Black Canary: New Wings #4

Previously in Black Canary...

Black Canary: New Wings #4 - "Just Say Thank You" is written by Sarah Byam, with pencil art by Trevor Von Eeden and inks by Dick Giordano.  Mike Gold edited the issue with Steve Haynie providing letters and Julie Lacquement colors.  The issue is cover-dated February, 1992, but thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics we know the book was released on Christmas Eve 1991.

The last chapter of Black Canary's first miniseries opens with two pages advertising the situational benefits of Hercules suitcases culminating in Senator Garrenger's son's drug smugglers throwing suitcases full of cocaine overboard and bringing them into port under water.

In Gray's Harbor, where the citizenry hates everything non-whte male American, Black Canary and Gan Nguyen are threatened by neo-Nazis with guns and knives.  While one of the racists talks of slicing Gan's eyes to look less Asian/more caucasian, Canary dumps lantern fluid on a Hercules case full of money, then puts it to better use.

As Black Canary and Gan make their escape, we cut away to young Chad Brennan who finds his father, former Marine Sgt. Brennan, passed out drunk.  In disgust, Chad takes his father's truck and drives off, hoping to never return.

Canary and Gan run through the woods.  She tells him to go on without her as he's in greater danger from the racists' hatred, but he slips and falls in the river and she has to pull him out.  She changes tactics and uses Gan to draw out the gunman pursuing them.  When the baddie emerges from the trees with a rifle drawn on Gan, Black Canary knocks him in the water.

Black Canary stops Gan from killing the man, convincing him that murder won't alleviate his pain, something she knows from experience.  They leave the gunman unconscious on the bank and make their way to the highway.  There, they're picked up by Chad Brennan, who recognizes the danger an Asian man and a woman dressed like a hooker face in his neck of the woods.

Dinah has Chad and Gan drop her off at the Sandbar police station so she can try and convince the local sheriff that his town is the base for a million-dollar drug smuggling operation.  The sheriff laughs her out of his office.

Sgt. Brennan finally arrives at the Port of Sandbar where Loren Garrenger, Jr. oversees the arrival of the drug shipment.  Lorry scolds the elder Brennan for not controlling his son.  Meanwhile, the scene and the crew armed with machine-guns are observed by Black Canary.  She dives off the pier and swims to a small motorboat that she hot-wires.  She strips off her sopping wet boots and jacket and cuts her fishnets to tie around her hair.

Elsewhere, Chad Brennan drives Gan to his girlfriend's place.  His girlfriend happens to be the daughter of Wren Kole, the Native American friend of Dinah's from issue #1.  Gan, Chad, his girlfriend and Wren meet at their place on the Quinault Indian Reservation and formulate a plan.  They figure Lorry has the shipments arrive in the Quinault region because the Reservation doesn't have much of a police force.  They decide to surprise the senator's son by deputizing one and bringing in some neighboring law enforcement.

Out on the water, the smugglers are hauling in the suitcases full of coke when Dinah comes up on them in her speedboat, acting like a dumb girl who doesn't know what she's doing.  That includes piloting the boat, which she bumps into the smuggling ship and falls into the sea.

The smugglers pull her unconscious body out of the drink and bring her into the ship's hold.  One of them gets some rape-y ideas, but luckily one of the other murderous drug dealers shows some honor in that regard.

Fully awake, Black Canary slips out of her room and takes out the guard posted there.  She then sneaks into the ship's bridge and takes out the captain.

Reinforcements arrive and surround the smuggling boat.  Said reinforcements are composed of the ships from three different tribes organized by Gan and Wren.  Hoping to jump on the chance for political advancement, Senator Garrenger arrives with the Coast Guard, unaware that his own son is on board the smuggling boat.  Also, just for good measure, Gan brought the media.

Dinah knocks out Lorry.  Sgt. Brennan has no plan to go quietly and readies his gun for a shootout.

In the aftermath of Chad killing his father and the cops arresting Loren Garrenger, Jr. and the rest, Dinah and Gan meet on the pier.  They reveal that the senator was more or less ignorant and innocent of the drug deals.  The story ends with Dinah and Gan sitting together, comforting each other.

