Black Canary #4

Ashes on Sunday is over, Bo.

I swear I just had two different topics I wanted to discuss before getting into the comic book but then I surfed the web and now I can't remember what they were. It's probably a good thing because they definitely would have been presented in a patronizing and condescending manner. So if you'd just do me a favor and try to feel like I just wagged my finger in your face while lecturing you about something totally obvious then you'll be in the proper frame of mind (a little angry, a little ashamed, quite a bit confused) to read the rest of this review.

Whatever happened in the plot last issue doesn't matter because DC Comics sold it to me for $2.99 before it was finished. It only had sixteen pages of comic as opposed to the usual twenty! Sure, sure. They threw in two pages of Burnside Tofu. But fuck that! If I wanted to pay for a shitty 'zine raving about the garbage local music scene, I have about twenty thousand to choose from down at Powell's. I suppose I should at least remind everybody (including my future self) that Ditto was kidnapped by ex-Ashes on Sunday singer Bo Maeve because Bo learned that Ditto was an alien and could give people super powers with her blood. Although Bo's main motivation may be just to fuck up her ex-band-mates new gig. She seems shallow enough to risk federal kidnapping charges for petty revenge.

Since Ditto doesn't talk, we're in for a constant barrage of self-promotion and not-so-humble brags from Bo.

"Obvi"? Who says "obvi"?! It obs should be "obs"! Who wants to take the time to say two whole syllables?!

I hope Bo has a lot of ninja friends because Black Canary is going to try to tear her face off later in this comic book. But I don't think Bo's the type to have many friends because she just loves talking about herself too much. Nobody likes those kinds of friends! That's why I don't encourage my friends to read my comic book blog. They think it's all about comic books so they don't read it. But it's actually all about me! Which, if they knew that, they'd probably read it. But I don't want them to know how much I love talking about myself so I let them believe this blog is actually about comic books. Good thing my friends are idiots!

Bo decides to tell Ditto about how she learned to dance because that will probably become important later. Remember how Black Canary sucks at on-stage choreography? But Bo is amazing at it? Do you see what I'm getting at? Black Canary and Bo are probably going to scissor each other's faces! If I were an artist, I would totally draw that but I'm just a wordsmith so here's my word picture of Dinah and Bo pulling off the incredibly dangerous Scissors-69:

SMASH SMASH DRIP LICK LICK GRIND GRIND GRIND PANT PANT GASP LICK POOT GIGGLE GRIND BUMP DRIP BUMP MINOR FINGER EXPLORATION LICK GRIND SMASH DRIP DRIP PUMP GRIND LICK SLOBBER LICK GASP MOAN GROAN CHIP TOOTH GRIND LICK LICK GRIND FASTER GRIND TONGUE (PAUSE TO PULL PUBE OUT OF BACK OF THROAT) CRAMP LICK FASTEST BUMP AND GRIND AND SMASH AND FEMALE EJACULATE GAG COUGH CUDDLE NAP STEAL BLANKETS SNORE VIBRATOR.

I'm just assuming that when two women engage in sex it ends exactly how sex between a man and a woman ends.

Bo's flashback seems like it might be a bit of the old unreliable narrator. I would expect no less from my new all-time favorite character ever, Bo Maeve!

It must be hard for kids today to be the biggest fan of something. I know how desperately you all need to prove to everybody else that you're the biggest most ultimate fan of all-time when it comes to whatever you're fangendering over. But how is that even possible when you're competing with everybody else on the internet? You're going to waste your life trying to be the ultimate fan when their are so many people who have already wasted more years than you were born being the ultimate fan of whatever you've just discovered! It was so much easier to be the biggest fan of something before the internet. You just had to hang posters in your locker and wear only shirts of the band (or whatever!) you were the biggest fan of until everybody in your circle and, hopefully, in your school associated you with your obsession. Now if you're a fan of something, you're just an inconsequential buoy in a sea of rabid fans. The only way to stand out is to completely throw your life away in service to your fandom! It's really pretty pathetic.

By the way, don't even try to be Bo Maeve's biggest fan because that's me, you hear? I'm declaring it right now. Just like I declared I was the biggest fan of Maps (still am), Alysia Yeoh (yup, still me), 2-6-8-1-7-9-5 (I don't know. I've kind of lost interest since she's being written by Cullen Bunn), and Vampire Tig (Totally the masturbating president of that fan club still!). I'm probably the biggest fan of other characters too but I don't remember them offhand which doesn't mean I don't love them more than you because I do. It just means I have memory problems and you can't make fun of me for that because it's a medical condition called, um, Memoroflogiston. You don't want to be a Memorflogistonphobe, do you?

