Transmyscira: BLACK CANARY #8

BLKCA-Cv8-ds-66741

BLACK CANARY #8
Written by Brenden Fletcher
Art by Sandy Jarrell, Lee Loughridge
Published by DC Comics
Release Date: February 10, 2016

There’s plenty of missed connections in the latest Black Canary issue, but none of them are between fist and face as Dinah is forced to take care of family business while Kurt scrambles the band to reunite with her in Europe.

Following the battle against the Quietus, Dinah’s bandmates find themselves in one of the most rock n roll situations there is, being questioned by the cops over their last gig, treating us to just how bizarre and disjointed the exterior view of the events in Wainfleet and Gotham is until Kurt’s lawyers can get them out of hot water.

Meanwhile Dinah finds herself locked up and her powers inhibited, sharing a cell with Vixen as her aunt and cadre of ninjas in creepy animal masks try to extricate the family’s secret recipe for whoopass from her. This is first and foremost an issue about letting the art ride despite the interstitial moments of set up for the major plot points to come, and Sandy Jarrell gives a commanding performance. One of the key markers that has distinguished Black Canary as a boutique title for DC is the careful attention to maintaining a consistent tone and style to the art when Annie Wu steps away from the title and Jarrell is just as much of a compliment to her style as Pia Guerra was during the previous arc.

Jarrell stays carefully on model with all of the characters, but his thin, sharp lines and idiosyncratic figures are what provides the most stylistic continuity with Wu. What makes Jarrell’s work on this issue so breathtaking and particularly suited to this issue is where he deviates significantly with Wu. The last time a Black Canary issue was as explicitly driven by the art was #3, the Mad Max inflected chase sequence involving the tour bus. What was so mesmerizing about Wu’s work on that issue was her ability to find visual shorthands to push the reader into seeing particular motions between the panels by drawing on common Hollywood film shots.

Where Jarrell takes control is in the absolute stillness of his fight sequences. There’s an intangible quality to his work that separates it from how sequential work from hyperrealistic artists appears stiff or static. Jarrell is a very kinetic artist, but where in the movements he chooses to capture a figure communicates a sense of monastic stillness. There’s an eerie familiarity in how he accomplishes this as well as some of the other qualities of his work like how he draws the prison bars that entrap Dinah and Vixen, but it was a specific head tilt that finally put the final puzzle piece in place. Jarrell’s cartooning is utterly his own, particularly his idiosyncratic inks, but he shares several intangible qualities with Frank Miller working at the peak of his powers that come out in full force this issue.

The parallels between the current arc and Miller’s classic work on Daredevil and Elektra are self evident, but that alone isn’t worth more than a shrug because of course everyone wants to stand in that shadow, it’s a really cool shadow. It takes a lot more than just standing in a shadow like that to draw on its power. When W. Haden Blackman and Michael Del Mundo sought to evoke it on their Elektra series, they focused in on Bill Sienkiewicz’s work on Elektra Assassin, drawing out his original palette and feverish surreality to masterful effect. Fletcher, Jarrell, and Loughridge move in the opposite direction by evoking the precision and stillness of Miller’s own lines.

Last issue we were brought inside Kurt’s worldview that defines sound as the moment of creation and silence as entropy, but as Dinah moves outside of the music industry and into her native environment we’re reminded that the same is not true for her. In issue #3, Wu and Loughridge worked to communicate that Dinah is at peace in freefall, that she finds comfort in silence. Dinah’s world is visual and tactile. It’s about movements and touch, not sound, an idea that finds its fulfillment not only in the stillness of Jarrell’s snapshots of her fighting but the draining of Loughridge’s colors away from the bold, clashing colors that defined the first arc’s punk aesthetic.

Of course, despite Kurt’s conception that sloughs most everything away to essentialize sound in his cosmology, a rock band is more than just sound. Dinah was a competent singer, but what defined her on stage was her physical presence and performance, something we see come back into sharp focus as we’re drawn to her body in motion in a far more intimate way than we’ve seen before. It doesn’t just apply to Dinah either, as the plot to observe and read Dinah’s movements in the hopes of unlocking the key to her mother’s signature move recalls how Bo Maeve and Ditto, who is a creature of sound made flesh, first bonded through Maeve teaching Ditto her dance moves.

Beyond the trappings of rock stars and ninjas, Black Canary is a story about achieving harmony and that’s how it retains its vitality once the luster of high concept fades.

The Verdict: 10/10

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