Character Profiles - Heroes - Black Canary/Dinah Lance
Alter Ego: Dinah Laurel Lance
Occupation: Crime Fighter
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: Dinah Drake Lance/Black Canary I (mother, deceased), Larry Lance (father, deceased)
Group Affiliations: Justice League of America,
Justice Society of America, Birds Of Prey
Base of Operations: Mobile
Height: 5ft 4in
Weight: 124lbs
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Blonde
First Appearance: Justice Leauge Of America #75 (November, 1969)
Created By: Robert Kanigher,
Carmine Infantino
SILVER AGE
Black Canary was revived along with the other Golden Age characters during the 1960s, and was shown as existing on the parallel world of Earth-Two (the home of DC's Golden Age versions of its characters). It was also revealed that Dinah had married Larry Lance sometime during the 1950s. Dinah also took part in various annual teamups between the Justice Society and Earth-One's Justice League of America.
In a 1969 JLA-JSA teamup against the rogue living star-creature Aquarius, Larry Lance was killed while trying to save Dinah's life from an attack. Out of grief, Black Canary decided to leave Earth-Two and move to Earth-One to create a fresh start. The Black Canary also joined the Justice League. Sometime afterwards, she began dating, her JLA colleague Green Arrow, and discovered that she had somehow gained a powerful supersonic scream, eventually named the Canary Cry.
In Justice League of America #219 and #220, it was revealed (via a retcon) that Black Canary was actually the daughter of the original Black Canary. Sometime during the 1950s, Dinah and her husband Larry had had a child. The infant developed a canary cry (given to her by the Justice Society foe the Wizard) which proved uncontrollable and devastating. Dinah asked her old friend Johnny Thunder to summon his Thunderbolt in hopes of a cure but it was to no avail. The Thunderbolt kept the child in suspended animation (but aging all the while) in his native Thunderbolt dimension. It was the Lances' hope that a cure could be found for the child's power, or at least a way to control it. Seeing his friends in pain, the Thunderbolt decided to erase all knowledge from the three that he had done this, letting them think that the child had died somehow. He felt that this would be for the best. After the battle with Aquarius, Dinah realized she was dying from the radiation she was exposed to during the battle with the star creature. She discussed possible solutions with the Thunderbolt and Superman of Earth-1. The three arranged to transfer Dinah's memories into the body of her now-adult daughter, still held in suspended animation, while not letting Dinah believe anything unusual had happened to her. This retcon was written to deal with the fact that Dinah was originally much older than her romantic counterpart, Green Arrow, as well as the rest of the Justice League characters.
MODERN AGE
Dinah Lance idolized her mother, Diana Drake Lance. Her mother was one of the great mystery women of her age, the Black Canary, who operated on her own as well as with the Justice Society of America and teamed-up with the first Starman. Dinah was raised around all these heroes as aunts and uncles, and she wanted to be just like them. Unfortunately, her parents wanted something else for her.
Diana and Larry did not want young Dinah following in her mother’s footsteps. But Dinah was insistent. She trained in hand to hand combat with Ted Grant, the golden age hero Wildcat, and with a sensei in Japan. When she discovered she was a metahuman, with the power of a sonic scream, her path was set. She took her mother’s old costume, a blonde wig, and at the age of nineteen, she became the new Black Canary.
On one of her earliest outings, Dinah was drawn into a battle with four other new heroes: the Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and the Martian Manhunter. The four decided to stay working together, and they formed the Justice League of America. Their ranks grew, and they even gained the approval of the Justice Society, although Dinah’s mother was still not happy.
During her early days with the JLA, Dinah met Ollie Queen, the hero called Green Arrow. While originally put off by his brash exterior, Dinah eventually fell for him, and the two began a passionate affair. These early adventures lead to tragedies in Dinah’s life, as her father died to save her, and her mother passed away from cancer, but not before giving her daughter her blessing. Dinah became part of a group within the League that took it upon themselves to wipe the memories of villains who learned the identities of heroes. This eventually led to the attempted rewiring of the mind of Dr. Light, an action that reverberates to this day.
When Green Arrow left the League, Dinah stayed for a time, but eventually left to join Ollie and Hal Jordan, the current Green Lantern of Earth, in their travels across America. Dinah helped Speedy, Roy Harper, Ollie’s old sidekick, break his addiction to heroin. Ollie and Dinah’s relationship grew rocky, and they fought and split up on occasion, but they always seemed to find their way back together.
When the JLA was reformed after Darkseid’s attempt to destroy Earth’s heroes, Dinah rejoined it. She stayed with the team for a time, but she eventually moved on. She found her way to Seattle, where she set up a flower shop called Sherwood Florist with Green Arrow. One night, while patrolling Seattle on her own, Dinah was taken by a group of drug dealers and tortured. Before Green Arrow could arrive and save her, her throat was cut, mangling her vocal chords and causing her to lose her sonic scream and to make her barren.
Ollie and Dinah attempted to stay together, and they did for a time. Dinah continued to fight crime after she recovered from the torture, with or without Ollie. He would disappear for months at a time, and she stayed in Seattle, working and fighting crime. But eventually, his infidelities grew too much, and Dinah left him. He went to travel, and she stayed fighting crime in Seattle.