As an individual issue, this story was okay.  The art suffered a lot this time around.  I don't know if scheduling got behind or what, and I'm not sure if the fault was more penciler Trevor Von Eeden's or inker Dick Giordano, but on nearly every page are panels where entire characters are blacked out as silhouettes with no detail or definition.  Still more panels are bereft of any background detail.  Von Eeden's panel construction is also comparatively more ordered and boring in this issue than previous chapters.  I greatly enjoyed Von Eeden and Giordano's work in issues #1 and #2, but the drop off was pretty significant in the second half of the book.

The same could be said of Sarah Byam's script.  Again, I don't know how much blame could be laid at editor Mike Gold's feet, or time's, but each successive issue felt less organized and clear than the one before.  That is, until this climactic issue.  It's not confusing like issue #3 was, but it does feel rushed and kind of underwhelming.  I don't know why Black Canary and Gan had to go to Gray's Harbor and fight the white supremacists there; they spend a good chuck of this issue in that area, and it doesn't feel connected to the rest of the story.  Rather, it feels like putting a cap on a story seed that Byam planted in issue #1 but never grew.

The consequence of that is the final showdown with Sgt. Brennan on the smuggling ship is extremely rushed.  Black Canary's fight with Brennan, Chad's decision to take up a gun against his father, and the elder Brennan's death all happen on one page.  Nine panels crammed onto the second to last page.  Yes, this issue was very, very poorly paced.

It's difficult to praise this series when the stakes were so high and the execution so...meh.  I thought the first issue was great, but perhaps too ambitious.  The story and art needed to be reined in from issue to issue, and these felt clumsy most of the time.  I guess I would blame Gold for a lot of those problems, especially considering he edited Black Canary's first strip in Action Comics Weekly, "Bitter Fruit", which was a mess of conflicting concepts and characters.  He should have known better from that experience, but I guess he just repeated a lot of the same mistakes.

On the other hand, Gold did champion the character more than any other.  His appreciation for Black Canary shows in the letters columns at the end of the issue where he announces the fiscal success of "New Wings" resulting in an ongoing title for Black Canary that would kick off almost a year later.

Was "New Wings" the best Black Canary story?  No.  But it was the first that could be called Black Canary in the direct market's order forms and comic racks.  So there's that.

Black Canary: New Wings #3

Previously in Black Canary...

Black Canary: New Wings #3 - "Somebody's Keeper" is written by Sarah Byam, with pencil art by Trevor Von Eeden and inks by Dick Giordano.  Mike Gold edited the issue with Steve Haynie providing letters and Julie Lacquement colors.

The story opens up once again with Chad Brennan feeling the strain of his hometown Sandbar's socio-economic descent.  The men of his father's generation are poor and bitter, and blaming anything and anyone that looks different.  Chad walks out on their praise for his baseball skills when he sees a young Native American woman outside.

Meanwhile, in the back of the bar, Chad's father, former Marine Sgt. Brennan is meeting with Senator Garrenger's son, Lorry, and his aide.  The senator's man isn't thrilled that Sgt. Brennan failed to kill Gan Nguyen, a Seattle radio host who has been critical of Garrenger's administration.  Particularly, Gan has attacked the senator's "phony" war on drugs and poverty.

In addition to Gan surviving the assassination attempt, the fiasco at the drug house resulted in Drake, a high-end drug dealer escaping.  Drake knows too much about Garrenger's operation, so Lorry puts together a plan to lure Drake out of hiding and salvage their reputation.

Back in Seattle, Dinah Lance and Gan meet in Police Lieutenant Cameron's office.  Dinah tells them her theory that the shootout at the crack house was more than just drug-fueled unrest.  She thinks someone with big money and political connections was motivated to silence the dealers, Drake, and Gan, too.  Lt. Cameron thinks it's a tall tale and she'll need proof.

After the shootout, Drake escaped into the sewers.  He makes his way through dark and dank tunnels, kills some rats, and finds an exit to the city above.

Dinah and Gan leave the police station, arguing about the merits of Gan's civil protest.  She thinks his action led to the death of two people, but he asks how many more would die of drugs and other societal blights if he didn't use his voice to stand up against injustice.  Gan calls Dinah a hypocrite, considering her nighttime profession of costumed avenging.

A little later, Dinah has thrown on her work clothes, and the Black Canary returns to the scene of the crack house shootout.  She narrates the scene... but the captions don't make a whole lot of sense.  They almost seem to be out of order or they're missing something.  A problem with the lettering from one draft to the final script, perhaps?

