was going on in this title. It may be a rushed explanation delivered in an information dump of exposition on one page, as is par for the course in Brenden Fletcher's writing, but at least it will be AN explanation.


The story is all over the place in this issue, with Dinah going to Berlin to rescue her band-mates (who we're told once again she loves like family, despite all evidence to the contrary) from an evil 80's rock star demon. Said demon is nursing a grudge because the ninja clan that Dinah's mother founded pretended to be background dancers in an effort to get to him. And Dinah's mother used this magical secret fighting technique that everyone thinks Dinah knows (but doesn't) to hurt him and he wants the secret of said technique so he can be healed.

...

I wish we'd gotten to read THAT comic instead, because that sounds WAY more awesome than what we get here - i.e. Dinah being randomly teleported around by said 80's rock star demon, as he throws exposition at her in an effort to disorient her.

Oh, and on that note, the demon says that he killed Dinah's father. And Vixen's manager used to be part of the same group as Dinah's mother. And that woman who claimed to be Dinah's aunt isn't really Dinah's aunt.

Yeah...


The artwork isn't much clearer than the writing. Sandy Jarrell phones it in again, with Wayne Faucher under-inking the four pages he was brought in to finish. Even Lee Loughridge seems to be waiting for a better gig to come along at this point, with most of the issue done in dull, muted tones that left me wondering if the printer was running low on every color but blue.

Black Canary #10 - A Review

The only kind thing I have to say about Black Canary #10 is that it gives a shout-out to John Constantine's old band - Mucous Membrane - in the form of Dinah's T-shirt. That momentary sight-gag allowed me to momentarily think of better comics than this one. It proved a welcome relief, given that I am hard pressed to think of any other thing this comic managed to do right.


Brenden Fletcher continues to "tell, don't show" with every bit of dialogue he writes. Over half of this issue is devoted to scenes of Black Canary and Batgirl telling each other things they already know or recalling conversations that took place off-panel during the action of previous issues. The vexing thing is that these conversations could have taken place on-panel if Fletcher had been buggered at any point in the previous eight issues to have written a straight-forward conversation regarding what the heck is going on!

And just what the heck is going on, you ask?

In brief, Black Canary is trying to find out the truth about her past and Batgirl is helping her. They get attacked by the same group of ninjas that abducted Black Canary a few issues ago, only now to learn that said ninjas want the knowledge of some secret technique that they think Dinah knows.

Why they didn't ask her for this information when they were forcing her to fight in their arena two issues ago is not explained. Nor is it explained why Dinah - who we're told thinks of her band-mates as a second family - hasn't bothered to make contact with her band-mates ever since escaping from an evil ninja clan's Arena of Death.

Of course I'm still waiting for an explanation as to why an ex-secret agent/vigilante trying who is wanted by the government and is trying to lay low would ever agree to become lead singer of a punk band with a major record label that uses her code name as the band name. I doubt we're over going to get an explanation for that one. The damnable thing is that Fletcher himself inadvertently points out the stupidity of it all, with the thugs that Dinah is beating up at one point recognizing her from the band!



The artwork is similarly troubled. Moritat seems to be trying (and failing) to emulate Annie Wu once again, with unusually forced poses such as Batgirl singing into a hair-brush despite not singing in the dialogue. Sandy Jarrell's pencils are better, but still uncharacteristically sloppy. Even the usually excellent Lee Loughridge seems off-form this month, with Babs and Dinah's coloration being mixed up in one panel (thanks to Jeremy Williams for pointing that one out to me) and the color art only serving to highlight rather than disguise how rushed the pencils and inks are.

The heck of it is I can't even blame the creative team for how thrown-together this issue feels. Given the approach of DC Rebirth and this issue's revelation that Dinah's parents were a private eye and a florist, coupled with the suggestion that Dinah was given implanted memories (exactly like what's going on in Batgirl right now), it seems likely that Fletcher was put over a barrel and forced to turn his Black Canary into the classic Black Canary and reestablish all the backstory that got thrown out the window five years ago.

In that respect, I wish I could be happy. But given that Dinah's apparent destiny is to be Green Arrow's muse, I can't. Problematic and contradictory as this book has been, it at least let Dinah be her own character.

Black Canary #8 - A Review

Trapped in a remote stronghold, Dinah is one of many being forced to fight in an underground arena. The good news is that Dinah is not alone, for the heroine Vixen is also a captive here and Dinah has learned that her mysterious guardian angel is her long lost aunt! But can Dinah really trust either one of them?
The artwork this month is something of a mixed bag. Guest artist Sandy Jarrell is competent but hardly outstanding. Jarrell's female figures all look like a stiff breeze could knock them over, which is something of a problem when most of the characters are meant to be experienced warriors. Lee Loughridge does their usual outstanding job on the colors but the whole comic looks drab and dull due to most of it being set in a prison.

The script for this issue is a showcase of everything Brenden Fletcher does right and wrong as a writer. Most of the action of the issue takes place off-panel and we are told rather than shown most of the information regarding what has been going on in a massive info dump regarding Dinah's past. (Incidentally, it turns out the mysterious blonde ninja is Dinah's aunt - not her sister, as I'd guessed.) What Fletcher gets right, however, is the relationship building between Vixen and Black Canary. You really want to see more of these two teaming up in the future. I just want to see it in a different title.

Black Canary #5 - A Review

Normally I start my reviews with a set-up for the media in question. A plot summary, more often than not. I can't do that with Black Canary #5, however, because there's no plot to speak of. In fact, looking back on the past issues, I realize that there hasn't been a lot going on overall. Events occur but there's very little rhyme or reason behind any of it and there are more mysteries than there are solid facts.

Most of this issue is devoted toward the characters discussing all the mysteries but no progress being made on any of the on-going story-lines.  There's the mystery of who the mute guitarist Ditto is, what connection she has to the government group that gave Dinah her sonic scream power and what any of this has to do with Dinah's amnesic ex-husband and the second group that he's apparently part of now that is also interested in Ditto.


This issue reveals two new mysteries - the revelation that Dinah's entire family died under strange circumstances when she was young and the idea that, somehow, her record label is involved in all of this madness as well and that Dinah's discovery as a singing talent was no accident. And all of these mysteries ignore further mysteries such as who is the white-clad ninja woman who saved Ditto in the last issue and spends this issue trying to steal Dinah's blood in the issue's one action sequence?

All this ambiguity might be tolerable if the characters were at least interesting. Unfortunately, they aren't. Dinah's band-mates all have the personality of dishwater and Dinah herself is a total cipher beyond being the standard "tough chick". At first I thought writer Brenden Fletcher had been trying to keep this book free of any previous continuity but now I find myself wondering if he had any direction from editorial for this book other than "Black Canary becomes a punk singer" or if there is any eventual direction for where any of this is going.


At least the artwork is good, even if there's precious little action for it to depict. The talents of Pia Guerra of Y: The Last Man fame are completely wasted here. Sandy Jarrell closes the book out in a memorable fashion with Lee Loughridge offering up the usual stellar color art.