Dinah seemed to have lost her purpose. She spent a brief time teamed up with the new Ray, and they had a fling, something she also regretted. When Sherwood Florist was burned to the ground, Dinah was truly at ends. And when Connor Hawke came to tell her that his father and her old love Ollie Queen had died, Dinah did not know what to do.
But purpose found her, in the form of Oracle. Barbara Gordon, the heroic information broker called Oracle, needed an agent to go and do the deeds she could not. Giving Dinah a new costume and hair dye so she no longer needed the wig, Dinah began her new life. Oracle remained distant from Dinah for many of their early adventures, not revealing her identity, but eventually the forces of Blockbuster began hunting Oracle, and Dinah was called to help. The two met face to face for the first time in years, having met once during Babs’s time as Batgirl, and they have remained the closest of friends since.
While vacationing, Dinah encountered a strange man who she began a whirlwind romance with. What she didn’t know was that this man was Ra’s al Ghul, the immortal eco-terrorist and nemesis of Batman. Ra’s was seeking a woman to give him an heir, and he had decided on Dinah. When she told him she could not bear children, he offered her one of his Lazarus Pits. She refused, but in Oracle’s attempt to free her from al, Ghul, she was mortally wounded, and was submerged in the pit anyway. Coming out of it, she found that her Canary Cry was restored, and she set out with a new purpose.
While still working with Oracle, Dinah was given an honor that she had always hoped for and joined the newly reformed JSA. She began a relationship with the new Dr. Mid-Nite, but that was halted when Ollie Queen returned from the dead. While the two began taking tentative steps, they eventually fell back in love with each other.
Dinah began splitting her time between adventures with Ollie and his son Connor and her assignments with Oracle. She aided Oracle in her attempts to exonerate Bruce Wayne for the murder of Vesper Fairchild, and continued to operate with Gotham as her home base. Recently, while on assignment for Oracle, she was kidnapped by the blackmailer know as Savant, and her legs were broken. While she was saved by the Huntress, Dinah was haunted by the similarity between this and the last time she had been captured.
The Huntress joined her and Oracle as a part of their group, mainly at Dinah’s urging. Shortly afterwards, Dinah was called away to the home of her old sensei, who was dying, There she met Lady Shiva, another of the sensei’s old students, and they went to hunt down his killer, the assassin known as Cheshire, the mother of Dinah’s goddaughter. The three fought across three continents, eventually arriving in America, where their paths crossed with a corrupt senator who had kidnapped Oracle.
Dinah’s relationship with Ollie Queen finally came to an end after she found she could not deal with all the secrets he was keeping. Returning to Gotham, she found that Oracle had set her up with a new florist shop, and that she, Oracle and Huntress were now a smooth crime fighting machine.
The most recent events in Dinah’s life have been trying. She joined with another group of Leaguers in the hunt for Dr. Light after the death of Sue Dibny. They were forced to face down the events of the night when they attempted to mindwipe him. Also, with the destruction of Oracle’s Clocktower, the Birds of Prey are now headquartered out of an old Blackhawk jet.
Since they were both trained by the same sensei, Black Canary has fostered a friendship of sorts with Lady Shiva. Shiva, impressed by Black Canary's formidable martial arts prowess, offered to provide her with further training. Black Canary turned down the offer, thinking it would compromise her morality, although they kept an ongoing correspondence, with Shiva conveying recommendations to assist Canary in honing her skills.
Dinah has embarked upon a regimen of very harsh training in an unidentified Vietnamese bidonville. (In her initial "exercise," a bag is secured over her head and she is forced to confront a body of club-wielding men who attack her without restraint. At the close of the issue, she lies unconscious.) She has left her place in the Birds of Prey to a reborn Lady Shiva, who has assumed the identity of the Jade Canary. Both of these occurrences apparently reflect Dinah's express wishes.
One Year Later Dinah trades life experiences with Lady Shiva in hopes of softening the warrior, undertaking a harsh training regimen in an unidentified Vietnamese bidonville, or shantytown. The regimen replicates Shiva's early life and training; Shiva, meanwhile, assumes Dinah's role in Oracle's group and demands that her associates call her the "Jade Canary".
When Dinah realizes following Lady Shiva's path will require her to fundamentally change who she is as a person, she ends the training and returns to the United States. She brings with her a little girl, Sin, who also had begun the harsh grooming process to be Lady Shiva's successor. Oliver Queen uses his connections to allow Sin to immigrate into the country. Dinah hopes to balance her duties as a superhero with the responsibilities of being a surrogate mother/sister to the child.
Dinah informs Oracle that she is quitting the team, deciding instead to devote all her time to raising Sin. Dinah and Sin moved away from Metropolis; their final destination is not stated but hinted that it may be Star City as Dinah tells Sin (jokingly) she can rip Ollie's beard out if he isn't nice to her.
SKILLS
Black Canary is one of the premier hand-to-hand fighters in the world. She is also a capable investigator, especially with Oracle’s computer network as back up. Her meta ability is a Canary Cry, a sonic scream that can do anything from stun an opponent to doing actual physical damage to enemies and property.
Some content and Pics came from Birdwatching: Birds of Prey
This bio came from: Comix Forums
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