Back in Action: ACTION COMICS WEEKLY #634

Previously...

For the last couple of months, I have reserved Wednesdays for reviews of Action Comics Weekly issues featuring a backup story starring Black Canary.  Each installment of Back in Action has looked at Dinah's story and touched on my favorite or least favorite moments from the rest of the strips in these issues.  That ends this week, however, as Dinah's second and final story arc comes to a close.  Her next appearance in the comic--the very next issue, as it happens--will be covered at a later date as a team-up review where she partners with Superman, Green Lantern, and the Blackhawks.

I'm not familiar with George Freeman, the artist behind this week's cover, but it looks to me like a convention sketch given full colors.  Sometimes ACW delivers utterly amazing covers, like the two featuring Black Canary, for instance.  Other times, they appeared rushed and lackluster.  Hal Jordan's face looks awkward, his smile strangely forced.  I think he's drunk and trying to sell a smile without laughing or throwing up.

Black Canary

"Knock 'Em Dead" Part 11: 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.  The final part of Dinah's story is printed third out of the six features in this issue.

At long last, Black Canary has traced the killer back to the theatre where she--the killer, not Dinah--starred in a stage production of Peter Pan.  Black Canary sneaks up to where Cat holds her ex-husband, Ken Glazier hostage in the rafters, ready to drop him to his death.

Black Canary dives for Cat and Ken, but the creaky wooden platform gives her approach away.  Easily sidestepping the Canary's attack, Cat orders Ken to tell the story of what precipitated her murderous quest of vengeance.  She tells him to explain why he and his old associates have been targeted for death over the last couple days.

Ken tells Dinah that the story of his contacting AIDS from Deb was true, but the way he discovered his affliction was when he needed to give his daughter, Dannie, a blood transfusion after an accident.  Dannie got AIDS and died when she was eleven years old.  For cheating and effectively condemning their daughter to a horrible death, Cat will kill Ken.

Canary has one desperate play to save Ken's life.  She taunts Cat with a bag of ashes--Dannie's ashes--that she took from Cat's hideout in the sewer.  Black Canary dumps the bag, spilling the ashes over the platform and down onto the stage.  This defilement of her daughter's memory is enough to make Cat forget about Ken and lunge at Black Canary like a wild animal.

Cat is fast, acrobatic, and full of righteous anger, while Dinah is both sleep- and blood-deprived.  For all her training, Black Canary is exhausted and the killer is fighting with the fierce conviction of a mother protecting the memory at least of her child.  So Black Canary changes her strategy and the battleground.

She grabs a rope and swings to one of the other platforms beside a heavy klieg light.  Cat chases her, but when she nears the second platform, Black Canary turns on the stage light.  Blinded by sudden, harsh light, Cat swings directly into the klieg, dying in an explosion of glass and light.

In the aftermath of the fight, Seattle Police Lieutenant Cameron tells Dinah that Ken Glazier is safe.  He tells her to check in at the hospital to treat her wound.  Dinah gives the lieutenant an urn full of Dannie's ashes.  She back she dumped earlier was a fake to provoke Cat into attacking her.  "A flare for the dramatic," Dinah calls it.

[Click the images below to enlarge.]

And so ends the "Knock 'Em Dead" story.  Eleven chapters.  Seventy-seven pages total.  Possibly the best standalone Black Canary story ever published when taken as a whole.  I still can't get over the difference between this tale and the story that proceeded it in ACW #609-616.  "Bitter Fruit" was a solid, fairly conventional mystery with heavy corporate, racial, and political overtones.  But it was a bad comic.  The script was ill-suited for graphic storytelling, the art ill-suited for the ambiguous characters and plot twists.  And it wasn't about Black Canary.  She just happened to be there, and she could have been any private investigator.

"Knock 'Em Dead" on the other hand gets personal early on when a friend of Dinah's is murdered, drawing her into a straightforward murder mystery.  The whys may be kept vague and mysterious until they need to be revealed, but the characters are all pretty well-defined as early as necessary.    Sharon Wright introduces themes of theatricality, disguise, and illusion early on and stays true to them throughout the story.  And Randy Duburke's art just gets better with each chapter.  The panels and character layouts during the action in the final chapters is frenetic, stylistic, and just insane-looking.  But it works.  The battle between Dinah and Cat is all over the place, but never confusing.