Bo mentions the first name of the band was Alas Insane. I'm so going to have an Alas Insane t-shirt made up and hang Alas Insane posters on my non-existent locker! Right over the top of my Dale Eaglesham Secret Six covers I've got hanging there now! I don't care! I'm so obsessed with Bo that my boner just curved the wrong way (because it's so rock hard!). I hope that's an actual thing or else people might guess I'm lying. I mean assume I'm lying about my boner which I'm not because I'm a huge fan (huge! Get it?! That's a lie about the size of my boner that I hope you believe!).

I guess Bo was kicked out of the band before they became Ashes on Sunday. I hope so because I've always hated that name. Always!

Bo is my total favorite. I'm glad I mentioned how she was my favorite immediately upon her first appearance to prove that I liked her first and I didn't add it to the older commentary just now at all!

Black Canary recruits Frankie to help track down Bo because she's planting the seeds for a new Birds of Prey book that won't be super terrible like the one written by Duane Swierczynski. I find it weird that I can remember how to spell his last name after all this time but I still want to keep calling him "Dwayne."

Annie Wu isn't drawing this issue for some reason that probably isn't that she's being super lazy. Instead the artist is Pia Guerra whose art is great as you've seen by the spectacular Bo moments which make my heart burst with fan-love. But sometimes--just sometimes!--she slips into Steve Dillon territory.

I've seen this Dinah before! Back when she was named Tulip and was starring in Preacher!

Black Canary has to go help the woman outside by fighting the man stealing the car. Her fighting is a lot like Bo's dancing because I said it would be and that was how she would solve the problem of being a cold and/or dead fish on stage. But she still needs help perfecting the changes from fighting to dancing. That means Bo will soon be living on the tour bus with the other characters.

Bo decides to have another flashback about the day she was replaced by Black Canary. On that day, Bo accidentally set the studio on fire. Maybe it wasn't even Bo who set the fire because Dinah just happens to have a bad history with fire! Remember that time all of her belongings and her Dojo burned down because of Batgirl's incendiary device stashed in her Mobile Bat Cave? And I think when she killed Kurt, fire was probably part of the explosion of the island. And that time Katana blew up a building full of people in Birds of Prey! There was fire there too even though the Birds of Prey didn't face any consequences for that. What I'm trying to say is Bo wouldn't hurt anybody on purpose! At least not anybody who was not trying to steal her spotlight.

Black Canary puts out the fire by yelling which is totally a thing that makes sense. Bo saw Dinah use her power which is why she kidnapped Ditto when she found out that Ditto is key to gaining that power. So Bo takes Ditto to Amanda Waller which is a really bad idea because it makes me remember Duane Swierczynski's version of Birds of Prey. I'm pretty sure that gave me the post dramatic stresses.

A ninja in white (that means it's a good ninja! Stormshadow taught me that!) rescues Ditto from Waller after Bo is taken away by Waller's guards to be prepped for super power acquisition. And then the mystery ninja drops Ditto off at Dinah's motel! I guess everybody can get back to the tour now.

Lucky for Bo, Amanda still had some samples of Ditto Extract. She's injected and becomes just as loud as Black Canary! But she's going to become the more elegant, sexier, more likeable version of Black Canary. I'm sick of Dinah Grumpypants! If only there were a popular way of expressing which side I was on when you have two characters that are battling against each other in the pursuit of some goal! I would say that if it existed but it must not or I would know of it.

Black Canary #4 Rating: No change. Wait! Before I lock in this month's ranking, I need to count the number of pages this issue! DC owes me at least two pages of Black Canary thanks to the eighteen page issue presented last month (sixteen if I'm being stingy and disqualifying the Burnside Tofu pages). If this book has over twenty pages, I can increase the ranking because I thoroughly enjoyed Bo and her dancing. But if it only has twenty pages, I'm in an ethical quandary. I cannot raise the rank on this comic book until I am given back the two pages I paid for last month and didn't receive. The good news is this issue was twenty pages long and thus was exactly what I paid for. The bad news is this issue was twenty pages long and DC Comics still owes me two pages of Black Canary. Figure out how you're going to satisfy me, DC! Until then, this comic book will never get a good ranking again!