Review: Black Canary, Volume 1: Kicking and Screaming

Title: Black Canary, Volume 1: Kicking and Screaming
Author: Brendan Fletcher, Annie Wu, Pia Guerra, Lee Loughridge
Genre: Graphic Novel
Publisher: DC Comics
Source: Library
Format: Ebook
Release Date: March 2, 2016
Rating: ★★★

Goodreads Synopsis:

Dinah Lance hits the road! After years as a soldier and vigilante, the last place Dinah saw herself is on stage…but she’s quickly learning she’d die to protect the gang of misfits she’s fallen into. And she just might have to—for some reason, the newly rechristened band Black Canary seems to be a magnet for trouble…and Dinah’s not gonna believe it when she finds out the reason why!

Collecting: Black Canary 1-7, Sneak Peek

Review:

I had never read a Black Canary graphic novel before this one, and I didn’t know much about her. Black Canary, or Dinah Drake, has a special “Canary cry,” which can harm her enemies. In this story, she is the lead singer of a band called Black Canary. They have to protect one of their band mates, a child who is being chased by a number of people.

Since I didn’t know much about Black Canary before this story, I would have liked it much more if she was the focus of the plot. The band members kept talking about feuds they had before Dinah arrived, so I was left wondering what happened before the story. There were a few subplots that were started, but they weren’t completed by the end of the graphic novel.

One problem with this graphic novel is that it tried to use sound to convey the story, yet there is no sound to the graphic novel. Dinah and the other characters had to use sound to fight off their enemies, yet that was hard to show on the page. That left many pages with just images to portray the story. This became confusing because some characters looking the same, and there wasn’t enough space to show who was in the panel.

Unfortunately, this graphic novel didn’t work for me. There is a new Black Canary adaptation coming out later in the year by Meg Cabot, which I’m looking forward to trying out!

What to read next:

Have you read Black Canary, Volume 1: Kicking and Screaming? What did you think of it?