And the craziest thing is it's the exact same creative team.  Same writer, same artist, inker, colorist, letterer.  The only difference is in the editor, which is why Robert Greenberger deserves the M.V.P. award for this story.  I don't doubt former Editor Mike Gold's fondness for Black Canary.  He edited her appearances in Green Arrow for years, her first miniseries, and the first issues of her ongoing title in the early '90s.  But she didn't always receive the most flattering treatment in those books, so maybe Greenberger had a better handle on the character.

Or maybe his involvement was minimal after all, and this was just a case of Wright and Duburke finding the story that just worked best for all of them.  Whatever the reason, "Knock 'Em Dead" was a classic Black Canary adventure that deserves to be reprinted and shared with more fans.

The Rest

In Green Lantern by James Owsley and M.D. Bright, Hal Jordan squares off against Lord Malvolio of the Green Flame, who looks like the Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott if Frank Miller drew him for The Dark Knight Strikes Again.  We learn that Malvolio's father was a Green Lantern centuries ago, but Malvolio killed him and took his power.  They fight for several pages and Hal gets the better of him, beating him down and down.  But Hal shows mercy and refuses to kill Malvolio.  When he turns his back, though, the villain draws a gun and shoots Hal's ring, destroying it.

In the final part of The Phantom Stranger's "Cat and Mouse" by Paul Kupperberg and Fred Carrillo,  the Stranger is captured by Tannarak and Tala, servants of the Lords of Chaos.  Doctor Thirteen races to the Empire State Building where Tannarak and Tala are using Phantom Stranger's magics to open a doorway to Chaos.  The giant cat beast is going to kill the Stranger as a sacrifice, but at the last minute, Doctor Thirteen rushes in with a broom... and effectively shoves it up the cat beast's ass, startling it enough that it leaps off the edge of the building.  Phantom Stranger throws Tannarak over the side and the dark sorcerer collides with the cat beast, causing an explosion, because yeah.  Then the Stranger saves Cassandra Craft from the Chaos realm.

In the two-page Superman strip by Roger Stern and Curt Swan, the Man of Steel was transported to some unknown place while trying to stop an energy beam coming from space.  Now, in a bright, airless space, Superman flies toward a strange machine.  He punches through the side of the machine, fighting off tendril-like defenses and removes something "hot" from inside, all while apparently suffocating.  I'll admit, I'm not sure what was going on in this chapter.  It didn't feel like it connected with anything that had previously gone down in this story.

In the finale to Cherie Wilkerson and Tom Mandrake's story of Nightwing and Speedy, all of the bad guys face justice of some kind.  Sepulveda, the bureaucrat in charge of the CBI who framed Roy Harper is sentenced to prison for working with Lord Danvers, who escapes criminal charges but ends up hanging himself to avoid other scandals.  The fedora wearing Detective Hunter writes a bestselling book about the whole ordeal, and the two Irish orphans, Moira and Button, are adopted and happy.  For their part, Dick and Roy beat up some military police.

Marty Pasko and Rick Burchett wrap up their Blackhawk story in fine, action-packed style.  In the nick of time, Jan snaps out of his LSD-induced hallucinations and saves the plane from crashing.  They track the sexy Nazi woman back to an island fortress.  There is some cool action with the Blackhawks fighting Nazis on plane, on jeep, and on foot, before Jan shoots the lady in the head while ripping a Nazi flag down the center.  Nice symbolism, and a nice climax for this adventure.  There is a caption announcing the upcoming Blackhawk monthly book hitting stands soon.

That's it for Back in Action.  If you want to read the continuing adventures of Superman and Green Lantern I guess you'll have to dig up those issues yourself.  But next week I'll take a look at Green Arrow Annual #2, which features a special Black Canary story written by Sarah Byam, and after that I will finally, finally start reviewing Black Canary's solo comics beginning with her first miniseries!

Back in Action: ACTION COMICS WEEKLY #633

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.

This week's cover by Swanderson, that is the art team of Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, delivers one of the classiest, most iconic covers of the whole series.  The Blackhawks form up in the skies as their leader appears majestically, almost ghost-like in the heavenly clouds.

Black Canary

"Knock 'Em Dead" Part 10: 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.  Again, Black Canary's story is printed second out of six features in this issue.

The penultimate chapter to the mystery of the actress hunting her ex-husband and his friends opens with a shocking and bloody image of Ken Glazier.  It's hard to tell if he's alive or dead, but either way he doesn't look good since he was captured by his ex-wife, Cat, last time.

