Six years ago, backstage at a dive comedy club near Dallas, a friend handed me a comic to read. I was bored, the comedian sucked, and I had no tables but I couldn't go home, so I was grateful for a distraction, any distraction.
The comic itself wasn't all that great, it was Frank Miller and Jim Lee's Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder, which was definitely not the best of the Batman literature but hey, it was better than nothing. It was the 3rd issue, which begins with a very annoyed woman stuck working in a crappy bar getting progressively more and more pissed off as the episode progresses until finally, she erupts and realizes her fantasy of kicking the ass of every obnoxious asshole that tortured and tormented her working life. What can I say? I definitely could relate. Having been away from the world of comics for some years (due to an epic D&D obsession which is another story for another day) I was not familiar with the character and so asked the friend who loaned it to me about her and why she was so familiar.
He smiled.
The next day he brought me Chuck Dixon's trade copy of Birds of Prey and reading it was one of the most surreal experiences I have ever had in my entire life.
This girl was me. To the letter (minus the obvious superhero aspect - gimme a break people!). I looked her up on DC Comic's hero database and it was weird. Same height, same weight, same build. Studied the same martial arts, same bad choices in men...same temperament. It was unreal.
And so my fascination/unusual link with the Black Canary began.
The comic starts off with Dinah Lance, real name of the crime-fighting Black Canary, living in a city that had brought her nothing but pain, she was broke and in debt up to her eyeballs, single after yet another failed relationship with an emotionally unavailable man. She had lost her voice (in her case it was her superhero voice, a sonic scream), her friends, she was alone and boy was she angry!
I could relate. I had a crappy job, I was still recovering from the loss of a relationship that I thought had been the love of my life (yes emotionally unavailable). I was in debt up to my eyeballs, I was living in Texas, and I had lost my voice.
Not my actual voice, but that piece of me that was fearless and said what she thought. That knew that she was enough, and could do anything. I had a crisis in confidence and that left me there. In Dallas. I was miserable.
For BC, things pick up as she is enlisted by Oracle (former Batgirl, Barbara Gordon) to be her "woman in the field" since Babs was paralyzed (see The Killing Joke), a plot point which becomes revealed later in the story.
This comic was the beginning of my own personal healing. Initially, with Chuck Dixon then largely through Gail Simone, who took over writing for the series. It was a woman who was finding herself, and I was finding myself right along with her.
Eventually, Dinah does get her voice back. That unique and defining piece of her that was really and truly hers. And I know that triumph, because through her, I found mine too.
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