Team 7 #0: We Finally Learn Which Black Canary is Fronting the BoP

[aeka]

And as expected....



That's yet ONE more character that has been retconned out of continuity, and amalgamated into a previous incarnation. (Which essentially goes back to the convoluted mess that was the pre-Crisis Black Canary).

Mind you, I was already suspecting the Black Canary fronting the Birds of Prey was going to eventually be revealed as Dinah Drake since her husband was a "Kurt Lance," but I guess deep down inside I was still hoping for daughter Canary. I guess this now means Babs has officially been BFFs with both Mama and Daughter Canaries.

RIP Dinah Laurel Lance.

As the Ninth Doctor used to say: "You were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic."

And now I have absolutely NO idea how to tag this post or future issues of Birds of Prey. :(

Comments

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

I'm amazed how DC's absolutely trashed all legacy characters just so Superman can be the first 'public' hero.

No Golden Age, no legacy heroes and absolutely no one older than 30 who isn't Deathstroke, apparently.

[aeka]

Well...I'm pretty sure Bruce Wayne is at least 30 if he has a ten year old son. Also, there's still Helena Wayne who still counts as a legacy heroine. But other than that, I completely agree.

What especially floors me about this decision is that Dinah Drake WAS originally an Earth-2 character herself and a member of the justice society. Considering that Helena Wayne and Kara Zor-L already ended up on the main DCU Earth after falling through a boom tube, I don't see why Dinah Laurel Lance couldn't still exist and function in a similar fashion as the other two? The fact that Wayne and Kara-L are also adults just makes my brain hurt even more on the decision to retcon Baby Dinah. >:(

[icon_uk]

Damian's real age is still up in the air, Batman and Robin #0 mentions him having 10 birthdays (It's a plot point in fact) but Batman has only been active for 5 years.. so unless he fathered Damian when he was training with Ra's and Talia (a la sort-of "Batman Begins") before becoming Batman, which seems unlikely (given that toddler Damian dressed up in the batcowl when he was a toddler) we're back to some sort of accelerated aging and Talia factoring that in when assigning birthdays... which also seems improbable.

[aeka]

I think you just furthered proved the point of how convoluted this newer continuity is. :/

[ablackraptor]

Did't they say that Bruce was operating in secret for at least five years before Superman went public? It could be that Ra's tracked him down during an earlier caper and Talia and Bruce...tumbled... during that time. Or,you know, Damian is an anomaly exiting due to bad decisions made by Dan DiDio and his underlings.

[icon_uk]

Did't they say that Bruce was operating in secret for at least five years before Superman went public?

Fan rumour, never confirmed by DC AFAIK.

[tarradiddle12]

FYI: Last week's Batman #0 shows Bruce operating in a sense, undercover trying to fight The Red Hood Gang, "six years ago", but the BatSignal going live "five years ago". Also implies that Dick became Robin a couple days after "Five Years Ago".

Yeah, just keep pretending it works, DC.

[an_idol_mind]

I'd kinda like to see a story where DC characters start to notice all these inconsistencies in the universe and start to investigate.

[darkknightjrk]

"Also, there's still Helena Wayne who still counts as a legacy heroine."

Couldn't you count Karen, then? Not to mention the other Robins.

[espanolbot]

Why I prefer to think of the Young Justice Universe as the proper DCU at present. They actually allow multiple ages of heroes to exist at once, which I think adds depth to the universe it's based in.

So they had an episode that had Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, Wally West and Bart Allen all teaming up together, for example. As well as the JSA's activities in the 1940s being important to the plot numerous times.

Just because there's a lot to keep track of doesn't mean that you shouldn't bother DC. It's like if Marvel decided that having Steve Rogers be from the 40s makes him too old, so they have Captain America debut in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and have him punch out the Crimson Dynamo, only to be buried out in the mountains due to being knocked out by an experiment WMD that put him into a twenty year hibernation period, only to awaken while the current war is going on...

Actually that sounds like an interesting superhero origin...

[majingojira]

One of the things I liked most about DC (and a bit of Marvel to) before the retcon was that it had a sense of history. I know, I know, comic book time, but it felt like a lot had happened and that there was history and stories there. I didn't even need to know them, just knowing they existed at all made me enjoy the universes as a whole more.

And now, it's gone.

[kenn_el]

I've always held the opinion that Black Canary's 'crossing' was the catalyst behind the initial Crisis, so I'm pleased that they're simplifying things here. (Besides, there's nothing stopping an Earth 2 version popping up in that series, which is what DC should have done back before the Crisis.)

[aeka]

Except that would mean having two Dinah Drakes, which would not at all be simplifying things. Also, having Helena Wayne (the adult daughter of Batman and Catwoman from another universe), and having two Kara Zor-[E]L's on the mainstream Earth isn't simplifying things either. So I beg to differ as to how it would have made a difference in having the two Dinahs in continuity.

[kenn_el]

I'm just saying that with Earth 2 allowing for a second Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Atom, etc., it wouldn't be out of line for them to come up with a Black Canary. The 'simplifying' for me would be that she wouldn't have any baggage from the pre-Flashpoint universe and could be a more 'back-to-basics' character.

[mommy]

DC has done a wonderful job of removing most of the Arrow family from existence in the last couple years, hasn't it? First Lian, then Connor and Mia, and now Dinah. I'm less than pleased.

[espanolbot]

There can be only one! And he's unrecognisable from the one who it was previously, effectively making it an entirely different character, so technically there can be only none from the original DCU!