While Black Canary receives treatment for her wounded arm, Seattle Police Lieutenant Cameron tells her that his men searched the theater and found no trace of Cat.  She escaped somehow.  Canary refuses to see a doctor or get actual stitches until the killer is found.  An officer tells Cameron that a boat team found a body dumped in the water that matches the description of Deb, the prostitute who was the police's original suspect in the killings.  Since Canary actually saw Deb a week ago, Cameron asks her to come with him to identify the body.

When they arrive at the waterfront, Black Canary confirms that that the dead woman is Deborah.  Cameron and the police speculate how the body was dumped since it was found in an unusual location, the type that would have left plenty of witnesses.  This leads Black Canary to suspect the body may not have been dumped into the water from the dock or a boat at all.

She walks along the sound until she comes to a sewer outlet.  Then she realizes that Cat escaped the police cordon at the theater by slipping into the sewers.  She follows the tunnel past rats and other vermin with blood on their teeth.  At the edge of the tunnel, she finds a lair, what she describes as a shrine or altar constructed by the killer.  And the altar was dedicated to Cat's daughter.  Her dead daughter, apparently.

Then she learns that Ken Glazier didn't make it to a hotel.  He's caught and hurt bad, but still possibly alive.  She anticipates that Cat will return to the theater with Glazier.  Canary doesn't have much time to save him, but she does have the will to see this to the end.

[Click the images below to enlarge.]

This chapter is mostly about setting the stage for the grand finale.  Deborah is dead.  The true killer, Cat, is revealed, but she has a hostage, her real target all along.  Black Canary knows where she is, and what's more, she may know how to defeat the killer.

Other notes of interest: In case anyone is unsure about Black Canary's public identity, Lieutenant Cameron calls her Dinah.  While she didn't really have much of a secret identity for a lot of her Bronze Age appearances, at least her police liaison knows who she is at this point in the game.

Something else: Dinah looks tough as hell on page two when she's getting her arm treated by the paramedic.  She doesn't always need a black jacket to look badass, which is reinforced during the Ed Benes era of Birds of Prey when she mostly went sleeveless.  But this is added confirmation.

The Rest

Green Lantern by James Owsley and M.D. Bright features a lot of Hal Jordan fighting Malvolio, Lord of the Green Flame, who looks a lot like early Image Comics' version of Alan Scott.  Hal and Malvolio fight a lot and Malvolio is so obviously overpowered that he punches Hal into the center of the planet, where Hal discovers a gold space station (?) full of Malvolio's followers.  Then there's more fighting.

Cherie Wilkerson and Tom Mandrake finally bring Nightwing & Speedy back to the United States as--hey, wait!  What happened to Roy's daughter?  Did I miss something important a couple issues ago? Where the hell is Lian?  Anyway, they head to Washington with the C.B.I. jackass who fired Roy a while ago.  They're also being followed by Hunter, the mysterious cop in the fedora, who is captured by agents of Lord Danvers, who seems to be the evil power behind the drugs and guns going through Northern Ireland.  Nightwing and Speedy make a deal with Sepulveda, who then seems to betray them and it looks like they're getting arrested.

In the two-page Superman strip by Roger Stern and Curt Swan, two armies clash in the desert as the super-powered Followers who believe Superman is a god wage holy war against the super-powered bad guys who believe Superman is the Devil.  Superman can't stop them, but he figures he can knock out their power source if he can find the object that is emitting radiation to both groups.  He flies to space looking for it, then appears to be atomized by something.

The Phantom Stranger continues to fight the Lords of Chaos and their agent Tannarak in the third chapter by Paul Kupperberg and Fred Carrillo.  The Stranger fights Tannarak and his giant liger monster, then Tannarak appears to capture Cassandra Craft and hold her hostage.  But when Tannarak threatens to kill her, Phantom Stranger has an epiphany and attacks her first.  He reasons that it's not actually Cassandra Craft, but his other enemy, the sorceress Tala in disguise.

