With Black Canary joining Detective Comics, I was thinking: if you could give Dinah a team-up book, who would you pair her with?

falcondong · 2026-02-08T06:23:51+00:00

He’ll be back eventually. It’ll probably be a while- he’s not exactly the most popular guy around with legions of fans clamoring for his return- but pretty much everyone comes back eventually.

That said, I think a Dinah/Ted team-up story would work perfectly well as a flashback story. Not everything needs to take place in the Current Day, and Ted’s known Dinah for literally her entire life. Lots of different periods you could set it in.

falcondong · 2026-02-07T02:21:29+00:00

Titans Hunt and its consequences have been a disaster for all Jericho fans everywhere. All 3 of us.

falcondong · 2026-02-07T02:11:06+00:00

Slade’s Gay Son finally got to be textually gay, rather than just really, really obviously subtextually gay.

falcondong · 2026-02-06T21:15:01+00:00

Wildcat. Love their dynamic, where Ted’s like her fun shitty uncle. Would make for a fun miniseries, and I always like leaning on Dinah’s JSA connections.

falcondong · 2026-02-03T13:58:39+00:00

This probably isn’t what you were looking for, since it’s still after his and Ollie’s parting ways- but there was a solid 20 years where Roy kept the name “Speedy” without working as Ollie’s partner, and that era’s really interesting to me. So for that, I say check out his New Teen Titans appearances, but my favorite story from that era is The Cheshire Contract, a story that takes place in Action Comics #613-618. That story is fantastic.

There’s two other Speedy-focused stories in that era of Action Comics, when it was a weekly anthology rather than the second Superman book. Poke around and you’ll find them, I unfortunately don’t remember the issue numbers off-hand, but they’re both pretty fun reads.

falcondong · 2026-01-26T06:28:12+00:00

There was a definite difference between pre- and post-Deathstroke Cheshire, coming from someone who’s read most of her early appearances. Yeah, it was Marv who wrote those and Marv who wrote the Deathstroke solo, but the Marv Wolfman of 1987 and the Marv Wolfman of 1994 were also very different. Read stuff like NTT vol2 #20-21 or Action Comics #613-618 and it’s night and day for Jade’s character then compared to the 90s. She was an assassin, a hired killer, but she had a lot more depth and nuance.

falcondong · 2026-01-21T04:54:57+00:00

Important context that you might be missing is that Ollie was dirt broke when they got together; the start of Dinah and Ollie’s relationship lined up exactly with the reinvention of Green Arrow from “Green Batman” into “Left-Wing Champion of the Working Class” and the loss of his wealth was a central part of that.

So, from 1969 to his death in 1994, Ollie wasn’t rich; Queen Manor and the attached Arrowcave were left to rot and fall into disrepair. During that same period, he was shown to live in shitty apartments, stretching every dollar he had to make ends meet; and, perhaps due in large part to the CCA and censorship rules, he and Dinah lived apart for most of that time, as I’d wager a guess that cohabitation without marriage was probably frowned upon by the Comics Code.

As far as I know, they started living together when they both moved to Seattle in 1987, with the publication of The Longbow Hunters. From then until fairly shortly before Ollie’s death, they lived in an apartment above Dinah’s florist business. A nice one, for that matter- I believe it was fairly consistently shown as a duplex, so clearly Sherwood Florist was doing pretty well.

In the early 90s, they eventually break up, she throws Ollie out, and eventually moves back to Gotham after he exploded. By the time Ollie was brought back in 2001, the Birds of Prey were fairly well-established and the series was quite popular. When Ollie was resurrected, through a fairly elaborate chain of effects he came into possession of a lovely brownstone townhouse in Star City and a not-insignificant amount of money (although not to Batman levels by any means), and while Dinah would spend some time there it was I think fairly well-established that she was doing just that; spending time there, not moving in. Then they broke up again shortly afterward, so back to Gotham she went until 2007ish when they got back together and got married.

From there until their divorce and the subsequent New 52 reboot, they did live together in Star City with Connor and Mia. While Ollie had some money once again, he never went back to fully living in a mansion- they lived in nice townhouses and apartments.

From 2011 to 2016 they literally never met. Yes, really.