The next day, Senator Loren Garrenger is harassing his son for his drug use and the scandal of his arrest years ago, an arrest with the rogue dealer named Drake.  The senator's aide, Boyd, calms him down, and Lorry tells his dad that he overheard the time and location of a major drug deal that could net his father a lot of good press.

Once the senator leaves, Lorry and Boyd confirm that they're sacrificing part of their own operation to give the senator a victory and to eliminate Drake.

Speaking of Drake.  As he's climbing out of the sewer, Black Canary has found him.  And Gan has caught up with Canary.  This sequence and their dialogue feels off, like there's a scene missing, which jives with the previous page of Black Canary looking into the crack house.

Anyway, Drake starts shooting up the building Dinah and Gan are hiding in.  She tells Gan to stay put while she sneaks around.  Gan shouts down to Drake about the danger of methane gas poisoning which is all around the sewage pit they're fighting in.

Oh, of course.  Black Canary slips in the mud because she's wearing heels.  Of course.

Drake jumps on Black Canary and begins to choke her.  Gan holds up a lighter and threatens to light it, which he claims will ignite the gas and kill them all.  Drake pushes Black Canary at Gan and pulls the trigger on his gun, but he's out of bullets.

Black Canary and Gan interrupt a tour of the city's tunnels and sewers by hauling Drake out.  Dinah says instead of taking their prisoner directly to Cameron's office at the police station, she's going to take him right to the docks to finger Senator Garrenger.

At the docks, the ship with the drugs is pulling into port, while Seattle's finest wait in the shadows to arrest the dealers.  Lt. Cameron is there, though he isn't too happy that the senator came along to see the operation succeed.

After Sgt. Brennan kills Drake, the police open fire on the ship.  The crew of smugglers and dealers return fire on the police, and the whole situation turns into a disaster.  As Black Canary and Gan sneak onto the ship, Brennan slips away with some scuba gear.  He meets one of his partners in the water and confesses that he still intends to murder Gan Nguyen, and now he plans to kill Black Canary, too.

Gan uses the ship's intercom to convince the crew to surrender.  When Black Canary studies the maps in the bridge, she theorizes that the crew may have already dropped off most of the drugs, and that this ambush was all a public relations set-up.  When Senator Garrenger and Lt. Cameron greet the press corps after the drug raid, Garrenger notices that Gan is not among the reporters and grows suspicious.

Black Canary and Gan follow the map to Gray's Harbor, a "summer camp for white supremacists" she calls it.  This is the last place on Earth that Gan would be safe, so Black Canary tells him to drive away if trouble starts.  She sneaks over the fence and enters the compound looking for evidence linking the racist group to the drug shipments.

A few elements of the story feel underdeveloped, and that combined with a few pages of dialogue and exposition that just don't make sense, make me feel that there was some rushed changes before the final issue went to print.  It definitely feels like Sarah Byam's story needed to be two or three pages longer, and maybe those pages were just taken out after they'd been scripted or pencilled.

Von Eeden and Giordano's artwork is mostly excellent, particularly the first shot of Black Canary (from behind, no less).  In her "hero" costume, she looks striking throughout the story, confident and dynamic, and larger than the frames allow.  She seems to be bursting out of the panels.  I wish the action choreography allowed her to show off her combat skills better in this issue, though.  She doesn't account for herself very well in the one fight she's given by slipping on garbage and nearly getting choked to death.

Come back next Wednesday for my review of the final chapter of this miniseries: Black Canary: New Wings #4.

Black Canary by Trevor Von Eeden and Dick Giordano

Click to enlarge.

From the team behind Black Canary's "New Wings" miniseries comes what I believe to be an unused page of penciled, inked, and lettered Black Canary art by Trevor Von Eeden and Dick Giordano.

Black Canary: New Wings #2

Previously in Black Canary...

Black Canary: New Wings #2 - "Home is Where Ya' Live" is written by Sarah Byam, with pencil art by Trevor Von Eeden and inks by Dick Giordano.  Mike Gold edited the issue with Steve Haynie providing letters and Julie Lacquement colors.