Martin Pasko and Rick Burchett have some fun in this installment of Blackhawk, as the drug that the Nazi babe slipped into the crew's coffee turns out to be the same L.S.D. that the government was developing.  After she shoots and wounds Olaf, she parachutes from the plane.  Meanwhile, Jan, Weng and everyone else aboard start tripping balls and seeing all sorts of amusing hallucinations that put them in serious jeopardy.  Olaf, despite his gunshot wound and blood loss is the only one capable of landing the plane safely.  That is, until he's attacked by Jan who has jealous visions of Olaf with Natalie Reed.  Will they all crash and die?  I guess we'll find out in a week.

Next week, I'll look at Action Comics Weekly #634, which continues Superman and Green Lantern's adventures while wrapping up the current sagas of Black Canary, Phantom Stranger, Blackhawk, and Nightwing & Speedy.

Back in Action: ACTION COMICS WEEKLY #632

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.

This issue's cover by Tom Grindberg shows Nightwing and Speedy under fire from the one or more of the warring factions of Northern Ireland.  I'm not sure if the toddler in Speedy's arms in this image is supposed to be his daughter, Lian, or the Irish scamp named Button that he's taken under his wing.  Likewise, I'm not sure he's trying to protect the child or use her as a human shield from the semi-automatic weapon pointed at him.  Also, I have no idea what emotion I'm supposed to be getting from his face.  Fear?  Pain?  Shock?  Did the baby just poop on his leg?  I guess I've seen better.

Black Canary

"Knock 'Em Dead" Part 9: 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 third out of six features in this issue, coming after Green Lantern and Phantom Stranger.

Last chapter we finally received confirmation that the killer hunting Ken Glazier's old friends and acquaintances wasn't the prostitute named Deb.  The killer is, in fact, Ken's ex-wife, Cat, a popular actress appearing as Peter Pan in a local Seattle stage production.  Part 9 opens with Cat holding the Deb prisoner in the sewer.  She claims to be doing this because Deb killed Cat's daughter.  Deb denies this, but it doesn't seem to affect Cat, who kicks her into the water, leaving her to sink and drown.

Black Canary and Ken Glazier go to see Peter Pan in order to identify Cat.  The police surround the theater and Lieutenant Cameron joins Canary to make the arrest when Ken points out his ex-wife.  They watch the show and and Ken ID's his wife playing Pan.  Cameron says they'll arrest her after the show.

Cat, however, recognizes her husband, and during the climactic sword fight between her character and Captain Hook.  They take the fight off the stage and into the audience, and when Cat is close enough, she leaps at Ken, fully attempting to kill him in front of the whole audience.  But Black Canary is there to stop her.

They fight while the audience reacts in panic, storming for the exits.  Cat slashes Canary's arm with one of her knives and runs backstage.  Cameron checks to see that Black Canary is okay, and then they chase the killer.  Canary follows Cat through the men's bathroom and out a window, but there loses track of the killer.  Cat slipped into a sewer grate and spies on her pursuers from underground.

Unsure of whether Cat escaped through the police cordon or if she's just holed up and hiding really well somewhere in the theater, Cameron agrees to send Ken Glazier out of there to a hotel.  But when Ken gets in his car, Cat is waiting for him and makes him drive away at knife-point.

[Click the images below to enlarge.]

Randy Duburke's art is immeasurably better in this issue than it was back in the first Black Canary story from issues #609 through #616.  Black Canary still looks great even wearing solid black leather pants instead of her fishnet stockings, and her hair seems to fill up the pages like Batman's expansive cape.  The action is highly exaggerated but never confusing.

This story has been as great as any classic suspense thriller and really reminds me of certain types of movies from the '80s and '90s like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, except without the explicit sex scenes and with a costumed vigilante.  The body count continues to rise as the story ramps up with two more chapters to go!

The Rest

From the pages of X-Force comes... BluddFire!!!

James Owsley and M.D. Bright continue the story of Green Lantern as Hal Jordan pursues the alien shrine-ship into space, reflecting on the fact that the alien only learned violence and aggression when it came to Earth.  Then something strange happens and Hal seems to be warped through time and space to a different star system with no way to find his way back to Earth.  He investigates a strange alien planet and finds its ruler, a human going by the name Malvolio of the Green Flame.

But as you can see, he looks a bit more like Alan Scott reimagined by an X-Men artist in the '90s.  Oh, and he's needlessly angry, too.

