As if a cover featuring the Flash battling a Tyrannosaurus rex wasn’t exciting enough, Flash Comics 86 also marked the debut of the Black Canary.
She was a thief, one adept enough to steal the very feature in which she first appeared from its protagonist, Johnny Thunder.
“All the 1940s stories were written by Robert Kanigher, with art by Carmine Infantino,” noted comics historian Michael E. Grost.
“In this first tale, the Black Canary is a crook who preys on other crooks. Such characters were familiar in 1930s’ pulp magazine tales, such as Erle Stanley Gardner’s Paul Pry and Lester Leith. In the tale immediately following, all of this was changed. The Black Canary became a 100 percent good gal, the sort of person who was a series hero in comic books. She retained her street smarts, underworld savvy and toughness, however. Here and later, she is a person who is an expert on the underworld.
“Kanigher has a long tradition of woman heroes. He scripted Wonder Woman during the Silver Age, took on Lois Lane and Supergirl in the 1970s, and featured Ora in his Knights of the Galaxy tales. All of these series are enthusiastically feminist.”
Operating like a femme fatale, the Canary cons the dimwitted superhero Johnny Thunder into performing a burglary for her.
“Like several of the Black Canary tales to come, this one deals with the side of a building, near which people are ascending on a ladder or a staircase,’ Grost noted. “Kanigher seemed to come up with suspense plots in such locales, and Infantino excelled at drawing the buildings.”
At the tale’s climax, the Canary proves her good intentions by deflecting the aim of a crook who’s about to shoot Thunder — not that he required much help. Born at 7 a.m. on the 7th day of the 7th month of a year ending in 7 (1917), Thunder was under the protection of a somewhat cranky but omnipotent Badhnisian Thunderbolt.
Bob Doncaster wrote:
ReplyDeleteFlash fighting a dinosaur would have drawn me to that book.
Edward Bebee wrote:
ReplyDelete“Kanigher has a long tradition of woman heroes. ..... All of these series are enthusiastically feminist.”
That's not a common claim about Kanigher's writing. In fact, usually, the opposite view seems to be "accepted wisdom."
I replied:
I would dispute that myself, where Wonder Woman is concerned. It seems clear to me that Kanigher hated that assignment.