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In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, learn how Black Canary’s costume was re-designed and re-drawn after the issue was completely drawn.
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and twenty-fifth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment’s legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I’ll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
DC had production artists re-draw Black Canary throughout an issue of Black Canary with a whole new costume design
STATUS:
True
Black Canary had a very strange arc as a character in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the otherwise acclaimed miniseries, The Longbow Hunters, Mike Grell basically just has Dinah as a damsel in distress in the story, being tortured to the point where she could no longer have a child (this was later used to explain why she lost her “Canary Cry” power, as Grell was not interested in superpowers in the series). Her torture was really only there to drive Oliver Queen to killing the bad guys who were torturing her. However, The Longbow Hunters launched a new Green Arrow series and Dinah was a major player in the critical hit and Grell used her a lot better in the ongoing series. She proved to be SO popular that DC decided to give her her own feature in Action Comics Weekly by Sharon Wright, Randy DuBurke and Pablo Marcos. Wright was Grell’s former wife (and had written a bunch of Warlord issues during Grell’s run on that series), so she was very familiar with Grell’s take on Dinah.
A couple of years later, Sarah Bynam, Trevor Von Eeden and Dick Giordano gave Black Canary her first solo miniseries, where she dealt with the unresolved trauma of Longbow Hunters and embraced her costumed identity more (in Grell’s Green Arrow and even most of the Action Comics stories, Dinah was effectively out of costume, although she would often use the blonde wig).
This led to a Black Canary ongoing series by Bynam and Von Eeden (joined by Bob Smith on the ongoing series) and Black Canary officially breaking up with Oliver in the pages of Green Arrow.
As you can see, originally, Black Canary rocked a costume that was a throwback to her original costume design, but as the series went on, editor Mike Gold left the project and Denny O’Neil and Jordan Gorfinkel took over the series. O’Neil and Gorkinkel, of course, were best known at the time for their work on the Batman franchise of books and so their first arc as the editors of Black Canary, they brought in a bunch of Batman-related guest-stars (Huntress and then Nightwing) and also decided to give Black Canary a brand-new costume.
The problem, though, came when they had the artist on the series, Trevor Von Eeden, draw the new costume and then change their minds after the approved new design was actually literally completely drawn in the issue! Now, one solution would have been to have Von Eeden redraw Black Canary in the issue. Gorfinkel, though, went another direction.
My pal Daniel Best did a spotlight on this story on his blog here, and be sure to check it out to get the full details as well as all of Von Eeden’s original art for the issue. Simply put, though, what happened was that Von Eeden’s art was re-drawn in part by another artist.
Von Eeden explained, “I’d been given a design for Black Canary’s new costume, which I pencilled and handed in. THE VERY SAME DAY, Assistant Editor Jordan Gorfinkel had some drone in Production erase and re-pencil every drawing of Black Canary that I’d done – because yet another costume design had been approved (the crew-cut look, seen in the book) while I’d been in my studio drawing the first version.”
Here’s the costume as drawn by Von Eeden…
And here’s how that page appeared in the published issue…
That really was almost one dramatic costume change, huh? While the costume they ultimately went with really not much of a new look at all, honestly.
While Von Eeden was, of course, irked that his art was redrawn, what I think almost grates him more is that the altered pages are out there as nominally “original Von Eeden artwork.” For instance, ComicArtFans has a couple of pages from the issue up at their site and no one is credited outside Von Eeden, which is pretty much the precise thing he didn’t want to have happen.
Here’s Von Eeden’s original…
The “original artwork” for the page with the redrawn Black Canary figures…
And then the published version…
And again, here’s Von Eeden’s original…
The “original artwork” for the page with the redrawn Black Canary figures…
And then the published version…
Von Eeden would quit the book after issue #11 and the series ended after 12 issues. Gorfinkel would then bring Black Canary back a couple of years later, now paired with Oracle in a new series, Birds of Prey, with Canary getting another new costume…
Thanks, again, to Daniel Best and, of course, Tevor Von Eeden. Be sure to check out Daniel’s site for more Von Eeden quotes and even more original pages of Von Eeden artwork for the issue. Hopefully whoever owns those Black Canary pages now will at least know that they’re not Von Eeden originals (well, not exactly).
CHECK OUT A TV LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest TV Legends Revealed – Was The Doctor on Doctor Who originally going to be called “Doctor Who”?
PART THREE SOON!
Check back soon for part 3 of this installment’s legends!
Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com
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