In chapter two of The Phantom Stranger's tale by Paul Kupperberg and Fred Carrillo, the titular character chases Tannarak across the skies of New York, learning that his recently deceased foe was resurrected by the Lords of Chaos.  Cassandra Craft tries to get him to stop but he doesn't listen to her because no one ever listens to women named Cassandra.  Tannarak goes to the Bronx Zoo, calling all the big cats to him.  After he summons lions and tigers and such, he draws in his energy and fuzes them all into one giant bipedal felinoid monster.

This week's two-page Superman strip by Roger Stern and Curt Swan is entitled "Holy War" and we learn that not only does the group known as the Followers believe Superman is a god, but their enemies, the evil organization determined to destroy them, actually views Superman as a devil.  They call him the Beast of the Apocalypse, which is all sorts of amusing to me to think of Superman that way.

The adventures of Nightwing & Speedy by Cherie Wilkerson and Vince Giarrano continue to deliver the action as our heroes from America find themselves beset by the Sanas and the F.O.E.s.  The girl named Moira is nearly killed in a bombing near the parade, Nightwing takes out some corrupt cops, and Speedy shoots down a helicopter gunship with his bow and arrow.  But the violence isn't limited to the streets, as even government officials poison each other to take power.

The latest installment of Blackhawk by Martin Pasko and Rick Burchett finds the Blackhawk crew
escorting a beautiful woman who fends of the flirtatious advances of Jan Prohaska.  However, when the Blackhawks let their guard down, the woman is murdered by the Nazi babe who takes her place and looks enough like her to sleep with Jan that night.  She infiltrates their group and when they take flight, she starts to poison their coffee.

Next week, I'll look at Action Comics Weekly #633, which continues the adventures of Black Canary, Superman, Green Lantern, Phantom Stranger, Nightwing & Speedy, and Blackhawk.

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.

Back in Action: ACTION COMICS #614

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.

Black Canary's sixth appearance in ACW was issue #614, which features one of my favorite covers of this series.  Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy, shows Green Lantern in a way that accents the hero's cosmic dimensions with a dash of the gothic mystery Mignola does better than anyone.

Black Canary

"Bitter Fruit" Part 6: written by Sharon Wright, pencilled by Randy Duburke, inked by Pablo Marcos, lettered by Steve Haynie, colored by Tom Ziuko, and edited by Mike Gold.  There is a misprint on the title page, saying this chapter is Part 4 when it's actually the sixth of eight.

This chapter begins with William MacDonald, an Immigration & Naturalization Service official calling a hit on another INS agent named Ellen Waverly.  Why?  Because Ellen is unknowingly close to discovering that MacDonald is corrupt and preventing immigrants from gaining legal status at the behest of...somebody with power.  Maybe a guy named Scales who has his own company.

At the same time, Ellen receives a phone call from a man calling himself Barry Neiman, and he is the mysterious man with the goatee who has been following several characters around throughout the story.  He was turned away from Hector Librado's hospital room at some point before Hector was attacked and put in a coma; is this "Barry" the man who tried to kill him?  Is "Barry Neiman" this man's real name?  We'll have to see.  After that call, Ellen informs Hector's family that she is awaiting documents from another office that will finalize their citizenship.

Meanwhile, in the alley behind Hank Beecham's shop, the forger is getting threatened by two familiar goons.  Dinah rushes the goons with a broken bottle and kicks their asses.  She threatens one with the bottle while demanding answers.  She reveals, perhaps accidentally, that she was the woman with the cowboy who the goons jumped in an earlier part of the story, even though she was in her Black Canary costume then.  The guys say they weren't the ones who knocked her upside the head, and then run away without telling her who they work for.

After the rescue, Hank Beecham takes Dinah inside his store and fills in some useful gaps in the story.  He says that he forged work history documents for Hector to help get him citizenship, and every job he did was paid for, so he had no reason to attack Hector.  But someone else has been muscling in on Beecham's business, trying to get him to retire.  He says the two goons Dinah just fought worked for the Cowboy, who Dinah thinks is named Doug Vallines but is probably named Gary, and Doug Vallines is another guy.

At the Scales building, Vincent Scales gets word that MacDonald is coming to Seattle for some business.  Scales tells Cowboy Gary to prepare the boat so they can go out to an island.

Down in California, the real Doug Vallines is spying on a piece of land that is owned by Scales, but fenced in by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and patrolled by government security forces.

That night, Dinah is sitting alone in her apartment above Sherwood Florist.  She has a sudden idea and dials for Information to connect with Doug Vallines.  She leaves a message--calling herself Bonnie Cardinal again--and says she knows who attacked Hector Librado.

