Black Canary #9

What the fuck is that chain attached to?

Rating: I have a complex relationship with this comic book (if you define "complex" as "simple and petty" (which I totally do)). It's currently 32 of 51 and I'm dropping it two ranks to 34 of 51 because several issues ago, DC published it with only sixteen pages of content. Unless I feel like giving it the benefit of the doubt for the two pages that were just that Burnside Fanzine! But I don't! So DC still owes me for four pages of comic book! Until they make good on the debt, I have no other option than to lower the ranking of this comic book month after month. Even if I love Moritat's artwork!

• Black Canary took a weird time travel turn an issue or two ago. And then it did some thing where Dinah was now battling her aunt or something in Germany. It's hard to remember because I haven't been keeping adequate notes on the comic books I've been reading lately. Which is why I need these bullet points! Because I'm fucking old and can't remember anything, okay?! Plus I don't have the fanatical need to know everything about every character that I enjoy reading about. Not that Black Canary fits into that category. I mean, I do know an awful lot about Sailor Moon and Vampire Tig and Maps Mizoguchi. Not in a fan way! In a desperately weird way that I'm going to pretend isn't sexual at all.

• The artist forgot to draw the microphone.

• The previous picture looks like something an adult would be overly proud of having colored.

• After that first page, the comic begins "two hours earlier." Why? Why not just skip that page with Black Canary's face that says nothing and means nothing and simply begin the comic book at the "two hours earlier" part but say "Now"? This is the kind of shit that somebody should be giving TED Talks on! Stop fucking wasting the first few pages of a comic book by having some kind of exciting bullshit splash page that's just going to be repeated later when the story finally gets around to that part of itself. Black Canary has wasted more pages than any comic book DC has released in The New 52.

• The last bullet point reminded me that this comic book still owes me four pages. I forgot I'm giving it negative rankings until I either get a refund on the comic book that was short four pages or DC adds four more pages to one of these comic books.

• I should also mention that this comic book has fallen behind schedule. It's so unprofessional!

• This issue is a flashback story because the creative team must want to watch the world burn. Get your act together and make a deadline, assholes! Now I have to read some other creative team's take on Black Canary in their early days (which was about three weeks ago, I think?)! At least Moritat is the artist. I love Moritat.

Oh, I'm so fucking impressed! You know all the words to four fucking songs! Wow! Impressive!

• Sometimes I get really snotty with fictional characters.

• Why would the guest writer of Black Canary mock the kinds of fans who probably love the comic book Black Canary? That seems counterproductive! Like pissing in the wind! I mean an upwind wind. Pissing in a downwind wind is all kinds of cool.

• Pissing in the wind isn't actually a good example of something that is counterproductive. That's just an example of my bad writing skills.

• Black Canary is playing a teenaged girl's birthday party because they're really popular but not so popular as to be uncool and mainstream but just popular enough to have rabid fans and also not so popular that they can't pass up a birthday gig.

• Tobias Whale shows up because he's creepily attending teenaged girls' birthday parties. So Black Canary tries to kick him in his fat face. I approve.

• He literally has a fat face so fuck you if you're insulted by that, you fat facers.

• I just reread that last bullet point and I think I hurt my own feelings.

• Black Canary finds out that little Julia is Carmine Falcone's granddaughter. I was wondering why Algebra Madden had an "F" on her belt buckle! I thought it stood for "Fuck me in my fat face."

• Her face isn't literally fat so that was probably uncalled for. It's a little bit chubby because that's Moritat's style. But it makes her fat face so much more fuckable.

• "Fucking faces" sounds like just about the sexiest thing in the whole world. After carrot cake.

• Other creepy male adult motherfuckers who go to teenaged girls' birthday parties? Professor Pyg. Hugo Strange. Black Mask. Me.

• This is an appropriate reaction to somebody trying to chat you up.

• To be fair, the guy in the above caption is probably a criminal and a murderer. To be a different kind of fair, my caption for the above photo doesn't have to be read sarcastically. I bet some people totally didn't even read it that way the first time!

• Black Canary discovers that a bunch of assassins were hired to kill the teenaged girl at her own birthday party. That's the second worst thing to happen to a teenaged girl's birthday party! The worst is when her parents insist on chaperoning!

• Black Canary sticks around to stop all of the hitmen while she sings and dances.

• See! See! I knew the artist forgot the microphone!

• One of the hitmen is the boy Julia the teenaged girl has a crush on. When Dinah kicks his ass, Julia decides she hates Black Canary. That's fine! Black Canary is totally an old person's band anyway. Life is so over at 26.

• Black Canary doesn't get paid and she accepts that bullshit because she's tired of kicking people in the face, I guess.

• This story is called "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want". That sentence doesn't describe quite how sour the look on my face is having to type it.