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ACW #626 – Black Canary



Action Comics Weekly #626 (Black Canary)
“knock ’em Dead, Part 3”
Writer – Sharon Wright
Pencils – Randy DuBurke
Inks – Pablo Marcos
Letters – Steve Haynie
Colors – Gene D’Angelo
Editor – Robert Greenberger

It’s Black Canary day… and, I dunno… Ya feel that?  It’s almost as though this story might actually be headed somewhere.


I hope I didn’t just jinx it…






We open in that hotel where everything went down last week.  A room service attendant arrives at Room 5E, and goes ahead and ignores the “Do Not Disturb” placard on the knob.  Ya see, it’s never a good idea to do that… you might walk in on some consummation, a weird ritual… or maybe, ya know… a corpse!  We quickly shift scenes to outside, where Dinah has arrived for her scheduled meeting with the dead guy… only to find the place swarmed with Officers.  Before she can get the skinny from Lieutenant Cameron (it had to be a Lieutenant, didn’t it?  It had to be the one I couldn’t spell with an eight-letter head-start…), he finds himself with a microphone jammed in his face.  The reporter, who sadly isn’t Ms. Susan King, asks if this might be the work of a “Barfly Robber”.




It’s here that Dinah realizes that the “dead guy” in the hotel is the same dude she was supposed to be meeting with about setting up a floral arrangement in a Macy’s window.  An officer rushes over to inform the Liue… Luei… Liei… Lt. Cameron that the Bartender recalls Walt “Dead” Sarno leaving the bar with a woman the night before!  The bartender appears to “vogue” for a minute to illustrate what this woman might’ve looked like.




We jump ahead to the evening, where we join the severe-looking woman (at least I think it’s her… might be the “Barfly”) jogging in an unspecified Seattle area park.  She’s tuned in to the AM dial on her Walkman, listening to a report regarding Dead Walt Sarno.  While initially thought to have suffered a heart attack, it’s now believed that he overdosed on Chloral Hydrate (a sedative).  They don’t go so far as to rule it a homicide, however, they are keeping their options open that it might be due to the “Barfly Robbers”.  That really doesn’t roll off the tongue, does it?  I mean, “Barfly Bandits” is right there.  Whatever the case, the woman laughs.




We jump over to Sherwood Florist, where Dinah checks out the latest edition of the Daily Press.  She (and we) learns here that Vincent Scales has succumbed to his illness.  If you recall, he was eventually revealed to be the sorta-kinda “big bad” of the previous arc.  It’s nice to have “connective tissue”, but I gotta say… I couldn’t care less!




We wrap up with Dinah psyching herself up in front of her and Ollie’s framed Robin Hood painting.  We close as she suits up, wigs up… and hits the streets!






Wait… I’m confused.


Was this a chapter of Black Canary that… I actually kinda liked???  Oh man, don’t tell nobody… it’ll ruin my reputation!


What we have here is a, dare I say it, solid installment of this feature!  Granted, we don’t get much in the way of Canary… but, everything makes sense!  The only drawback to this chapter, which is kind of an inverse to my usual complaints… is the art!  Not that it’s all that bad either!  It’s just kind of “unclear”.


I couldn’t tell if that woman jogging in the park was supposed to be the killer or the severe-woman.  There was a dude with a mustache with Dinah for her meeting with Sarno… who she might’ve given the “side-eye” to… but again, it wasn’t clear.


The Vincent Scales reference… was okay.  I’m not sure if it’s going to actually go anywhere, or if it was just meant as a coda for the prior arc… either way, I suppose it doesn’t much matter.  Any connective-tissue that instills that there is a continuity is fine with me.


Overall… some clarity complaints aside, this was probably the best installment of Black Canary overall.  Let’s hope they can keep this up for the next seventy or so weeks that this story is going to run!


Tomorrow: We tie that bow!

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