Black Canary: Best of the Best #3

Recap
ROUND THREE... FIGHT! Victory seems assured for the vicious Lady Shiva. Can anything turn the tide of this match? Plus, the Dark Knight Detective drops in on Canary's training to sway her from the fight!
Review
Black Canary: Best of the Best #3 picks up with round three of the big fight that Dinah continues to horribly lose. This issue delves into some more of the backstory of the fight with Batman getting involved as well as more backstory for how Dinah formed a deal with Vandal Savage to save her mom. If it was not clear already, Tom King has a strong love for DC’s history and his knowledge is vast. This issue plays a lot with that continuity, painting a past for Dinah’s mother, the original Black Canary, that is not often explored.
While the previous issue focused a lot on Dinah’s upbringing and reason for becoming a hero, this issue focuses more on her motives for doing this fight. The inclusion of Batman comes in when he decides that he is not okay with Dinah participating in the fight with Shiva, mainly due to his “altruistic” morals for how a hero “should” act. In typical Tom King fashion, Batman is then put into a situation of assisting Dinah in her training, as the characters start breaking down his façade and allure. King has done this a lot in his miniseries, where he uses Batman as a device to showcase how the other characters within the DC universe interact with him. In The Human Target, he was used as a way to show Christopher Chance’s paranoia; whereas in Strange Adventures he was used to showcase the position Adam Strange held within the superhero community. Here, he is shown looking down upon Dinah’s choice, only for her and her mom to laugh at him as their superhero legacy has existed longer than he has, and they don’t need this man to tell them what to do. Overall, it is a great use of Batman that doesn’t harm the character, while elevating others.
The other facet of this backstory shows how Dinah approaches Vandal Savage and why she decides to make a deal with him. This is where King’s knowledge of DC’s past and present come in, revealing that Savage and the original Black Canary had stayed in touch in the years since her retirement. Even though they were villains to one another, they still maintained some levels of communication. This is similar to how Batman and The Flash are often portrayed as communicating with their rogues galleries years after retirement. This was a small tidbit of the issue that helped paint some worldbuilding that added more to the overall story.
The rest of the issue showcases the modern day where Dinah resumes the third round of her fight with Lady Shiva. This is where Ryan Sook really gets to shine, especially as the brutality heats up and Lady Shiva starts taking some nasty shots. This is where the severity of the situation really starts to show, as Dinah’s losing situation continues to get more dire. With the story revealing that Dinah only needs to survive another few rounds in order for her deal with Savage to pay off, there is no way she can continue to take the beating she has. As the issues ramp up, expect to see her holding more of her own.
Final Thoughts
Black Canary: Best of the Best #3 continues to showcase the awesomeness of the fight between Black Canary and Lady Shiva, while also delving more into the Canaries' backstories.
Black Canary: Best of the Best #3: Legacy Within Brutality
- Writing - 9/109/10
- Storyline - 9/109/10
- Art - 9/109/10
- Color - 9/109/10
- Cover Art - 9/109/10