InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Get down, make love!"

uadlika (uadlika) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-06-05 13:57:00

Entry tags:

char: batgirl/oracle/barbara gordon, char: black canary/dinah lance, char: gypsy/cynthia reynolds, char: huntress/helena bertinelli, char: lady blackhawk/zinda blake, char: lady shiva/sandra woosan, char: sin, creator: gail simone, creator: joe prado, creator: paulo sequeira, title: birds of prey

No DOOM, only SIN (part 1)
Sorta continuing my previous posts of cute kids from the DCU.

I like Sin and thought there was a lot of potential in her and Dinah's relationship. I definitely hate what happened to her and the apparent reasons why. I thought I would go through Sin's brief appearance (12 issues in all) and subsequent disappearance. Warning: this post contains an amazing amount of Dinah being awesome and badass.

From issues #92-#95 of Birds of Prey (collected in TPB Vol 5: Perfect Pitch) There are a lot of scans here, but I don't go over the 7 page rule for any issue.

Once upon a time, Dinah became Lady Shiva's apprentice, and the two agreed to trade places. Shiva would help out the Birds of Prey, while Dinah went to somewhere in Asia and was trained by the person who trained Shiva. Although I thought Shiva grew up in Detroit, but whatever. Dinah arrives somewhere in Southeast Asia, meets "Mother," and is named Tag.

There are a few panels of Dinah fighting back and kicking some ass, so don't think she was just ambushed and KO'd.

The next day (?) one of the guys at the village taunts Dinah, asking if shouldn't she be making his meals naked?

Damn right.

Mother is less than impressed.

So Dinah goes down to the water...

She being Shiva. Canary and Shiva discuss the terms of their agreement, and Canary says that if Shiva doesn't do one thing, then she automatically loses. What is this one thing? Well...

It's the Jade Canary y'all.

Hee Zinda. Anyways, back to the undisclosed location in Southeast Asia. Mother tells Dinah that a warlord's army is marching towards the village and when Dinah tries to get everyone to hide or fight, Mother says that they will do neither. The song she refers to is "Auld Lang Syne," which the villagers are playing on a piano.

But that doesn't mean she's not going to try.

She starts taking out the rear of the army convoy:

A few more pages of Dinah singlehandedly handing the army their asses.

I would argue that Batman DOESN'T turn the screams off. But that's another story.

Dinah speaks to Mother and says that she quits; she doesn't want to be Shiva. When Mother says that Sin will be trained as the next Shiva, Dinah kicks her ass and then phones Ollie, who is currently the mayor of Star City.

Happy sniff.

Next: amazing syrup, tough decisions, cyber-sex, and irony.

(Post a new comment)

	oldmanrain 2009-06-05 02:02 pm UTC (link)
	Is there no end to Dinah's awesomeness? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	hybrid2 2009-06-05 03:01 pm UTC (link)
	The Green arrow/Black Canary comic? I miss the real Dinah and sin....Stupid DC. (Reply to this) (Parent)

xlineartx
2009-06-05 02:24 pm UTC (link)

DINAH. Oh my God, I love her so much. This is why she's a founding member of the Justice League. This is why she needs to hold her own title. And Sin! I miss her! Why couldn't she be part of the Arrowfamily? She could hang out with Lian and Mia could teach her normal girly stuff and Connor would absolutely love her--they all would. Speaking of the Arrowfamily, I love that Ollie cooks. See, that is the sort of thing I want to see in a Green Arrow book--them all being adorable and domestic, and Dinah sometimes coming in to kick ass and take names. Only, she'd have her own book, and sometimes she goes and hangs with the Birds and sometimes with the Justice League. Also, Connor is functional? And Grace still exists? She can babysit and also be badass. At the same time!

Also, Jade Canary. OH SHIVA NEVER CHANGE.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	tavella 2009-06-05 05:00 pm UTC (link)
	But you see, Sin was Dinah's child and not from Ollie's loins. Having her in GA/BC would indicate that perhaps Dinah was an actual joint leading character, rather than Ollie's helpmeet and incompetent foil. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	xlineartx 2009-06-05 06:28 pm UTC (link)
	LA LA LA DINAH WEARS THE PANTS I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF HOW WHIPPED OLLIE IS. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	kingrockwell 2009-06-06 09:54 am UTC (link)
	oh man i just want to motto all this (Reply to this) (Parent)

	parsimonia 2009-06-05 02:49 pm UTC (link)
	This is the story that made me warm up to Dinah as a character. You get to see just how tough and capable of being kick-ass she is (and the art does a really great job of reflecting this), as well as her compassion and kindness. I would argue that Batman DOESN'T turn the screams off. I would agree. But I also think he's better at compartmentalizing than Dinah, probably. (Reply to this)

	the_engineer 2009-06-05 03:38 pm UTC (link)
	I so wanted Lone Canary and Cub. Stupid DC. (Reply to this)

richardak
2009-06-05 03:48 pm UTC (link)

My favorite part, in a way, is when she says "My fists and feet put a lot of those guys on stretchers. Maybe in wheelchairs, some for a good while."

I love the denial she's in about having clearly put at least some of those men in body bags. Because if you chop two grown men in the throats, and they go down without any further resistance, or even any thrashing around or otherwise making any noise, they're just unconscious. It's all but anatomically impossible to knock someone out non-fatally with a single blow to the throat, but okay.

