Black Canary #12

The Review!
This is just The Last Temptation of Christ but starring Dinah Lance! At least it's shorter! And Brenden Fletcher's name is easier to spell than Nikolas Kazantzakis! Just a second while I consult Lord Google. Holy shit! I spelled the last name right! But I got the first name wrong. It's just Niko! But I bet that's short for Nikolas, right?!

The Commentary!
In this issue, Dinah Lance gets asked the stupidest question anybody can ever ask another person.

Stop judging me for not living my life the way you think I should be living it! I mean stop judging Dinah!

Nobody should ever feel obligated to live their life in a way somebody else expects them to. Even if they have a gift. Even if they have the ability to help others. Even if they could bring peace to the entire sodding world through some magic hoodoo. Nobody else has to live inside your own head. It's unfair to expect more than somebody is already giving. It's unfair to expect other people to view the world in the same way that you view it, and to act according to your desires, no matter how selfless or charitable your desires may be. We can only be who we are, and, in the end, we will only answer to ourselves. We can only answer to ourselves. And sometimes what we want is to not kick criminals in the teeth on a constant basis! Sometimes we just want to fucking sing!

But since Black Canary is a hero, I bet her singing is helping more than kicking people in the face! Somehow! It's, like, inspiring or something! It's making the world a better place! It has to be or else we're all going to judge her for only caring about herself and not others! How dare she!

Since the next scene is has another "One Year Later" tag, this must be Dinah's visions of her possible future as she lays dying with a katana in her gut. In her vision of the future as the lead singer of Black Canary, somebody (Izak Orato?) is convincing her that giving people joy is a noble way to live. But she doubts that because she remembers kicking people in the junk was an actual noble way to live! I don't mean I believe that but I think Dinah still believes that because she had all of that Team 7 brainwashing. I mean training.

Not that I think bringing people joy is a noble way to live either! Both ways are just ways to live. Nobility has nothing to do with any of them. Do what you want, Dinah! Stop being distracted and controlled by other people. I mean, you can even choose to just bleed out and stop struggling with your destiny, if you wanted to!

The Justice League can only be saved by roundhouses and leg sweeps?! Diana's subconscious has a really healthy self-esteem!

Black Canary's musical future begins to get bleaker and bleaker as she realizes at forty that she's become a commercial sellout. Her music reached a broader audience and her miserable little fans couldn't be any less happier for her! They accuse her of leaving her art behind to become a bland, moneymaking puppet! And, of course, her nemesis Ravedeath continues to wreak havoc on the world because she fell for his offer. Now she's a musician instead of a super hero and only her judo kicks can stop him!

Dinah tries to get Black Canary back together because her life has lost all meaning. I guess I was wrong about people choosing to live with their choices instead of being bullied by obligation! See what happens when you make the selfish choice? You wind up dying lonely and unloved! Except Dinah is already dying lonely and unloved and this is all in her imagination because she's really lying on a floor with a katana in her belly.

As all hallucinogenic temptations do, Dinah's passes in time and she returns to the present with the information she needs to create the proper future. She knows the Five Heavens Palm and means to use it on Izak to stop Ravedeath from destroying the universe. Although can you use hallucinations as evidence in your manslaughter trial? Won't Dinah just wind up in prison for killing a record producer?

Luckily Ravedeath decided to attack in demon form instead of human form. I think people are allowed to kill demons with karate moves. I suppose it was also self-defense. Whatever! Black Canary defeats the bad person and realizes she was never cut out to be the singer in a band! That's independent comic shit! She's a super hero!

So, you know, she quits the band and moves to Seattle. Which is great news! Not the Seattle part! The part about quitting the band. Because now Bo Maeve is the lead singer of Black Canary! The band just got five bajillion times better! And sexier! And mean-spiriteder! I love Bo! Hopefully the end of this comic doesn't mean the end of Bo.

Black Canary #3

How is Black Canary not yet rich as fuck? Everybody in the DC Youniverse listens to the band!

