It’s Christmas, and DC Comics has a powerful, heartbreaking gift for you: Black Canary: Best of the Best #2, which is now in comic book shops everywhere. Written by Tom King with art by Ryan Sook, the comic digs deeper into the relationship between Black Canary and her mother, the original Black Canary. And spoilers past this point, while issue #1 ended with the younger Black Canary revealing she’s throwing her fight with Lady Shiva to get a cure for her mother’s cancer, issue #2 ended with her mother telling her she has to win.
According to King, that’s of course purposeful, and the ending of issue #1 — revealing Vandal Savage telling her to lose — and the ending of issue #2 — with Black Canary’s mother telling her to win — are of a piece. And those final panels in Black Canary: Best of the Best #2 really change the direction of the series.
“[This is] a comic about two women in the ring, and you think that’s going to be Lady Shiva and Black Canary, but it’s actually Black Canary and her mother,” King told Comic Book Club. “The ring stuff is almost metaphorical to what’s happened to Black Canary and her mother, and their battles and their loves over all the years. That’s what stands at the heart of this. This is a brutal, bloody, action-packed mother-daughter love story.”
King also noted that the ending to Black Canary: Best of the Best #3 “also lands hard,” and that it “keeps going as we go forward.” But jumping back into the meat of the issue there are more parallels than the two endings. Specifically, in a flashback we see the younger Black Canary putting on her mother’s blonde wig for the first time, and seeing herself as the superhero she might one day become. And closer to the “present” we see the older Black Canary taking off her blonde wig to reveal a bald head, likely due to chemotherapy treatments.
“[Marie Javins], the Editor-in-Chief of DC Comics, said ‘I didn’t know what this book was until I read that scene where she puts on the wig,'” King recalled. “And I think that’s probably true for me too. That’s the sort of scene that crystallized what the whole series was about in one image.”
While King noted that calling it “wig lore” was “weird,” she’s actually a “raven-haired woman who wears a blonde wig. That was built into the character. That’s the disguise she wears when she puts on her armor. It’s part of her costume. It’s like Superman pulling his shirt apart. And so when the younger daughter puts on her mother’s armor, a lot of us have been there when you’re at a low point, and your shields you have in life have fallen, and you put on your parents’ shields, and you hope that’s enough. And then maybe it becomes not healthy. So that’s all wrapped into what Dinah’s doing.”
Beyond the relationship between the younger and older Dinah Lance, though, there’s also the relationship between King, Sook, and the reader. That’s something King worked hard to convey, particularly in this second issue.
“The challenge of this whole book is [telling a story] in terms of the four corners of the ring,” King said. “MMA and boxing and WWE have been telling stories in the ring for 100 years that have compelled many more people than ever read comic books. But still, it’s a challenge for us to bring that energy into our medium, and the challenge was on me, too, in each issue raise the stakes of this match [so] that when you’re looking at Ryan’s art you not just seeing how beautiful it is, but how important every blow is. And have those blows feel like they’re landing on the audience, and the audience wanting to do what Dinah has to do over and over again, which is get off the mat and keep going.”
Black Canary: Best of the Best #2 is now in comic book stores everywhere.
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