We pick up with Dinah having a sort of picnic date with her new friend, Gan Nguyen, a passionate and danger-prone talk-radio host.  They eat takeout and enjoy a beautiful Pacific Northwest sunset while Gan tells Dinah about his history.  His father served in Air Force Intelligence during the War in Vietnam and promptly disappeared after getting his mother pregnant.  Gan's mother put him on a refugee boat bound for America to spare him the harsh treatment of half-American children growing up in Vietnam after the war.

Gan faces the same violence and discrimination in Seattle, but not because of his ethnicity.  It's because he challenges the system.  In addition to picking fights with street-level drug dealers, Gan is highly critical of Senator Loren Garrenger's hypocritical drug policies.

In the sleepy nearby town of Sandbar, a teenage boy named Chad Brennan narrates the social and economic troubles that have fallen on his father and the rest of the community.  Sgt. Brennan was a Marine sniper, but with no war to fight, he has started drinking heavily and seeing enemies in the government, and the faces of immigrants, and other social castes he views as infringing on his freedom.

The Brennans are paid a visit by Loren Garrenger, Jr., the senator's son.

Back in Seattle, Dinah tends to her daytime business, Sherwood Florist.  She grumbles and curses about Oliver Queen's inattentiveness while listening to Gan's radio interview with Senator Garrenger. Gan points out the inadequacies in Garrenger's drug policies, citing that there are no treatments and avenues for assistance targeting non-English speakers.

Dinah recalls something she heard in the news some time ago and heads to the local library to do a little research.  She finds an article about Loren Junior getting arrested in a drug bust.  The newspaper named Garrenger, but Junior was later released with all charges against him dropped.  Dinah calls the paper to speak to the journalist who wrote the article, but he's been transferred and nobody knows where.  Dinah smells cover-up.

Dinah goes to Gan's apartment and shuts down his flirting with a stack of notes pointing to corruption in Senator Garrenger's office and family.  Gan looks over her findings but deems them speculation, not evidence; he thinks she's too quick to see conspiracy that she's not being an objective detective.

Dinah spends the night at Gan's place, and the next morning he leaves her sleeping so that he can go start another fight.  He parks a radio sound-truck outside a local drug den and announces his plan to "Adopt a Crack House" for the community.  His timing is either great or terrible, because a local pusher inside the building is meeting with his supplier.

A crowd gathers around outside, including police trying to maintain order while Gan stirs them up.  Inside the crack den, the well-dressed supplier, Drake, argues with the local pusher, Sooner, about the severity of the situation and why Gan wasn't killed off earlier.  Dinah wakes and recognizes the trouble brewing.  She dons her Black Canary costume and rushes to help Gan.  Unbeknownst to her, Sgt. Brennan has taken position in a tree down the street and taken aim against Gan.

Black Canary's appearance causes enough of a commotion that Brennan's shot strikes Gan but not fatally.  The shot causes the crowd on the street to explode in panic.  Pedestrians run every which way while the cops exchange gunfire with the drug dealers inside the apartment.

Black Canary runs to the apartment to take down the drug dealers, and the wounded Gan follows her.

Seemingly boxed in, Drake kills Sooner and his accomplices and plants a gun with a stoned junkie who won't be able to explain the situation to the police.  Then Drake sneaks into the sewers beneath the apartment as the police storm the den.

Black Canary and Gan find more dead dealers, but Dinah is more concerned with the junkies who lost themselves to the drugs before the violence was set off.

The action in this issue isn't as clean or exciting as the previous chapter, but the story has grown a little more substantive.  The conspiracy between the Senator, his son, this rogue Marine sniper, and the drug trade in Seattle is a worthy opponent for Black Canary.  It's both street-level and systematic with wealthy or governmental connections; exactly what a good crime noir should have.

I enjoy the mention of Dinah's mom as the previous Black Canary, and the oblique references to Canary's torture in Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, but I wonder how new user-friendly these references are.  There is a bit of prerequisite knowledge in this story if you want to really understand how frustrated Dinah feels when faced with a powerful adversary like Senator Garrenger.  It's clear that she wants to strike back because of the victimization she felt before.  But the whys and wherefores are kept from the reader, and I'm not sure if that hurts Byam's storytelling.

Come back next Wednesday for my review of Black Canary: New Wings #3.