Last issue, the story took a depressing turn as Kurt Lance was discovered stalking the band. It's been said that his superpower is the ability to amplify or negate the powers of other heroes. But I have a theory that his super power is to suck the fun out of every comic book he appears in. He was in Team 7 which was as entertaining as having a tick up your urethra. He was in Teen Titans which was so poorly written that fans of Tim Drake began to hate Tim Drake. And generally those fans will eat dog shit if it means they get to read another fan fiction where Tim gets his dick sucked by Conner Kent. He was in the first version of Suicide Squad which was only selling enough issues to seem like a popular comic book because Harley Quinn fans are even more obsessed than Tim Drake fans. They don't even need the promise of more Harley Quinn fan fiction to eat dog shit. And finally, Kurt Lance was in Turds of Prey which received that nickname for the finest of reasons: it was shit and "turd" rhymes with "bird." Now Kurt Lance has decided to send this comic book into the literary toilet. I'm kind of excited to watch it happen since this is the first book he's appeared in that didn't already suck before he made an appearance. Which might seem to be evidence against my theory but it's not, so there and fuck you.

The story begins with Black Canary performing in Keystone City. But the real story is what happened on the way there. I guess she had a Road Warrior adventure in the tour bus on the way to the gig. Speaking of Road Warrior, I saw Mad Max: Fury Road a few weeks ago. It's a fantastic movie and fits right into the series. It's the exact same plot as Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome but that's why it works so well. It's like the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard. The stories are essentially other people's stories in which Mad Max finds himself entangled. What I found so fascinating about the movies is that it's like reading a Post Apocalyptic Role-Playing Game Source Book. The movie is filled with so many little details about each of the different tribes of people. It's a world that I think would do well to become the next 007 type of franchise. Keep pumping these stories out and replace Mad Max whenever the current Max is ready to move on. It doesn't matter who plays him at all since the real meat of the stories are the other people and their problems, even though Max always plays a pivotal role in the plot. The movie was a blast and I'm so happy when I see a movie that exists because people loved the idea of it existing. And it occurs in a setting so outrageous that nothing they can put on that screen can pull a person out of the movie. Everything on the screen becomes acceptable by the sheer audacity of every other thing surrounding it.

On the way to the show, Black Canary had to fight off a bunch of troops who were working with Kurt Lance. They're probably covert government troops but I don't know which covert organization they're from since the DC Youniverse has so fucking many of them. While Dinah fights, she's also apparently choreographing her stage routine. I think I mentioned somewhere previously how that plot was being set up. Somebody said her stage moves sucked. Other people said she's the best hand-to-hand fighter they've ever seen. Chocolate meet peanut butter.

One of Kurt's men winds up captured by the rest of the band, thrown on the back of the bus, and devoured by an Alien Scribble Monster.

It seems more like a Paranormal Ink Creature now.

Dinah dances her way onto Kurt's truck so she can stick a gun in his face. She's already killed him once, so Kurt shits himself and tells her everything he knows. Ditto is an alien and the Alien Scribble Monsters want to capture her. But Kurt and his people also want to capture her. I bet she comes from that world in the song 2112 where music is illegal and hidden in caves.

Kurt and Dinah decide to head back to the tour bus because one of the things Kurt says that he probably shouldn't have is that one of the Alien Scribble Monsters was aboard the bus and about to capture Ditto. Dinah arrives just in time to scream at it and it goes away in pain because I guess Alien Scribble Monsters have really sensitive organs for hearing.

After the gig, Kurt says some boring stuff that bores me even though I thought it was totally working for the story. But he's so boring! What did Dinah ever see in him? Besides her tongue? And maybe two fingers.

Oh my god! Ditto is one of those aliens from Bloodlines!

But they won't have to worry about Ditto for much longer. She's kidnapped by Bo Maeve, the original singer of Ashes on Sunday, or Black Canary, or whatever. I don't think Bo is actually bad ass enough to keep Ditto contained. This problem will eventually just solve itself.

