November 1965: The Most Dangerous Game

In their second and final team-up try-out, Starman and the Black Canary fought another costumed pair, the Sportsmaster and the Huntress, in a sort of double date of derring-do.

The criminals — one obsessed with competitive athletics, the other with traps and snares — both dated from the late 1940s. 

Introduced in Sensation Comics 68 (Aug. 1947), the Huntress was dedicated to turning the tables on law enforcement by capturing public officials and hunting them down in her game preserve. Wildcat thwarted her deadly desires. 

The ruthless “Crusher” Crock turned to crime after being banned from professional athletics in All-American Comics 85 (May 1947). Although Green Lantern stopped him, the tenacious crook got himself a costume and returned as Sportsmaster in Green Lantern 28 (Oct.-Nov. 1947).

Subsequently married, the crooked couple tries to capture Starman, Black Canary and Wildcat in The Big Super-Hero Hunt.

“A very enjoyable escapade, with no fewer than five golden-age characters on hand, as Wildcat joined with Starman and Black Canary in the course of their conflict with Sportsmaster and (Golden Age) Huntress,” Keith W. Williams observed. “Great fun, with a superbly crafted cover, and interior work to match, by Murphy Anderson. Thanks to Fox and Anderson, the Golden Age reached a new zenith in the Silver Age.”

“One suspects that the two Black Canary and Starman revivals were more done out of a love of the two characters, and a chance to see ‘what they are doing now,’ than from any real expectation that they would be a huge reader hit,” observed Michael E. Grost.

“ (In) The Big Superhero Hunt (The Brave and the Bold 62, Nov. 1965), the Black Canary and Starman team up with another revived hero, Wildcat, to fight against two old villains: the Sportsmaster and the Huntress. After a good opening involving statues of athletes, this minor tale becomes a routine fight between good guys and bad guys. Its biggest merit is some good draftsmanship by Murphy Anderson.”

August 1965: Astral Avenger and Blonde Bombshell

In 1965, Murphy Anderson’s resplendent renderings turned a pair of pairs into a winning hand.

Although the team-ups of Hourman and Dr. Fate in Showcase and of Starman and Black Canary in The Brave and the Bold failed to develop into superhero revival series at the time, they remain highly prized by collectors decades later.

The North Carolina-born Anderson’s smooth, fine-lined work evolved because he’d been influenced by “…many of the slickest artists in the field, including Will Eisner, Lou Fine and Alex Raymond,” observed comics historian Jerry Bails.

In The Brave and the Bold 61 (Aug. 1965), Anderson and writer Gardner Fox gave us Mastermind of Menaces!, a tale in which Starman and Black Canary teamed up to tackle the Astral Avenger’s unforgettable fog-foe, the Mist (who’d first appeared in The Menace of the Invisible Raiders in Adventure Comics 67, Oct. 1941).

The two members of the newly reactivated Justice Society of America had seen some changes since the team’s last adventure in All-Star Comics 57 (Feb.-March 1951). 

Florist Dinah Drake, who began her costumed career as a sort of Robin Hood-like outlaw, had finally settled down and married her boyfriend, private detective Larry Lance.

And somewhere along the way, astronomer Ted Knight upgraded his original “gravity rod” into a more potent “cosmic rod,” underlining the character’s similarity to Green Lantern.

“He first put this new instrument to use against the Crime Syndicate of America of Earth-Three, when he returned to action with his fellow-JSAers Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Dr. Mid-Nite and Black Canary,” noted a two-page text feature in Brave and the Bold 61. “This was the first time he had worked with the Blonde Bombshell, for he had retired before she began her crime-fighting career.”

Later, via retroactive continuity, the pair’s comradely relationship would be recast as an adulterous affair. 

Because the audience for superhero comics had shifted from largely children to largely adults over the intervening decades, that plot twist was fairly predictable.

February 1948: The Siren of the Superheroes

It was 1947. In postwar comic books, superheroes were on the way out and women were on the way in.

Romance comics had just arrived, and even titles like Action Comics and Detective Comics now had women displayed on their covers as prominently as the resident superheroes.

Over at Harvey Comics, the popular super heroine Black Cat had been awarded her own title in 1946. At Timely, in Captain America Comics 66 (Dec. 1947), Bucky got the boot, replaced as Cap’s sidekick by Golden Girl. In Marvel Mystery Comics 82 (May, 1947), the Sub-Mariner met his crime-fighting super-cousin Namora. The Human Torch would team up with Sun Girl.

And, with impeccable timing, the Black Canary arrived in Flash Comics 86 (Aug. 1947).

The creation of writer Robert Kanigher and artist Carmine Infantino, Dinah Drake was originally a masked Robin Hood, a sexy foil for the dunderhead superhero Johnny Thunder.

As she became more law-abiding, the jiu jitsu expert also deftly tossed Johnny out of his own feature and the Justice Society of America. She appeared in Flash Comics until publication ceased in 1949 and with the JSA in All Star Comics until their run ended in 1951.

The Black Canary returned a little more than a decade later in dimension-hopping adventures with the Justice League of America. In 1965, she teamed up with Starman for two issues of Brave and the Bold, apparently as a tryout for a revival (DC did the same thing with an Hourman and Dr. Fate team-up). As comics became more adult in later decades, her relationship with Starman was revealed to be adulterous.

In 1969, when her husband, private eye Larry Lance, was killed, Black Canary joined the JLA and coincidentally got tricked out with a super power — a destructive voice — presumably to make her more useful. Really, she was there to replace Wonder Woman, who had lost her powers the year before and become an Emma Peel-style mod crime fighter.

August 1947: A Pretty Thief Steals the Show

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.