[mommy]

When Ollie looks and acts nothing like Ollie and Roy is busy hanging out with a different former Robin than usual, who needs things to make sense? Clearly not DC.

Wait, Roy isn't Ollie's former sidekick anymore, is he? I have't followed RHATO, so I'm not sure if he even counts as part of the Arrow family these days.

[espanolbot]

I just stay clear of anything Todd related to be honest. Didn't like him pre-reboot, don't like him now.

Though I've never really been a fan of non-cartoon Kori either, and now Roy doesn't have Lian around he's lost the only thing that made him interesting too. So...

[akodo_rokku]

Ollie recruited Roy after he broke into Queen Something-Or-Other in Green Arrow #0. But it was only like two pages of "okay yeah here's that guy."

[akodo_rokku]

Oh and it looked like they were about the same age, so if Roy still has his addiction background it makes Ollie's actions SLIGHTLY less abhorrent.

[mommy]

Well, that's something. That means two out of five of the original Teen Titans are still former sidekicks.

Edit - Wait, if Roy and Ollie are roughly the same age, then Roy couldn't have been a sidekick. That leaves Dick as the sole remaining sidekick of the original Teen Titans. Bah humbug.

[q99]

You can have same-age sidekicks. Even if the ages are the same, people can still need training.

Like, Spoiler serving in something of a sidekick role to Tim and occasionally Cass.

[silverhammerman]

I really really hate what Green Arrow's become in the New 52. I keep saying, the single sentence description for Ollie should be "Robert Downey Jr's Occupy Wallstreet Batman" DC had a perfect chanced to have a character who tapped into the prevailing populist zeitgeist but decided instead to revert him to being a boring Batman rip-off, even though the character hasn't been that since the 70s, and wasn't considered to not be generally shit until after he'd become a goatee, socially conscious crusader.
Truly one of the worst decision of the reboot.

[leikomgwtfbbq]

The reason I actually got into comics was because I watched some special about it on the History Channel and they discussed the Green Arrow's turn into a socially-conscious Robin Hood figure. I thought the idea was amazing, and I picked up all the Green Arrow stuff I could with my vacation allowance that summer. He was my first favorite Western superhero because he seemed actually somewhat unique among his increasingly gloomy peers.

But nope! Now we've got pallette-swapped Batman. Yawn.

[sir_razorback]

Tag idea for some of these confusing post-flashpoint characters:

Char: Black Canary 52/Dinah Drake

Hopefully at some point DC will go back to the Pre-FP arc, maybe make that an event in and of itself led by booster Gold (who seems to be the only one with an inkling that somebody's shit in the timestream) If you were going to make a multi-year timeline story, that would be the way to go. I don't give DC that much credit though.

[silverhammerman]

That would be way too awesome and not nearly edgy enough. Still, I'd love to see Booster, Wally, Donna, and all the other misfit toys team up to de-clusterfuck the DCU.

[magusfool]

This is stupid.

Also, the WS universe has really not been fitting very well into the DCU... I mean I thought that was the whole point of "What's so Funny about Truth, Justice, and the American Way?" DC heroes are just a different caliber, and the world they live in functions in a drastically different way. I think Jim Lee has made a mistake. And I say this as someone who's read, like, all the old Jim Lee Era Wildstorm (Stormwatch, Team 7, WildC.A.T.S., Gen13, et cetera), as well as all the Ellis Era Wildstorm (Stormwatch, Authority, Monarchy, Planetary). And I'm a fan of both, but neither of these fit with the DCU.

[arise]

I feel pretty similarly re WS. :/ The thematic principles behind the worlds are different, I think. It does everyone a disservice trying to blend them. I'm sure it can be well done in individual cases, but idk I feel like something has been lost.

[darkknightjrk]

Well, we really haven't seen a LOT of DC/Wildstorm integration up until this point. The most interaction we've gotten was Superman facing off against Helspont--and considering that Helspont and Mr. Majestic were bitter enemies, and Majestic was basically a Superman clone, it only makes sense that the two would meet.

Besides, I always thought that "What's So Funny" story was kind of up it's own ass anyway. It wasn't at all a legit and thinking examination of the two ways and what makes the other better, but felt more like the tirade of a pissed fanboy who was whining that his favorite hero wasn't as popular anymore.

[shadowpsykie]

so... she's Dinah Drake Lance in name, but essentially Dinah Laurel Lance in everything else.

Dinah Drake didn't have the Canary Cry or the established friendship with Batgirl.

is it possible that given Team 7's History that Dinah and BoP Dinah are different characters... though that wouldn't work because the one in BoP's Husband is Kurt, and we meet Kurt here....

For some reason this doesn't upset me as much as it should... maybe it's because i am loving BoP and from what I have seen of Team 7 i love it too... and despite my dislike for some of the other titles, there are more titles i like than hate.... (though admitedly there are few titles i actually love...)

[wonderwomanhero]

They....they have not retconned Ivy have they?

[big_daddy_d]

I....I thought the Red Robin thing would be what does me in but this?....*sits in corner, hugging knees and rocking back and forth*

[darkknightjrk]

Honestly, the name thing doesn't really bother me. Dinah Lance always felt like a band-aid for the post-crisis continuity, to me. Even with this revelation, this still feels like the Dinah Lance we've been reading for the past few years at her core, just with a different origin.

Also? This issue? Pretty damn awesome. So looking forward to more. :D