And sure, it's possible to hit a jeep with an ultrasonic attack strong enough to instantaneously vaporize enough of the gasoline to cause it to explode without also liquefying the bones of any human occupants of said jeep.

But this is one of the things I like about this story: this degree of denial is clearly consistent with Dinah's character, at least as Simone wrote her. It's also consistent with the degree of PTSD that Dinah would in all likelihood be suffering after an experience like this.

Parenthetically, I would add that once you realize that Dinah is suffering form undiagnosed and untreated PTSD, her marriage to Oliver makes perfect sense.

"I would argue that Batman DOESN'T turn the screams off. But that's another story."

It's difficult to say anything definitive about a character who has had so many different versions with so many different creative teams over seven decades, but certainly some versions of the character took on the identity of Batman to frighten criminals precisely so that they would give up without his having to hurt them.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

bluefall
2009-06-05 04:56 pm UTC (link)

I would add that once you realize that Dinah is suffering form undiagnosed and untreated PTSD, her marriage to Oliver makes perfect sense.

Heh. I don't know how much I hold with that, but certainly something happened out there that caused a significant shift.

I mean, I've said it before, but it's interesting how much Dinah is already pulling away from Babs, here. First off, calling Ollie instead of Babs - having a duly elected mayor with red tape and bureaucracy to deal with pull strings, spend favors and waste political capital in order to get your new kid into the country instead of having a master information manipulator fix you up in the time it takes her to microwave her danish... it's not sensible. And when Babs feels automatically entitled to make some comment on Dinah's decision, Helena's all with the "this isn't your call, butt out," which I don't picture her saying if Dinah weren't coming across as being patient with Babs more than actually listening. (The dialogue could go either way.)

It's a huge change from just a handful of issues prior, when Dinah was basically being Ms Power Of Attorney for Babs before the Braniac surgery. Babs thinks she gets to have an opinion here because as far as she knows, she does - that's how they've been for years now, always talking out these huge decisions together, wanting to be sure they have each other's support before they do massive stuff like adopt kids or go in for life-threatening surgery. Then Dinah discovers Sin, and suddenly she's withdrawing, she's going through Ollie to get this kid into the country (and the only reason I can think of for that is so that she didn't have to have this "are you crazy? What happened to 'I won't make orphans'?" conversation until it's too late to make a difference), she's not telling Babs about Ollie faking her kid's death or even that Ollie proposed in the first place.

It's very weird, and it does kind of demand that something be up with her.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	jlbarnett 2009-06-05 06:04 pm UTC (link)
	I recall someone on the old board once making a comment about Superman taking ordinary people to the edge of the atmosphere to interrogate them, or something like that. sometimes the stuff superheroes assume normal people can survive is ridiculous (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

richardak
2009-06-06 08:53 pm UTC (link)

Human beings can survive exposure to a hard vacuum for about 30 seconds, give or take, although generally one will need medical attention immediately thereafter. How long one can survive at the edge of the atmosphere depends on what exact elevation you mean by that, although it's not likely to be very long in any case. But I think Simone knew exactly what she was writing here. I think she intended for Dinah to be using lethal force but to be in denial about it.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	jlbarnett 2009-06-06 09:27 pm UTC (link)
	maybe. That's kind of expecting a lot from comic art and fans though. I'm not going to assume death just because a character in a comic book is still. It's a static medium after all. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	richardak 2009-06-06 09:44 pm UTC (link)
	So still that they don't thrash around or make any noise as they're being dragged into the underbrush? That only happens if the person is completely unconscious or dead, and, again, you cannot knock someone merely unconscious with a punch to the throat. You can kill him, however. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	jlbarnett 2009-06-06 09:54 pm UTC (link)
	again, static medium. I can't tell that sort of thing from a drawing, so I wouldn't even think about it, so I wouldn't conclude they were dead. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	lieut_kettch 2009-06-06 12:23 am UTC (link)
	No Pokemon with Barda? Or is that for your follow-up post? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	uadlika 2009-06-06 12:43 am UTC (link)
	I was going to do one giant post but there was so much I think I will do three parts instead. Yes, Pokemon is in the next post, coming in the next few days. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	red_cyclone 2009-06-06 04:17 am UTC (link)
	Oh. I'd forgotten how much I missed Simone-written BOP, and Dinah, and Shiva - what's she up to at the moment anyway? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	bariman1987 2009-06-07 05:12 pm UTC (link)
	Shiva - what's she up to at the moment anyway? Last she was seen, Shiva got pwned by Tim Drake thanks to poison chocolates. Really, take a look at the last issue of "Robin." (Reply to this) (Parent)

	kingrockwell 2009-06-06 10:12 am UTC (link)
	I haven't gotten this far with the trades yet, so this is certainly illuminating. It also tells mw what I have to look forward to from Paulo Sequeira, and I think I approve! Thanks for the post! (Reply to this)

	Hole In Momma's Logic comicjunkie1 2009-06-07 10:48 am UTC (link)
	Ok, so the 1st attack is supposed to cause shame, right? Annnnd the guy was the one who insulted Dinah right? So... doesn't the fact that Dinah kicked his ass completely invalidate her little speech? (Reply to this)