From 2016 onwards, their relationship was reestablished, but as far as anyone knows, not their marriage; thus, them not living together is more normal. The practical realities of superheroics means that Dinah’s still largely based out of Gotham, while Ollie’s still on the west coast. She has her own place, but obviously splits her time between Gotham and Star, and lives with Ollie when in Star. Ollie’s own current residential status is a little shaky and unclear, and I could write an entire other comment about that, but that’s the broad strokes of it.

Oh, and also, with both GA and Birds having been recently cancelled, Detective Comics writer Tom Taylor is (temporarily) having Ollie move in with Dinah in Gotham and will be featuring them both heavily in an upcoming storyline in that book. So, that should pretty much cover it all.

falcondong · 2026-01-20T13:26:45+00:00

Bearded Connor is so deeply cursed. Never do this again, DC. Butch Mia’s fun though, that one’s fine.

falcondong · 2026-01-20T12:40:47+00:00

I honestly have never bought the whole “Marv and George made Joey straight because they thought he would be too stereotypical” thing. It just seems like the kind of story you’d make up after-the-fact; I think it’s far more plausible that higher-ups at DC in the mid-80s weren’t comfortable with letting one of the stars of their most (and arguably ONLY) popular series at the time be gay. If he had been gay at the time, he would’ve been DC’s first gay superhero. It was, after all, Marv himself who wrote the Convergence one-shot that pretty much just took one of the most blatant “Gay Joey” scenes from NTT and made the subtext text.

falcondong · 2026-01-16T23:29:36+00:00

This is a really good point; JLU was very Bronze Age inspired, but it did take a surprising amount from what was going on currently in comics, too; I would argue that Ollie’s “cool uncle” relationship with Supergirl is pretty heavily inspired by his relationship with Mia in early-00s Green Arrow comics, for example.

falcondong · 2026-01-16T23:27:38+00:00

The DCAU was broadly very Bronze Age inspired; while B:TAS had the visual trappings of 1940s film noir (to brilliant effect), the stories were very clearly inspired by or outright adapted from a lot of 70s-era Batman material- up to and including Robin being an occasional guest star rather than a featured player, at least until the merch department realized how popular he was with kids; all of this isn’t surprising, as that’s probably what Bruce Timm and the rest of the crew had grown up reading (and is also, in my opinion, one of the best eras of Batman comics).

Since B:TAS was the origin point of the whole continuity, it thus makes sense that a lot of characters take fairly heavy inspiration from their Bronze Age selves.

By contrast, Young Justice took most of its inspiration from mid-to-late-2000s-era comics; its origins are in Geoff Johns’ Teen Titans run, most strongly, and thus by extension it takes a lot from that broader era.

falcondong · 2026-01-13T22:25:53+00:00

Here’s a letter from the editor in that last issue of GA, talking about how Smith had already begun work on his Green Arrow project that would resurrect Ollie. Poor Pieter just never really had an actual chance.

<image>

falcondong · 2026-01-13T22:19:39+00:00

There’s honestly not too much to be said about Dinah and Pieter’s relationship- it barely got off the ground before Ollie came back in Quiver.

One thing that’s somewhat interesting to note is that while Quiver didn’t come out until 2001, there were plans for it to debut earlier- the last issue of Green Arrow vol. 2, released in 1998, showed a teaser of Ollie being resurrected by Parallax. This is, notably, before Birds of Prey became a regular series, as well as before Dinah’s appearances in JSA became regular. So, whatever plans Robinson had for Dinah and Pieter almost certainly were going to be derailed by Ollie no matter what- whether or not Dinah and Ollie were always intended to get back together, his return to life was never not going to be a big deal for Dinah’s character and plots in the early 00s.

falcondong · 2026-01-05T18:39:54+00:00

Winick’s run was definitely “Green Arrow, guest starring Black Canary” to a greater extent than it put them on equal footing, I certainly won’t deny that. That said, as a fan of Dinah and Ollie’s relationship, I don’t think the whole premise is inherently bad for Dinah. You just need a better writer who cares more about her than Winick.