Black Canary: New Wings #1 - Editor's Note

At the back of Black Canary's first solo comic book, editor Mike Gold offered his thoughts on female superheroes in general and Black Canary in specific.  He describes her history and her importance as an icon, but also emphasizes that none of the best intentions or skills of the creators will mean anything if people don't buy the comic.  Female superheroes don't sell as well as male superheroes; they never had before, they still don't today, and it's hard to imagine a time when they will.  Gold flat-out tells the readers that DC has little faith in Black Canary's ability to sustain a monthly title, but that they're willing to give it a shot.

We can talk more about that in sixteen or seventeen weeks maybe.

Anyway, check out Gold's letter.  It's an interesting read.

[Unless you can read very small or have freakishly good vision, I suggest opening the images below in another window and zooming in.]

Black Canary: New Wings #1

More than four decades after she debuted in Flash Comics, DC finally published the first issue of a Black Canary solo book in November, 1991.  After the continuity-smashing event known as Crisis on Infinite Earths changed damn near every character's history, Black Canary continued to pop up in various books throughout the late '80s.  She hung around Justice League International for about a year.  The Dinah Drake version appeared in a Justice Society of America miniseries set in the past.  She had two serial features published in Action Comics Weekly.  But her most frequent appearances were as a love interest and (mostly) supporting character in the pages of Mike Grell's Green Arrow.

Unfortunately, she didn't always receive the most flattering characterization in that book, and she hardly ever appeared in her classic superhero costume.  But in '91, Green Arrow's editor, Mike Gold, got the go-ahead to publish a four-issue Black Canary miniseries that would put Dinah Laurel Lance front and center, fishnets and all.

Black Canary: New Wings #1 - "Domestic Troubles" is written by Sarah Byam, with pencil art by Trevor Von Eeden and inks by Dick Giordano.  Byam and Giordano had previously told a tale of two Canaries back in Green Arrow Annual #2, and Von Eeden was well versed in drawing Black Canary from older issues of World's Finest Comics.  Steve Haynie and Julie Lacquement provided letters and colors for the issue respectively, and Mike Gold was the editor.

The cover design has a distinguished--almost prestigious--look, as if they want this book to be taken more seriously.  Graphic novel was a high art form in this era, and tons of superhero comics aspired to that level of classiness.  The design and color scheme (the green hued background of Seattle's cityscape) is also reminiscent of Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, for which "New Wings" could almost be viewed as a sister title.

Black Canary's first solo issue begins not with Black Canary, but with a radio host taking calls about Asian integration in Seattle, gang violence, and drugs.  The radio host is Gan Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American, with zero tolerance for racism or bigotry, even (or especially) when it comes from within different Asian cultures.  Gan is also quite outspoken against the influx of drugs and gangs on Seattle's youth, calling for his listeners to stand up and fight for their streets.

During his show, Gan takes a call from an older man who describes how his grandson died playing with his father's war souvenirs.

The story moves Gan and underlines one of the themes of "New Wings", that being violence against children and the unintended consequences of gun ownership.  Like Green Arrow and plenty of other comics from the '80s and '90s, this series is clearly going to have a message.

As Gan leaves the KYKO station after his show, he comes across a drug dealer selling to a kid.  Not afraid to put his money where his mouth is, Gan beats down the dealer and scares off the kid before he can score.  It seems this radio host isn't just all talk, because later the dealer calls his boss and it sounds like this is the third time Gan has broken up one of their drug sales.

The boss, unseen but for a swastika tattoo on his hand, tells the dealer not to act; that Gan will be dealt with at a higher level.

Across the street, Dinah Laurel Lance wakes up in her apartment above Sherwood Florist.  She's having trouble sleeping, and reading isn't helping, so she decides to exercise in the costume of her superhero secret identity, the Black Canary.

This page devoted to her workout routine establishes Canary's physical strength and training, but it's also a nice way of allowing Von Eeden and Giordano to show Black Canary in action before diving too deep into the plot of the story.  Von Eeden draws Dinah a little bigger--not overly muscled, but toned (pay attention, Alex Ross)--while Giordano's old school inks harken back to her early days with the Justice League of America.

After her workout, Dinah goes downstairs to do some bookkeeping for the flower shop, but her calculations reveal she's almost nine-hundred dollars in debt.  And that's when her boyfriend, Green Arrow, shows up sporting a fancy and expensive new bow that he bought with money from her account.