I continue to have the same problems with this story week after week, namely the unwieldiness of the plot and supporting characters, and how the art fails to distinguish different people we barely recognize from page to page.  However, this chapter was a little better and things seem to be picking up steam.  They had better; after all, there are only two chapters left after this.

The highlight, as always, is seeing Dinah in action.  She gets the drop on the goons and gets some valuable information out of them and their target.  I wish we could see her do this in her Black Canary costume--that's kind of the point--but something is better than nothing, I guess.  Revealing her past involvement with them in a different costume seemed like a mistake, though, like a dumb non-blonde thing where she forgot she was supposed to have a dual identity, even if she's "out".

I have mixed feelings about Dinah's phone call at the end.  On one hand, it's nice to see her be proactive, especially if she's formulating a plan or putting the pieces together.  On the other hand, does she really know who she's calling?  Is this message an intentional trick?  A trap?  Is she leaving a message for the real Doug or the fake one she knows?  If this is a trap, will it succeed if the wrong man gets the message?  I guess hope we'll find that out next time.

The Rest

In the Green Lantern chapter, Peter David and Tod Smith treat us to a GL retcon worthy of Geoff Johns.  The ring reveals to Hal Jordan that the reason he is a man utterly without fear is because Abin Sur's ring sort of lobotomized him.  We see the moment where the ring identified the two most worthy candidates for stewardship of the ring: Hal and Guy Gardner, but Hal was closer geographically to where Abin crashed.  But Hal still had some basic fears that the ring erased by rearranging part of his brain.  So in this issue, Hal has the ring reverse that process.  Now Hal Jordan has fears that he must overcome through will power.  "You don't have to be a man without fear," Hal tells himself.  "Just a man."

Writer Paul Kupperberg and artist Tom Grindberg conclude their short Phantom Stranger adventure with the titular character being captured by Ah Puch, the Mayan death god.  I'm a big fan of Kupperberg's writing, and Grindberg creates some gruesome and horrific images in these panels, but somehow, this story didn't really grab me.  Maybe it needed more time to breathe, more pages, or maybe it wasn't right for the Phantom Stranger, whom I have always had difficulty viewing as a protagonist in his own stories.

In the second part of the Nightwing story written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Chuck Patton, Nightwing and Roy Harper have traveled to London to prevent Cheshire, the mother of Roy's child, from killing a member of British government.  They save the target, but Jade kills an innocent bystander.  In combat, Cheshire proves more than a match for her former lover.  Against Dick Grayson, though, Cheshire must resort to trickery in order to escape.  Later, Roy tells Dick the story of how he hooked up with Jade and got her pregnant.  Even later, Cheshire murders her target by pumping lethal gas into his shower.  Later still, Jade taunts Roy in an alleyway, scoffing at his threats.

This is a really enjoyable story, though I'm not sure why Roy Harper or Speedy doesn't get equal billing with Nightwing, since it's as much his story as Dick's.  I'm a big fan of Marv Wolfman's work at Marvel, particularly in the horror titles.  I never had the same fondness for his DC work.  I didn't like Crisis on Infinite Earths, and I couldn't get into New Teen Titans, though I concede that nobody wrote Dick Grayson better than Marv, and that's why this story works for me.

In the Superman strip by Roger Stern and Curt Swan, the Man of Steel races to the hospital to question the man who tried to kill the other man who told Clark Kent that he--the man--is part of a cult that worships him--Superman--like a god!  Superman arrives at the hospital just in time to find another man attempting to smother the first attempted murderer man.  Fun.

Finally, Mindy Newell and Barry Kitson wrap up Catwoman's adventure in "The Tin Roof Club" part 4.  Previously, Selina Kyle stole an Egyptian cat brooch and hid it with her friend Holly.  Then Holly's husband got the brooch and blew up his wife.  When Catwoman came for the brooch and some revenge, Holly's husband, Arthur, threw Catwoman out the window of his penthouse apartment.  As this chapter begins, Catwoman saves herself from the fall and scales the side of the building, going back up to Arthur's room.  Two security guards come to the room after Arthur's mistress called for help.  The guards act shifty, pretty much demanding a bribe... and then Catwoman straight up murders the guards by pulling them over the ledge and dropping them off the side of the building.  She leaves the brooch there, so when the cops arrive to investigate the two dead men, they find the stolen property in Arthur's room.  Arthur is arrested, and Selina feels justified in avenging her dead friend.  But still.  She freaking murdered two security guards.  They weren't even a danger to her.  They were completely incidental, and while not the most noble of people, I don't think they deserved what they got.

