Does Black Canary really regerts what she did to Bruce and Roy ? Spoilers for BOP #8

[CMBMOOL]

I know Gail Simone Post here from time to time, so I'm hoping she can catch this...

It has to do with the ending for Birds of Prey #8, where we see the Black Canary face with the sins of her past, one of the things I did not see was Bruce and Roy.

I'm hoping Gail would include them within the next issue especially considering how we NEVER saw Canary apologizing for her part of the Mindwiping.

Also with how Roy was treated one must wonder if Canary's worried about him at all anymore ?

I'm hoping someone can clear this up or not.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Ah, the perils of continuity.

Basically, Roy's drugged outta his mind, working with villains and stumbling down the road of no return. Anyone who gave half a damn about him would hunt him down, find him and set him straight no matter what. It's something well within the ability of the hero community.

But because DC thinks that making Roy a drug addict means $$$, no character will do that. So against all common sense, people close to Roy like Dinah and Dick will just ring their hands, bemoan their helplessness and look the other way.

[Mat001]

Bruce and Dinah's issues were already resolved during "Crisis Of Conscience" and when he acted more polite to her and Barbara after his conversation with Kal-L. And then when the League reformed in "The Tornado Path", Bruce didn't say anything negative about her becoming the chairperson. He was angry more at Zatanna than the others, though he did vent his issues to Carter and Hal when he punched them in "Crisis Of Conscience" and "Revenge Of The Green Lanterns".

[Mark_S]

How were they resolved? I get the feeling that the DC editors didn't want Bruce mad at anyone except Zatanna and everything else was just pushed out of the way. I objected at the time to Dianah being made head of the JLA, the idea of a person who has committed and not paid for kidnapping and assault makes the very name Justice League a joke in my opinion.

Mark_S

[Jbenn]

I know Gail Simone Post here from time to time, so I'm hoping she can catch this...

It has to do with the ending for Birds of Prey #8, where we see the Black Canary face with the sins of her past, one of the things I did not see was Bruce and Roy.

I'm hoping Gail would include them within the next issue especially considering how we NEVER saw Canary apologizing for her part of the Mindwiping.

Also with how Roy was treated one must wonder if Canary's worried about him at all anymore ?

I'm hoping someone can clear this up or not.

The Bruce question has been one that bothered me for awhile too. I was very surprised that among Dinah's "regrets" were her thing with the then-teenage Ray (which to my knowledge has never been brought up by any other writer since) and Dr. Light (whose mind-wipe she voted AGAINST unlike the Batman vote which was unanimous) but Bruce? No. She has never expressed regret over that. Zatanna has. Ollie has (but he always does after the fact) but none of the other members of the mind-wipe have shown any remorse (and this was explicitly shown in the only follow-up to that story Geoff Johns “Crisis of Conscience” JLA arc and its aftermath where Ollie was visibly guilty while Dinah never said Boo to Batman about it, I remember Bruce having it out with Ollie and Carter and Zatanna apologizing but Dinah said very little throughout - certainly not "sorry"). And remember, if Dr. Light and the other villains hadn’t gotten their memories back following Sue’s death and if Wally West hadn’t found out and pushed them to admit it they probably would’ve continued to cover it up.

This wasn’t helped with that scene in BoP #79 where Dinah tells Batman/Bruce off because of the way he’s treated Oracle and Huntress. She tells him:

Keep in mind that (retroactively according to DC) one of the reasons he is the way he is, is because of the mind-wipe she voted for. And she has to know it as she says this (at some point some of the conspirators must have figured out they altered Batman in some way as his level of paranoia heightened over the years).

And then says if he doesn’t lay off she’ll lose respect for him. Awesome, right? Well considering this comes AFTER Identity Crisis and the mind-wipe reveal, it makes Dinah somewhat of a hypocrite. She voted to mind-wipe the guy, she lied about for years - TO HIS FACE, she’s lied about to all his “family” (including her best friend) who must wonder why/how he got so paranoid about other heroes, she only fessed up after it was revealed not due to any guilt and unlike Zee and Ollie she’s pretty unrepentant about it (on-panel at least). Why should Batman respect her (at this point in time in the DCU) again? Once Identity Crisis is factored in that whole moment reads badly for Black Canary (to me at least) although it seems to be one of the “Crowning Moment of Awesome” moments for Dinah.

I mean, Bruce can be a tool. Writers have written him as such from the 90s into the 00s. But he’s also been there whenever anyone in the cape “community” needs him, he seems to have forgiven those involved in the mind-wipe, he has (especially since his return) eased up on Oracle and Huntress and when it seemed that Dinah had “killed” Ollie on their wedding night (even though it was really Everyman) it was ONLY Bruce who believed her when she said it wasn’t Ollie. You would think she have apologized to him since. But apparently he’s low on her list of regrets (behind Dr. Light?)

