GREEN ARROW/BLACK CANARY #21

Enemies List, Part Six:  Background Noise

August 2009

Written by Andrew Kreisberg

Pencils by Mike Norton

Inks by Josef Rubenstein

Cover by Ladrönn

Synopsis

Star City has been rendered completely silent.  With the lack of noise, rioters haven taken to the streets.  Black Canary and Green Arrow have done the same to control the situation.  Black Canary heads over to the university to find an answer to the silence.  As the professors explain, Black Canary recalls when she first used the Canary Cry and caused damage to her friend.  Afterwards, her friend was not forgiving and they no longer were friends.  Now, Dinah is given a device to return sound to the city.  She finds a high place to use it.  There, she encounters the source of the silence.  Black Canary attacks.  The man causes the building to explode.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

This is an average issue, with Kreisberg setting up the situation and the eventual confrontation.  There is nothing here that really stands out, although there are some neat touches such as the use of text messages to communicate and the backdrop of (pseudo-) science to solve the problem.  I should also mention the issue was paced nicely, everything flowed nicely.  However, the final exposition from the bad guy was horrible and as I have said for awhile now, Kreisberg has not done a good job defining Ollie and Dinah to make the emotional payoffs work.  Luckily, there is not much character interaction between the two leads (where the story breaks down) here so this read better than some of the previous ones. 

I didn’t realize it last issue, but I guess it certainly hit me with this issue:  why are so many people rioting simply because there is no longer any sound.  I can understand being freaked out and a little unnerved, but rioting and blood thirst.  I think it really hit me when the girl was asking why Dinah didn’t kill the mugger.  I mean, really?  I understand being upset at being attacked and I certainly wouldn’t go easy on the dude, but does asking to kill someone an offshoot of the sounds of silence (insert Simon and Garfunkel reference here).  Anyway, I think the problem with this issue (and the basic idea) is that comic books don’t rely on sound, so having no sound in the story doesn’t really come across that well.  There is still dialogue of sorts with the dueling captions of Ollie and Cupid, so it seems like a typical issue.   

I am not sure Kreisberg meant it in quite this way, but I got a chuckle out of the way both Dinah and Wildcat decided doors are not worth using.  seriously, they both come crashing through windows.  At least Dinah is excused because it is a crisis and perhaps a little pressed for time and it might take a little bit of time to go through the lobby, up the elevator, and down the hall.  But, Wildcat?  He couldn’t take the time to ring the doorbell of his friend’s house.  And why is bursting through the window, anyhow?  Is he trying to scare Dinah?  I am sure he is there to train her.  Is that part of the training.  I don’t know, I just found it funny.  Doors?  Who needs doors?

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