Black Canary: Best of the Best #2 – Tom King, Writer; Ryan Sook, Artist; Dave Stewart, Colorist
Ray – 9.5/10
Ray: Tom King often grounds his books in a very specific sense of time and place, and it doesn’t get more specific than a whole series taking place entirely within the confines of an MMA fight. Of course, when the fight is between Black Canary and Lady Shiva, it deserves all the attention it gets. The fight had only begun when things kicked off last issue, with the events being broadcast across the universe, Dinah’s own teammates – and boyfriend – not knowing why she’s doing this – and most insiders giving Dinah low odds to make it out of round one, to say nothing of winning. This issue spends a lot of time focusing on the blow-by-blow of the round, as Dinah takes virtually all the punishment but doesn’t seem to know when to surrender – and while things get pretty bad for her by the end, we can see the hilarious announcers starting to believe that she can at least make this a fight.
And while this might be a simple if effective story, it’s divided with two compelling flashbacks that show the emotional heart if the series – Dinah’s complex relationship with her mother, the reason she’s doing this. In flashbacks to her childhood, we see the toll Dinah Sr.’s vigilante career took on her daughter, leaving the young girl spending long nights wondering if her mother would return at all and walking in on a traumatic informal surgery one night. But despite that, she clearly respects the hell out of her mother – and chooses her to train her when she needs it. The training is…brutal to put it lightly. Some of it almost feels like parody at points, but Dinah laps it up as if she totally understands. These two interacting is something we almost never see, as Dinah Drake is often dead long before Dinah Lance puts on the fishnets, so the fact that this series exists at all is already a big win.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