There’s also the idea either that a) Oracle knows about the mind-wiping of her mentor/big brother figure and her having it out with Canary about it wasn’t important enough to discuss on-panel (though apparently dishing about Ollie’s love life prior to the marriage is) or b) Oracle still does not know the hand her supposed-BFF had in making the paranoid, ultra-suspicious jerk he was for so long. I really don’t think Barbara (who is a lot like Bruce in many ways and cares for him a great deal despite his behavior) would be “cool” with his supposed “friends” erasing parts of his mind, especially when one of them is HER supposed best friend who was still actively covering the incident up long after she had joined Barbara’s operations and they became friends. Either way it’s long past time it should have been addressed between the two of them. I’ve seen in several places that Gail was going to address it at some point but it fell through but I don’t think that’s enough, considering how close Dinah and Babs are supposed to be and how big the Batman mind-wiping incident has become in the Didio-era DCU. Right now it’s like the elephant in the room whenever Batman is mentioned or appears in a scene in Birds of Prey.

[Hamdinger]

Or it could be the case of one writer not wanting to waste their time with crappy stories from years ago that the writer had nothing to do with.... kinda like what every other writer has done before in Marvel and DC.

[noh-varr]

I rather hope neither of them comes up, as I am not a fan of the whole mind wipe thing in Identity Crisis (or really any of that whole 'event') or the current situation with Roy. Both are really crummy forced stories that for my money can happily be ignored forever. Ideally with Lian just magically alive again and Roy back to being a decent character....

But really depending on how long the whole Black Canary dealing with her regrets lasts, odds are one or the other will pop up at least in a quick panel view. I would imagine that the regrets focused upon will be things that Gail will handle later on in the series and the random calls to continuity will just be quick asides. Because as others have stated, really wouldn't a big number of characters have stopped Red Arrow and gotten a real intervention going by now? Instead of ignoring the problem or putting up a minor fight?

[Flash Gordon]

Dinah most likely doesn't want to step foot in that crap Cry for Justice storyline.

She might end up getting raped and doing crack lines off a pigeon.

[CMBMOOL]

Or it could be the case of one writer not wanting to waste their time with crappy stories from years ago that the writer had nothing to do with.... kinda like what every other writer has done before in Marvel and DC.

Well, you have a point there, I mean when was the last time DC and/or Marvel ever TRIED to Followup on a bad storyline ?


I'm just hoping Gail's willing to do it given her respect for these character and their history, plus it would be interesting to fully see her 2 cents on the subject at hand, like what she did with Ryan Choi's death in Secret Six.

[Sean Walsh]

How were they resolved? I get the feeling that the DC editors didn't want Bruce mad at anyone except Zatanna and everything else was just pushed out of the way.

Well, even that's been resolved - Dini used her a few times during his DETECTIVE run and ran the gamut with their relationship, starting with Bruce's anger & disdain but eventually getting them back to a good place. And he did it well, too.

[Mark_S]

Well, even that's been resolved - Dini used her a few times during his DETECTIVE run and ran the gamut with their relationship, starting with Bruce's anger & disdain but eventually getting them back to a good place. And he did it well, too.

He did, but as I see in the current Gotham City Siren's Zatanna is back at it again.

Mark_S

[Mark_S]

Or it could be the case of one writer not wanting to waste their time with crappy stories from years ago that the writer had nothing to do with.... kinda like what every other writer has done before in Marvel and DC.

Literary cowardice should not be applauded or excused. I've always felt that the reason Barbara and Dinah never talked about this was because editorial flat out told Gail not to. Even the best chance to bring it out, when Zinda's own mind-control history was referenced, ignored it. As I said it made the JLA with Dinah in charge a cynical joke that I couldn't read. To me the more DC hides from it's mistakes the more those mistakes haunt them.

Mark_S

[carabas]

Literary cowardice should not be applauded or excused. I've always felt that the reason Barbara and Dinah never talked about this was because editorial flat out told Gail not to. Even the best chance to bring it out, when Zinda's own mind-control history was referenced, ignored it. As I said it made the JLA with Dinah in charge a cynical joke that I couldn't read. To me the more DC hides from it's mistakes the more those mistakes haunt them.

You basically have three options here...

- Have every future story mired in crap like Identity Crisis and this Arsenal mess.
- Retcon those stories completely out of existance.
- Do what they have been doing: maintain the Sacred Continuity but ignore it mostly because doing otherwise makes a whole bunch of character unusable.

[Mark_S]

You basically have three options here...

- Have every future story mired in crap like Identity Crisis and this Arsenal mess.
- Retcon those stories completely out of existance.
- Do what they have been doing: maintain the Sacred Continuity but ignore it mostly because doing otherwise makes a whole bunch of character unusable.

They don't have to be mired, simply dealt with. When you do something wrong it lasts. The worse you do, the more it lasts. The more ideal you try to be, the more you strive to be a good person the more disastrous it can be when you fail. But one of the measures of any person is how they face their mistakes and crimes. So far the only one to face up to what she did and the consequences is Zatanna. And now (hopefully if Catwoman doesn't wimp out on it again) she'll have to face what she's doing in GCS. Dinah in the meantime has skirted her responsibility and that's a deep flaw in the character.

Mark_S

[CMBMOOL]

He did, but as I see in the current Gotham City Siren's Zatanna is back at it again.

Mark_S

But isn't the Gotham City Siren title being written by someone that isn't Paul Dini now ?