Black Canary #3 Rating: -2 Ranking. At first I just thought the comic book read quickly because it contained a lot of action sequences. But then DC Comics overplayed their hand with two pages in the back which were laid out like Burnside Tofu. That made me suspicious because usually DC Comics only adds weird incidental pages at the back of a book if the script comes up short a few pages. I thought that maybe the story would wind up being eighteen pages with the two extra zine pages in the back. Imagine my surprise when the story as only sixteen pages long with the two extra pages added at the back. Only sixteen pages of comic book this month! Sure, eighteen if you count Burnside Tofu which is a good enough addition to the comic book that I wouldn't complain about its inclusion. But that still just gets the total to eighteen! Hey! DC Comics! I fucking warned you! This is what happens when Kurt Lance guest stars in a comic book! He's already sucking down the page count! I feel like I've been mugged! I've been violated! My liberties and freedoms have been shackled to a dungeon wall and hosed down with rancid water! Nobody has ever felt this violated in the whole history of existence. And I'm not saying that in a hyperbolic fashion, DC Comics! I mean it! You have taken my innocence and I'll never trust another corporation ever again as long as I live. And I'm not the only victim! How do you think Brenden and Annie are going to feel when they see their drop in the ranks on my blog!? I suppose I could blame them for being short but I don't blame any worker who finds out exactly how much they can get away with and then does just that much. How many pages short is this going to be next month if you don't nip this in the bud, hunh? And so, Black Canary receives minus one in the rankings for every page DC Comics now owes me. Jerks.

Black Canary #2

Is "Search and Destroy" their next rival band?

When I was sixteen, I attended the Monsters of Rock show at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The bands playing were Kingdom Come, Metallica, Dokken, Scorpions, and Van Halen. I barely remember Kingdom Come and whatever song they had playing on MTV at the time and I really didn't know much Dokken besides that Dream Warriors song they had for the third A Nightmare on Elm Street movie. I was a fan of Van Halen and the Scorpions, and a passing fan of Metallica, so I wasn't super familiar with the lyrics to their songs. When Metallica played "Seek and Destroy", James Hetfield told fans in the mosh pit to beat the shit out of anybody who wasn't singing along to the song. So I swayed and danced and stomped around making it look like I was singing because I'm a huge pussy who didn't want to get his ass beat. I really enjoyed the parts that went "Searchiiiiiiiiiiing...seek and destroy!" Because that part was easy to pretend to!

Metallica always had a sense of snobbery about their music. It was almost as if the people who knew their music before ...and Justice For All were somehow better than every other fan of music to ever exist. It's also possible they were just angry that they weren't making as much money as they thought they should be making. Judging by their black album, I'd be inclined to say that was the reason for their bad attitude. That album was awful when compared to their previous albums and yet it sold like thrash metal hotcakes (if you ordered them without any thrash metal). I'm not one to argue that they sold out. Bands have a right to evolve and grow and change in their sounds. But fans also have a right to say that their new album didn't sound anything like the band that they loved and to drop them like a hot potato (or maybe, in reality, a luke warm potato with a friendlier edge to it).

This issue begins with the band practicing firing guns instead of practicing riffs and key changes.

Why are so many comic books now using this muted color palette? Is it artsy?

The band Black Canary has a problem. They're being hunted by Alien Scribble Monsters because their underage guitar player named Ditto is a monster from another world. Probably. But Ditto just wants to be human and play music! I bet where Ditto is from they're not allowed to play music or have feelings. But now Black Canary (the band! Not the person!) has to protect Ditto while also trying to fulfill their studio contract by completing a tour to promote their new album. Apparently nobody gets paid by the studio unless they complete the tour which seems like crap since it's their record. Also I might not understand the entire premise of the band on the road plot. I always have to leave enough wiggle room for my poorly rolled 9 intelligence score. Good thing I rolled 18 on Charisma, right?!

Target practice is interrupted by the band feeling weird and sketchy like they're being watched. And they are being watched! By the Alien Scribble Monsters with invisible spaceship technology. Dinah decides they should pack up and head out but not before she discovers Paloma Terrific is a deadeye marksman. I wonder what Lord Byron and Heathcliff's special powers will be? I guess Lord Byron will be the seductive one and Heathcliff can probably do math really well or something.

Meanwhile Burnside Tofu continues to waste precious space in their zine on Black Canary reports. Burnside Tofu is really going all in on Black Canary! If they hit it big, Burnside Tofu can brag all over Burnside about how they discovered them and how they were fans from the start and how nobody else truly gets Black Canary! They're just fans of the band because it's popular to be fans of the band! And even if Black Canary doesn't make it big, Burnside Tofu can point out that they should have made it big but music fans are cretinous weasel porkers who wouldn't know a jammin' riff full of intense passion from an obvious hook chosen purely for how many albums it will sell.