Catwoman is a tricky character.  I will always categorize her as a villain, no matter how many times Batman screws her and then lets her go with a warning.  Catwoman is a criminal.  She doesn't break the law to make society better like a vigilante.  She breaks the law to make herself happy.  She's a villain.  That doesn't mean she's a psycho killer like Joker or Two-Face.  This last chapter felt really unsettling with her killing two people as a means to punish someone else.  Also, her story only got seven pages instead of the usual eight.

Next week, I'll look at Action Comics Weekly #615, which kicks off two brand new features starring Wild Dog and Blackhawk, as well as continuing the sagas of Black Canary, Superman, Green Lantern and Nightwing.

Back in Action: ACTION COMICS WEEKLY #613

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.

Black Canary's fifth appearance in ACW was issue #613.  The cover by Michael Kaluta showcases the newest addition to the anthology, Nightwing.  The Nightwing stories in this series were recently collected in the trade paperback, Nightwing: Old Friends, New Enemies.  It was this collection that first drew my attention to these back-issues which included the Black Canary stories.  I'm sure it's too much to hope that Dinah's stories from ACW would ever be collected, but given her increased exposure in recent episodes of the television series Arrow and the video game tie-in comic Injustice: Gods Among Us, maybe someday soon she'll have a high enough profile to warrant some more trade paperbacks.

Black Canary

"Bitter Fruit" Part 5: written by Sharon Wright, pencilled by Randy Duburke, inked by Pablo Marcos, lettered by Steve Haynie, colored by Gene D'Angelo, and edited by Mike Gold.  Other than her inaugural appearance in this series, Black Canary's feature has consistently come at the end of the issue, after the letters column.

The fifth part of "Bitter Fruit" opens with Dinah meeting Rita and Luis at the hospital on a rainy Seattle morning after their father, Hector Librado, was attacked.  He didn't die, we discover, as his attacker was discovered in mid-kill by the patient in the next bed.  Rita recalls a man who tried to get into Hector's room after visiting hours the day before.  It's Dinah's only lead.

Outside, we see the man Rita was talking about, the mysterious man with a goatee who has been following her around.  Was he the one who tried to Hector?  His dialogue sounds vaguely ominous, but if he was anything more than just a misdirect, why wouldn't they have shown the assailant's face last issue?  He's on the phone talking to "Doug".  Is it the cowboy Doug Vallines that Black Canary met the day before, or the Hollywood Doug Vallines we saw at the end of part 4?

Dinah takes Rita and Luis to a cafe where the walls are alternating shades of red, yellow, orange, and pink.  Luis says Doug Vallines was a crop-duster pilot back when Hector worked in the orchard.  Luis then goes on to explain how his father enlisted the service of a records forger to help establish a legal employment record so he could become a naturalized citizen of the United States.  The goons who beat up Luis in part 1 were looking for Hector and wanted to know the name of his forger.

We then find the head of the Scales corporation in a greenhouse with the cowboy who is obviously not Doug Vallines.  In fact, Scales calls the cowboy Gary and demands an update on the cryptic, overly confusing crap that's been going on in this story.

In the Seattle branch of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, a woman named Ellen Waverly stumbles onto the fourth or fifth subplot of this series.  She calls William MacDonald from the I.N.S. office in Lincoln, Nebraska, to let him know that Hector Librado is not a convicted felon from Mexico and his citizenship papers ought to be processed.  Since MacDonald is corrupt and working to deny visas to certain people for unknown reasons, he tries to throw her off the case.  She stubbornly holds to her principals of righteous justice.  So MacDonald makes a phone call that sounds like he's ordering her killed.

Meanwhile, Dinah goes to see Hank Beecham, the forger, only to find him getting his ass kicked by the goons who previously attacked her in part 3 and Rita and Luis back in part 1.

"Bitter Fruit" Part 5 sort of answers some of the questions I've had since the beginning, but there are still a lot of characters whose identities are vague and motivations are indecipherable.  Is this story about immigration or about using and abusing undocumented migrant workers?  Who is spying on who and for what reason?  And who tried to kill Hector when he's already in the hospital?