I don't want to knock Mike Grell because he told some amazing stories with Black Canary and Green Arrow, but way, waaaay too often, Dinah came across as the nagging wife who kept cramping Ollie's style.  He just wanted to save the world and do his righteous thing and Dinah was always on him about work and responsibility.  So lame, right?

It's refreshing to see this scene play out from the other perspective.  Ollie does seem childish, and selfish, and patronizing to think that all Dinah needs is some good lovin' and then she can calm down and let him play with his new toy.

So Dinah goes hiking up the mountains in the Quinault Indian Reservation with Aunty Wren, a character previously mentioned Sarah Byam's story, "Do Black Canaries Sing?" and a woman I think showed up in some Green Arrow comics, but I can't think of the context or who she is at the moment.  In any event, she's seventy and Native American, so you know she's got to be wise.  Wren calls Dinah "Noisy Crow", which doesn't sound as sweet as Ollie's pet name for her, "Pretty Bird", but a little nicer than "Siu Jerk Jai", what her Sensei called her in Hong Kong.  "Noisy Crow" is a reference to back when Black Canary had a sonic scream, a metahuman power that she lost during The Longbow Hunters.

During the hike, Dinah meets Gan, who Wren introduces as the Quinault's Asian language translator. Gan tells Dinah she can call him "Duke" and she notices a bruise on his face.  Gan and Wren talk business and development deals concerning the tribal land, while Dinah enjoys the tranquility of the sunset.

After the hike, it starts to rain (because Seattle, duh!) and Gan asks Dinah for a ride to the ferry so he doesn't have to ride his bike through the storm.  Dinah obliges and they drive off, not knowing that a pair of hoodlums are staked out looking for a guy riding his bike.  Dejected about missing their target, the two hoodlums drive off and get on the ferry, the same vessel carrying Dinah and Gan across the sound.

Gan wrongly suspects Dinah of being a cop, but that's not too far off.  She is a crime fighter, after all, and both her father and grandfather were cops and her mother tried to be a cop before inventing the identity of the first Black Canary.  For a guy who makes his living talking on the radio, Gan is very observant.  He knows exactly what type of woman Dinah is, what's in her nature, even if he doesn't tag her specific Justice League codename.

Dinah excuses herself to the ladies room where she lets her guard down.  She likes Gan.  Maybe not in a romantic way... not yet... but she's certainly fond of him already, and given how pissed she was at Ollie earlier, it's not outlandish to assume she might pursue some form of relationship with "Duke".

While she's in the bathroom, though, Gan is caught by the hoodlums, one of whom being the dealer that Gan smacked around in the beginning of the story.  For the second time, the dealer mistakes Gan for Chinese, but that offense seems slight after they club him in the head with the butt of a shotgun and drag him to the side of the ferry.

Dinah witnesses the hoods carrying Gan's unconscious body, and she darts back into the bathroom.  As quick as Dinah Laurel Lance vanishes... the Black Canary appears!

If every artist could draw Canary as gorgeously as Trevor Von Eeden does in this page...!

Surprising the first punk with her strength, Black Canary tugs on the chain and throws the hood over the ledge.  He crashes in the water below, screaming for help.  The second hood draws his gun on her, but she trips the lever that sends the life raft dropping down into the water on top of the bad guy.  When Hoodlum #2 looks overboard to see his pal, Black Canary kicks him in the head, taking him out.  Below, Hoodlum #1 climbs aboard the life raft.

Once the fight is over, the captain comes down and Black Canary more-or-less hands the hoods over to his [Port] authority.  Black Canary sneaks back to the bathroom and changes outfits, slipping back to her car as Dinah Lance.  Gan, meanwhile, is questioned by the captain, but volunteer many helpful answers.

Gan returns to Dinah's car where she pretended to be asleep.  He calls her on it instantly.  Again, his powers of observation are not to be taken lightly.

In the issue's epilogue, we venture to the quiet seaside town of Sandbar.  It's a super-conservative town, where people are big on tradition and old-timey values.  Generations of fighting men who have seen too much death and poverty in life, and blame their suffering on what other members of society would call progress.

Within one of these houses, we find a former Marine sniper who has been hired to kill Gan Nguyen.  The Marine's son doesn't sound too thrilled about his dad murdering an innocent man.  Naturally, we'll get to know these players a little better in the next issue.