Oh! Oh! Who is Heathcliff sending this too? Pomeline or Olive?! Or Miss MacPherson?

Maeve (or Bo), the ex-lead singer of Ashes on Sunday (now Black Canary!), appears just as I was thinking the comic book didn't have enough characters in it. Sure, it's got a four piece band and a merch table guy. But Dinah can't be in most conversations about how Dinah is ruining the band and Ditto doesn't speak. So that leaves a lot of interactions between Paloma and Lord Byron with Heathcliff saying things that nobody cares about because he's not actually part of the band. I think Bo should be asked to join the band because she's totally my favorite character ever and always has been and always will be forever! Maybe she can drive the bus at least since the band probably doesn't need two singers. It's more probable that she'll become Dinah's Nemesis.

The story is interrupted by a pull-out insert describing the band on one side with the poster that is in the background of every other DC Comic on the other side. I'm going to hang it on my wall right now!

Bo runs off before she and Dinah can get into a physical altercation for practically no reason at all and then the bandmates argue about whose past is more secret. Dinah decides maybe shopping will sort it all out.

While out shopping, Ditto and Dinah perform some kind of sound voodoo which reveals one of the people following them in the invisible spaceship. Dinah kicks the stalker's ass and then takes off the helmet to reveal it is Kurt, her husband. That probably means that the band is being pursued by both Alien Scribble Monsters and the government's new version of Team 7. Ultimately that means more venues are going to be destroyed in the near future.

Black Canary #2 Rating: No change. This is a competently written and beautifully drawn book that's telling an actual story. Having an actual story being told in a comic book is always a plus. You might think that every comic book on the racks is telling a story but you'd be mistaken. Some of them are just using the pages as places to store the characters while they're not really doing anything in the comic book lives. They just kind of do the same thing over and over again while readers yawn but continue to buy the placeholder comic books because their favorite characters aren't currently being used in an actual story anywhere else. Having characters with motivations who are dealing with impediments to their goals? That's always a plus! You would think that most comic books would be capable of this, especially in the first few issues. Some story idea had to be pitched to get the comic book out the door, right? Wrong! Apparently you can just pitch an idea as vague as "Jason Todd and Roy Harper hang out together and fight bad guys." Black Canary isn't that. It has groove, it has meaning. Or something.

Black Canary #1

This comic book better play an MP3 when I open the cover. And it better not melt my face or blow up my head.

Opening the cover, I'm met with the sound of silence (at least from the comic book. My butt made a comment and Pelafina the Cat won't stop commenting on who the fuck knows. I wish I knew because it sounds like it's really fucking important). My eyeballs are met with a page from a zine called Burnside Tofu. It sounds like the kind of zine put out by cool people about cool music with lots of cool images placed helter-skelter throughout the zine in horrible black and white photocopies of actual photos. I put out a zine around 1995 but it wasn't cool like Burnside Tofu because it didn't mention music or hip scenes or short stories where nothing happens because the break-up that is the driving force of the internal monologue of the only character in the story happened twenty years ago and the speaker has done nothing of value since because the speaker died that day and only thinks that the speaker is still living. No, my zine had superheroes in it. It was co-written by Doom Bunny and Upright. It was called The Galactic Hero Corps. The art in the final Zero Issue Special was by Dan Santat, creator of the cartoon The Replacements. That was the day my life peaked and now twenty years later it's all I can talk about because I'm really dead inside. And outside. Maybe that's what Pelafina is screaming about?

According to Tantoo La Biche, the creator of the zine, the group Black Canary "have been tearing up the road on tour--literally!" Wrong! Maybe they've been literally kicking ass. Or they've been literally knocking the crowd dead. But I doubt they've been literally tearing up the roads. Unless their roadies forgot to take the snow tires off the tour bus. If that's the case, I apologize to Tantoo.

Tantoo finishes her piece about Black Canary with "could Black Canary's song be over before it even begins?" Does anybody care?! How many people are reading Tantoo's shitty zine? Maybe a dozen simply because Black Canary is from Gotham so the people of Burnside would have more interest in the band. But I bet across the country, their fans are mostly teenagers who don't love the band as much as they love making fun of newer fans who proclaim they love the band.