I maintain my position that Sharon Wright's script does not work for this shortened eight-page format, and even more, that her story would have worked better as a long form graphic novel or even a prose novel.  Randy Duburke's art is suitable for the lack of action, but not for the subtlety and nuance in the characters.  Duburke as well as the inker and colorist make every character look roughly identical and non-specific, which only adds layers to the confusion of this overly-layered story.

The Rest

Once again, Green Lantern by Peter David and Tod Smith kick off the issue with the continuing story of Hal Jordan questioning the nature of his fearlessness.  The psychic villain Mind Games attacks Hal by thrusting him into a mental war zone full of mental projections of all of Hal's villains and supporting players.  The first page is a great splash image of Sinestro, Hector Hammond, the Shark, Black Hand, Carol Ferris in Star Sapphire garb, Arisia, and half a dozen Green Lanterns including Tomar-Re, Kilowog, and Salaak.

Hal is confronted by emotional triggers such as guilt, jealous rage, passion, and fear, the last of which proves ineffectual.  As a reader and fan of Geoff Johns' run on Green Lantern, it's kind of fun to see these precursors to the emotional spectrum given a  sense of danger.  Hal defeats Mind Games and turns him over to the police.  Then he questions the ring about the source of his fearlessness and the ring pulls him inside it.

This issue sees the first chapter of Nightwing's story, "The Cheshire Contract" by Marv Wolfman and Chuck Patton.  The story opens with Nightwing taking out some smugglers on the wharf.  When his over enthusiasm puts him in danger, Dick Grayson is saved by his old Teen Titans pal Roy Harper, Speedy.  Roy has come to Dick at the behest of the Central Bureau of Investigation and the two team up to pursue Roy's baby mama, the deadly, sexy assassin known as Cheshire.  They arrive in London to save Cheshire's target, but it seems her loyalty to the father of her child is nonexistent and she turns her sniper rifle on Roy and Dick.

During the story, Wolfman lays out for the reader Dick Grayson's reason for severing his partnership to Batman.  No longer Robin, no longer able to sport the classic green trunks, Nightwing must balance his fun, free-wheeling attitude with the maturity and responsibility of a solo hero.  I forgot how much I enjoyed this era for Nightwing.  And how much I liked this original costume.  As silly as some aspects of this costume look, it is so much better and more fitting of his character than the forgettable black and blue or current black and red costumes.

In The Phantom Stranger chapter written by Paul Kupperberg and drawn by Tom Grindberg, the titular character involves himself with an investigation into two mysterious deaths.  The victims were reading a novel when they were mysterious attacked and drained of their life force by something inside the book.  The Stranger is greeted in his sanctum by the novel's writer, Daniel Gleason, who reveals the substance of the novel is based on a Mayan chant to their god of death, Ah Puch.  The writer is possessed by Ah Puch, who looks particularly nasty, and then attacks the Stranger, stealing his life force.

The two-page Superman strip by Roger Stern and Curt Swan furthers the tale of the mysterious Bob Galt, who believes Superman is a deity.  There's an inscrutable corporation that's out to destroy the Man of Steel.  The one weak link in their plans is a man in a hospital, so they send someone to kill him.  Meanwhile, Superman targets the same man as his best shot at solving the mystery of Mister Galt.

In the third part of Catwoman's story, "The Tin Roof Club" by Mindy Newell and Barry Kitson, Catwoman has gone to the New Jersey home of her friend Holly.  Catwoman stole a brooch and hid it with Holly; she has come to collect it, but Holly reveals that she already opened the gift and showed it to her husband.  Catwoman knows they're in danger.  She tries to get Holly out of the house, but there is an explosion and Holly is mortally wounded.  She dies in Catwoman's arms.  Selina goes to get drunk in her club when she's visited by her police detective friend, George, who warns her to get out of town before the heat from the cops and the gangs comes down on her for the stolen brooch.  Catwoman pays a late night visit to Holly's widower, who is consoling his grief in bed with another woman.  Catwoman figures out that he caused the explosion that killed Holly so he could cover the fact that he kept the brooch.  Catwoman gets it back, but he throws her off the balcony of his hotel.

Next week, I'll look at Action Comics Weekly #614, which furthers the continuing sagas of Black Canary, Superman, Green Lantern, Nightwing, Catwoman, and the Phantom Stranger.