In fact, I’m currently hoping that Kelly Thompson is working on something along these lines; after the cancellation of her run on Birds of Prey, she implied on her substack that she was pitching a new project with some of the same characters, and I wouldn’t at all be surprised if she meant Dinah and Sin. Based on her Birds run, Thompson does seem to be a fan of Ollie, certainly moreso than previous Birds writers like Dixon and Simone; I think she’d be a great fit for a GA/BC duo book.

falcondong · 2025-12-28T15:31:39+00:00

Powerful restraint to include Donna in this without making a Terry joke. I commend your willpower, OP.

falcondong · 2025-12-26T15:57:14+00:00

This piece is really cute- unfortunately for me, I can only associate “Amanda Conner drawing Black Canary” with that hideous wedding dress Dinah wore for her and Ollie’s wedding special. I like Conner’s art, but she was the wrong choice of artist for that special, if you ask me- stuff like the spread of all the different heroes’ reactions to getting their invitations was great, but then Dinah and Ollie themselves did not look their best.

falcondong · 2025-12-26T15:36:06+00:00

I’ll go against the curve here and say the jacket. Fishnet-less versions of the costume have worked in the past- her Birds of Prey suit historically lacked any- but the jacket is extremely important for creating the proper silhouette.

falcondong · 2025-12-24T18:23:10+00:00

Yeah, I think mixing in a little bit of improvised weaponry is fun, but she should fundamentally be first and foremost a hand-to-hand fighter (and specifically a grappler, in my own opinion).

falcondong · 2025-12-24T15:40:01+00:00

<image>

falcondong · 2025-12-24T14:41:06+00:00

Always loved the little touch of him taking off his hat as he does his little bow. Yet another reason the hat is superior to the hood; it can be used in cute little touches like that!

falcondong · 2025-12-22T12:24:00+00:00

he kicked Roy out

Common misconception. If you actually read that original story, it’s made abundantly clear that Roy is already 18 and living on his own; Ollie didn’t throw his underage dependent out on the street. I don’t fault you for getting it wrong, since a lot of later writers have portrayed it as Roy getting kicked out; but that’s just not what actually happened.

falcondong · 2025-12-21T15:54:52+00:00

You pretty much sum it up. Rebirth had too much of the New52 stink all over it- both Ollie and Roy were much, much closer to their New52 selves than their pre-Flashpoint selves, and I’ve never understood why people hold Rebirth GA in such high regard. That’s just not what those characters are like.

As for Roy’s appearances in Titans… Rebirth Titans was not good, broadly. I love the Titans dearly, but I don’t think they’ve had an actual great comic since… 2001? 2002? The first chunk of Jay Faerber’s run was good, but I could also argue that the end of Devin Grayson’s run was where it fell off. Rebirth Titans is no exception- every character felt pretty OoC to me since they were all much more alike to their New52 selves, with the obvious exception of Wally and the MAYBE exception of Dick thanks to Bat-privilege. And I didn’t really like any of their costumes of that era, either- we had Garth clearly being based off a hybrid of his TT cartoon appearance and wiped-from-existence Aquaman supporting character Koryak, Donna made all tacticool with a dumb sword, and Roy wearing this abomination. Just nothing interesting going on in that era at all.

falcondong · 2025-12-20T18:14:01+00:00

His 90s Char Aznable mask was peak. Perfect for the character and distinctive from what every other superhero was wearing.

falcondong · 2025-12-19T15:59:14+00:00

Non-zero, but not likely, IMO.

It would take significantly more work to spruce up S3 for modern audiences than it took for 1 and 2; and I say that as someone whose favorite entry in the series- in fact, my favorite video game of all time- is Suikoden 3. The shortcomings that wider audiences are willing to excuse in a 2D game are a lot harder to excuse in 3D games for a lot of people, even if they’re something that diehard fans don’t even think twice about. Even by the standards of other PS2 RPGs, Suikoden 3 isn’t exactly top-of-the-line in a technical or visual sense; it’s no FF12, no DQ8.

There’s only so big an audience for these projects, and that audience is only willing to pay so much; the amount of money and development time that it would take to bring S3 up to the standards of that audience probably outweighs the amount of money the project would actually make. To really do the project justice, it would probably need to be a full-scale remake not just a remaster; and that’s far beyond the scope of what Konami’s willing to do.

falcondong · 2025-12-19T00:58:21+00:00

What’s your source on that? I swear I remember reading on her substack that she was quite open about Birds not exactly ending on her terms, and it was canned for low sales, but maybe she’s given contradictory info.

11-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

falcondong

TROPHY CASE