Name: Dinah Laurel Lance Parents: Larry & Dinah/Diana* Drake Lance (deceased) Siblings: none Significant Other(s): none at the moment; married at 18 to fellow college student Craig Windrow (they divorced after 9 months); long-term relationship with Oliver Queen, the original Green Arrow, which broke up sometime before his death Birthplace: Gotham City First Appearance: Black Canary I: Flash Comics #86, August 1947 Black Canary II.: Justice League of America #219-20, Oct/Nov 1983 (Justice League of America #75, November 1969, is generally accepted as Canary II's first appearance, but the "fact" that the character was two people wasn't introduced into continuity until the 1983 story arc and it was then retroactively applied to almost fifteen years of the character's history. Until 1983, there was only one Black Canary.) Character Created By: Bob Kanigher and Carmine Infantino (Infantino also created Batgirl some twenty years later) Vital Statistics: blue-grey eyes, blonde hair, 5'4" tall, 115 lbs (until recently, she wore a blonde wig to disguise her naturally black hair while in her Black Canary guise; however, since teaming up with Oracle, she has abandoned the wig altogether and now bleaches her hair) Base of Operations: Gotham City, International formerly based in Star City & Seattle "Real-Life" Occupation(s): florist, currently "employed" as the Black Canary (Oracle has set up an generous expense account for her making her one of the few full-time professional crimefighters in the DCU) Special Skills: Martial Arts master, excellent general athletic abilities (her meta-human "canary" or sonic cry was destroyed when she was tortured by a sadistic criminal (see Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters), a trauma from which she has otherwise [mostly] recovered) Current Affiliations: (with Oracle) half of the crime-fighting team "Birds of Prey" founding member of the newly formed Justice Society of America Past Affiliations: a former & founding member of the JLA At the tender age of nineteen, Dinah Laurel Lance donned her mother's long-retired costume and became the second Black Canary. Her very first adversary led her to a fateful meeting with four other rookie crime fighters and together they founded the Justice League of America (hereafter JLA). When DC decided to replace Wonder Woman (who, due to her own post-Crisis retconning, could not have been a founder of the JLA) with Black Canary, it might have been a whim, but it turned out to be one of the best things to ever happen to the character. The events which took place during the Crisis on Infinite Earths über-crossover were geared to drastically alter the DCU, but most of the characters inhabiting the revised DCU took some time to shift into their new modes, and only a few of them actually got the royal "Year One" treatment that the Batman, for instance, received -- and even his "Year One" didn't follow hard on the heels of the Crisis. It is only last year (1998 -- twelve years after the Crisis) that the JLA received their own "Year One" series. Black Canary's backstory is still being worked out all these years later. Having her origin so drastically changed also changed much of what was known about her prior to the Crisis. Her years in Mike Grell & Co.'s excellent Green Arrow comic series redefined and refined her character and her identity quite a bit, even spawning a self-titled miniseries and a monthly which lasted one year. She also appeared in the back-up feature in Action Comics for a time in the 1980s, but the years she and Oliver spent together in the JLA have not been rewritten or addressed, only referred to. It is to be assumed, then, that most of those stories still stand except where they clash with current continuity. The most recent revelation of note in either of the Canaries' histories is that the original Black Canary had an affair with her fellow-JSAer (and married man) Ted "Starman" Knight. It should be pointed out that Dinah Sr. was not herself married at the time and that Dinah Jr. was born several years later so while there has been some speculation that Dinah Jr. is Starman's daughter, there doesn't appear to be any basis for it. This shocker (which Dinah Jr. found out about during her first few weeks in the the JLA) rocked the foundations of her lifelong belief in her Justice Society heroes' superior virtue. Finding out that her mother and one of her heroes were subject to all-too-human failings introduced doubts -- and the consequences of this are still being played out in the don't-miss-it year long miniseries JLA: Year One The current official history is that Dinah joined the JLA as a founding member at age nineteen and spent the next few years adventuring with them pretty much full-time. During this time, she met and became romantically involved with Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow. When he decided to leave the JLA she stayed behind, but only for a short time. Soon, she joined him in Star City and was also a fellow adventurer when Oliver teamed up with Hal "Green Lantern" Jordan. Quite some time later, apparently during an "off" period in their relationship, Dinah donned a new costume and rejoined the newly-formed Justice League as sponsored by Maxwell Lord (whose members also included Batman, J'onn J'onzz, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Mr. Miracle -- but not, oddly enough, Big Barda -- and Guy "Green Lantern" Gardner). She didn't stay with the new organization (or the new costume) for very long, though, and was soon back with Oliver, this time in Seattle where they both became much more grass-roots, of-the-people heroes and let their secret identities slip through their fingers. Ostensibly they co-owned and ran a flower shop called "Sherwood Florist" (the latest incarnation of the shop Dinah inherited from her mother and ran during her early years with the JLA), but the work of it usually fell on Dinah's shoulders. They'd faced aliens and supervillains together with the JLA and Green Lantern, but Seattle was a tougher, grittier city where they were faced with more common, everyday evils. They were on their own, too, in a way neither had been for years. No superpowered heroes would sweep in at the last moment to save them. In many ways, it was exactly what they wanted, but there were consequences. They both, during the course of separate investigations, suffered at the hands of torturers, and each ended up taking the lives of the other's torturers. As a result of her ordeal, Dinah lost her meta-human "canary" cry and (possibly) the ability to have children. Dinah and Oliver's relationship was a troubled one, but for several years they stuck it out. Even when Oliver left her and Seattle for over a year, Dinah hung on to the belief that he would come back. He did, but, perhaps during that period, Dinah's passion for justice and her determination to fight for it herself were reborn. She soon went back to her old costume (she'd been wearing a black jumpsuit and no wig for sometime whenever she was at work on a case and only occasionally wore her classic costume during most of her Seattle years) and both with and without Oliver, she went back to her first love of crimefighting. "I love you, Oliver . . . Good-bye." Being back in the superhero game felt right, and Dinah found a renewed sense of purpose. But while that aspect of her life was going well, everything else fell apart. After all the strains and frustrations and heartbreaks of their relationship (which included Oliver's having a child with his mysterious sometime ally Lady Shado and a final straw of Dinah catching him kissing her friend and flower shop assistant Marianne), Dinah realized she could no longer stand to be with a man she loved so much but was forced to share with so many. The next several months were even rockier, and not long after their breakup, the beautiful, castle-like "Sherwood Florist" building in which Black Canary and Green Arrow had lived and worked together for so long burned to the ground. Dinah lost her focus then, and while she still hunted Seattle's streets, fighting crime where she found it, her life was in pieces. Through a series of rather accidental meetings and associations, she ended up traveling through time and space for a time with the Ray (son of her mother's old ally, the Golden Age Ray) and even had a very brief, instantly-regretted fling with him. The worst blow came when the new Green Arrow Connor Hawke (whom she immediately guessed was Oliver's son) came to her with the horrible news that Oliver Queen had died while attempting to save Metropolis from destruction at the hands of high-tech ecoterrorists. The love of her life was dead, her personal life was a shambles, she could barely meet her bills, and she developed a cynical veneer to stave off emotional attachments. She had never been so low before. And then Oracle called -- just in time -- and helped pull Dinah out of the malaise into which she'd fallen. Back in action and this time with an equal partner who happened also to have suffered some major traumas and fought her way back from them and who is able help channel Dinah's efforts in positive directions, she quickly rejoined the superhero community, playing an active rôle in the events of The Final Night and participating in adventures with the younger Connor, and with various members of the Gotham home team. As she has been before, the Canary is -- once again and better than ever -- a Bird of Prey.