The following contains spoilers for Black Canary: Best of the Best #4, on sale now
Black Canary: Best of the Best is obviously designed to evoke other classic superhero-fighting comic books like Superman vs. Mohammad Ali and that issue of the Thing where the Thing fought the Elder of the Universe known as the Champion. However, the fact that a superhero comic book is centered on a fight to decide who is the greatest fighter between Black Canary and Lady Shiva is a bit of an unusual thing for a superhero to actually be DOING, right? And that, right there, is a quick glimpse of the sort of thing that this book excels at. While your first instinct upon hearing Black Canary and Lady Shiva are going to have a battle to determine who is the greatest fighter in the DC Universe is likely, like mine, “Cool!” your next thought might be, “Why is Black Canary DOING this?” As, well, don’t superheroes have better things to do than to fight super-villains for the title of the greatest fighter in the universe? Of COURSE they do, and soo…
Black Canary: Best of the Best #4 is from writer Tom King, artist Ryan Sook, colorist Dave Stewart, and letterer Clayton Cowles, and it grapples with that question of, “Why are we even DOING this? in a great way, as it displays a major theme that King is trying to explore in this series, which is that Black Canary simply has a much different view on the world than other superheroes. In the last issue, Batman, the world’s greatest detective, couldn’t figure out why DInah was even DOING this fight, and, to a certain extent, the reason he can’t tell is because it really DOESN’T quite make sense, but on the other hand, it is because Batman (and almost every other major superhero in the DC Universe) wasn’t actually born INTO being a superhero. Dinah essentially WAS, as her mother was a superhero before Dinah was born, and thus, she has a completely different picture on the ethics and morals of being a superhero. She is willing cut corners in a way that other heroes might not be willing to do so because she idea of being a superhero is less precious of a concept to her. So she is willing to cut a deal with Vanald Savage to throw the fight in the sixth round in exchange for a theoretical cure for her mother’s cancer. That’s fair enough in theory, but what about in practice?
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CBR interviews Tom King and Ryan Sook about their series, Black Canary: Best of the Best, and Batman’s major appearance midway through the series
How does Black Canary get tortured by the actual events of the fight?
The issue opens with Hal Jordan, like the reader, asking, “What the heck IS the deal with this fight?” And Oliver Queen not wanting to address it, as he tends to have blind faith in Dinah. However, as we see in the scenes, DInah’s plan has led to Ted Grant, her former training partner, being badly injured in her fight with Shiva, as Ted tried to help Dinah out at one point. Ryan Sook’s depiction of Ted getting basically curbstomped was VISCERAL, but was impactful.
So Dinah’s decision to throw the fight for the sake of her mother already has a physical cost, as Ted has paid the price for the fact that the fight has to go six rounds before Shiva will win. However, there is also the moral cost of what Dinah is doing, and you can tell that it is weighting on her, but moreover, the whole situation with her mother has been weighting on her, honestly.
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Tom King and Ryan Sook discuss their upcoming miniseries, Black Canary: Best of the Best, where Black Canary takes on Lady Shiva in an epic fight
How did Green Arrow first meet Black Canary?
In the original comics, Black Canary and Green Arrow met when the Justice League and the Justice Society met each other in one of their cross-dimensional crossovers, and upon the death of Dinah’s husband, she decided to move over to Earth-1, and she struck up a relationship with Green Arrow (and almost with Batman). Obviously, that origin no longer works, so instead, she just joined the Justice League at some point, and THAT’S when they met, and since that first meeting hasn’t really been shown (part of this is because, Post-Crisis, Black Canary was a FOUNDING member of the Justice League, and so previous depictions of Green Arrow meeting her are based in THAT continuity, and that’s now just as much gone as the Pre-Crisis stufff), King and Sook give us a brand-new meeting, with Oliver Queen, millionaire playboy, training with DInah after his ill-fated boat trip that saw him forced to become Green Arrow. He wants to learn how to fight for his newfound career as a superhero.
Dinah, of course, kicks his ass, but at the same time, she is interested in how he TAKES his ass-kicking, and in a very cute sequence, we see her text with her mother about Oliver. You can tell that they have very little experience bonding with each other in this sort of way, so it is very charming, but also very weird. It really just helps to show the deep problems between Dinah and her mother, problems that she now has to deal with in the ring, as she intentionally keeps herself from winning the fight in the fourth round so that the fight can go the planned six rounds.
It will be fascinating seeing what shape DInah is if/when we get there, both physically and emotionally, but it’ll be a heck of a ride getting there. Sook is great, as always, and I really love the coloring Stewart does on the flashbacks. Really gives them their own vibe.
Source: DC