Black Canary has just played another club where Dinah beat the crap out of half the audience and smashed up the joint in the process.

I guess she had a good reason. Or three good reasons. Or six good reasons, wink wink! OW! SORRY DINAH!

Some of the band members are worried that Dinah might kill their music career by giving Black Canary a reputation for violence and destruction. Wait until they hear about that time her and her last band destroyed a hotel with all of the guests still in it (see Birds of Prey #8 -- Tell Em All About It Tess!). Dinah seems to feel bad but not bad enough to quit the band. She's just going to continue to burden the members of Black Canary with her problems in the same way she burdened the Birds of Prey with her problems during Duane Swierczynski's run. What a mess that was! I almost hated Black Canary forever because of that series. And the way she acted like a huge snothole in Burnside Batgirl didn't help her cause! But she kind of redeemed herself at the end of that whole Batgirl vs. Batgirl's Senior Thesis story arc. But I think this is the last chance I'm giving her! She'd better be likable in this comic book or we're through!

Here's something I'm not going to do and you can all thank me for it later: I'm not going to compare this comic book to Scott Pilgrim. Not even once. Never in the run of this book. Ever.

Dinah promises that she will tone down the violence and ramp up the lead singer sexy time bust-a-moves. Man, this talking like a youth is easy! Like grinding a straight blunt down an elderly grabhandle!

Not if the Rival Band has anything to say about it!

I hope Black Canary battles F.V.B., the Future Villain Band! Hell, I hope this entire comic book winds up being as fantastic as the Sgt Pepper's movie! What a gem! Back in 1978, two soundtracks ruled my world: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings (Although the Lord of the Rings' soundtrack I most truly loved was from Rankin and Bass's Return of the King. "Frodo and the nine fingers! Frodo! And the nine fingers! Frodo! And the nine fingers! And the ring of DOOOOOM!" "Where there's a whip! KER-RACK! There's a way!"). Oh shit. Wait a second! Make that three soundtracks from 1978! I can't forget Grease! What a great year for a seven year old nerd's budding love of music! Although the soundtrack to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was like a crucifix to Dracula to my mom. I'm sure a piece of her heart died to see her son would rather listen to the Bee Gees sing the songs of her beloved Beatles.

Black Canary's roadie is Heathcliff. I think it's the same Heathcliff from Gotham Academy because how many Heathcliff's can there possibly be in Gotham? Like eight or nine?

Other members of the band include Paloma Terrific on keyboards and surly remarks, androgynous Casanova Lord Byron on drums, and mute child wunderkind Ditto on lead and only guitar.

Dinah promised this show would go better than the others but things soon get weird.

That's the Rival Band! They're alien scribble monsters! Hey! I bet that's their name: Alien Scribble Monsters.

To subdue the Scribble Monsters, Black Canary has to scream at the roof and drop the ceiling on them. At least that will let Tantoo use the headline, "Black Canary Brings Down The House--Literally!"

It turns out the Alien Scribble Monsters were after Ditto. They threaten the band and then leak out of the hole in the ceiling while Ditto stands around not explaining herself even though Dinah has to continually explain herself after every single show. It's not fair at all! Little girls get all the breaks! I can't even yell at them in public without everybody staring at me and saying things like, "What the fuck is wrong with you, dude?" You can't even knock them down when they stand right in your way and refuse to move because they're not paying attention! You have to act like an adult and go around them. I hate little girls! Everybody is always taking their side!

I wonder if Dinah will get Ditto an iPad or she'll just force her to write messages on the wall with her own shit the way she did with Strix? (See Birds of Prey #18 -- Tell Em All About It Again Tess!)

The band heads out to their next gig where they'll play worse than ever because they'll spend their practice time sparring and then they'll be too stiff to play well. Success!

Black Canary #1 Rating: I think I like this comic book. It's hard to tell because I constantly interrupt myself while I'm reading the book to type out a stupid comment about my past. But I'm pretty sure I kind of maybe sort of like this comic book. So far! But I don't want to like it if it's supposed to be cool and hip. Then I hate it because it's for young idiots! And if there's one thing I know young idiots love to do more than anything else, it's hang out on my fucking lawn! Get off it! And take your damn hipster zines with you!