Black Canary TP Vol 1

by Brendan Fletcher

[inlibrisveritas]

It’s always a shame when a story leaves you largely indifferent to it, unfortunately, Black Canary was one such read for me. To be clear, I do not hate Black Canary Vol. 1 I did give it three stars after all, but I don’t really care one way or another about the characters. I will say I stopped reading D.C. comics a few years ago, simply because I felt like I was reading a ton of dialogue and set up but getting very little out of it. I’ve never read a comic so wordy and yet feel so empty as I have with D.C. It happens to be sure, but they kind of lead the pack for me.

D.C. bias aside, and fully disclosed, on to the review. New 52 reset and reintroduced a lot of characters…and some of them underwent some changes became more young adult oriented which is both cool and kind of odd at the same time. Black Canary really feels like a YA comic book. It isn’t subtle about its energy and attitude, and it still maintains that dark D.C. atmosphere. Our leading lady is Dinah Lance, a kick-ass lead singer of the band Black Canary. In fact, she sort of takes that literally…and kicks ass while actively singing on stage. It’s kind of weird, a little fanfiction-y but also a little bit cool. Much of the book is centered around Dinah’s hidden past, her relationship with her bandmates and the mysterious Ditto who is definitely more than just an adorable bass player. I appreciate the rather odd storyline for this one, and while it is a little on the nose in terms of bad guy weaknesses and skill sets it was still kind of cool.

The art is a pretty good fit for the story. It has this sort of rebellious messy look, with scratchy dark outlines. It fits the mood quite nicely.

I’m not someone who actively enjoys comics where it feels like 10 piece puzzle. You see the whole picture and you pretty much know it’s all going to fit together, in the end, even if you misplace a piece for a few hours you still see the overall image even if you’re not quite sure what corner looks like. Canary moves at a nice clip and ends with everything pretty much where you expect it too.

It’s a fun story but it doesn’t drive to me grab the second one (I did grab it, as I checked both of them out at the same time. It’s not boring by any means, but it just failed to pull me in and keep me there.