I first read this issue about a year ago.  At the time, I remember being a little underwhelmed; I don't know what I was expecting but I thought the story seemed too small.  Now, I don't think so.  I've read this issue three times and I like it more with each read.

First of all, Sarah Byam's story is anything but small.  It's not an adventure story, and it's not high-concept superhero fantasy, no, but it ain't small in scope.  It's closer to the street-level private investigator genre that Black Canary excels at, except in this first issue, we don't really have much of a mystery.  What we have plenty of is cultural and societal themes: racial discrimination, urban violence, drugs, gangs, economics, kids playing with daddy's weapons, gender roles and reversals.

And Byam throws most of these themes at us in a way that doesn't feel forced, because they're all relevant experiences to the characters, either Dinah or Gan.  But Byam's finest storytelling moments are the conversational dialogue scenes between Dinah and Ollie in her apartment, and between Dinah and Gan in the woods and on the ferry.  The characters feel right when they're talking to each other, even though her treatment of Green Arrow makes him out to be kind of a douche bag.  I guess that's deserved given how Dinah has been presented in Ollie's book.  If she can avoid the pitfalls of making this book needlessly preachy and "about something" Sarah Byam might just tell one helluva Black Canary story.

As for the art, Black Canary has hardly ever looked stronger or sexier.  There's a weight and shapeliness to Canary that Trevor Von Eeden really grasps in these issues; her power and combat prowess doesn't feel miraculous or superhuman, because you can almost see the muscles under her fishnets.  Dick Giordano's inks keep him in check, though, keep him from going too big.  In later issues of Black Canary's ongoing series where Von Eeden is inked by someone else, Dinah kind of balloons up like something out of Art Adams fused with Rob Liefeld.  Von Eeden and Giordano were a knockout art team, one of the best to ever work on Black Canary.

As a first issue, this story hits just about every major button it needs.  It looks good and it sounds good.  The heroine gets more than one action beat.  We get a cameo by Green Arrow, so there's some familiarity with the greater DC Universe.  We get a new character who serves as the lens and the voice for the reader, addressing the themes that affect both the world of the story and the characters.  We don't get much in the way of big, looming crisis--just the last page, really--but the plot is driven by character, and that's really nice to see and often ignored in superhero comics.

If I had picked up this book when it first came out in November, 1989, I definitely would have come back again for the second issue.  And you can come back next Wednesday for my review of Black Canary: New Wings #2.

As a bonus: Tomorrow I will post editor Mike Gold's history of and comments about Black Canary that appeared in the back matter of "New Wings" #1.  Some interesting insights in his essay.  Come back and check it out.

LongBox Loot: Black Canary from '93 and The Ray from '94

Just got back from vacation, and during my travels, I was fortunate enough to pilfer the Black Canary collections of two different local comic stores.  I got the four-issue "New Wings" mini from 1991/92 by Sarah Byam, Trevor Von Eeden and Dick Giordano.  I posted a pick of that collection last week.

I also snagged most of the ongoing series that followed.  Dinah's only regular series lasted a mere twelve issues, and I was able to pick up all but #9 and #10, which I should track down next week.

Almost as exciting as the Black Canary series, I managed to grab most of her appearances in The Ray from 1994.

The only Ray comic I've ever read was the Zero Hour tie-in.  I enjoyed that issue and I thought the character looked cool--I'm also a fan of Christopher Priest's writing, as if I needed more incentive--so I'm really looking forward to cracking this series open when I get the chance.

LongBox Loot: Black Canary Mini from 1991

For those of you who graciously check Flowers & Fishnets for its reviews of classic Birds of Prey issues (karl), rest assured I'm working on the write-up for Manhunt #3 and hope to post it tomorrow.  In the meantime, I have to share my most recent Black Canary purchase.

While visiting my parents, I had occasion to stop in the LCS of my old hometown.  After fighting with the owner about Man of Steel and saying some truly shameful things about his family, for which I apologize, I decided to peruse the back-issue boxes for Black Canary stories.  As luck would have it, they had the whole four-issue "New Wings" miniseries from late '91/early '92.

Black Canary: New Wings was written by Sarah Byam, with pencils by Trevor Von Eeden and inks by the immortal Dick Giordano!  I've heard lots of good things about this series--can't wait to read it!