THE BLACK CANARY ARCHIVES (by multiple different creators) collects Dinah Drake Lance’s adventures from when she was a bad-girl thief crashing into Johnny Thunder’s Golden Age strip through her own adventures after she got his slot in Flash Comics through a handful of Silver Age yarns including an attempt to launch a regular series with her and Starman (see here for context).
As comics writer Steven Grant once observed, the Golden Age stuff is a reminder that all the old stuff wasn’t golden. Canary never gets an origin, nor a real explanation how or why she swings from thief to costumed hero, other than, presumably, her popularity. The two team-up tales are fun but the last story, by Denny O’Neil, is painfully sexist (good thing Green Arrow taught the Black Canary to never, never give up!). Then there’s the utterly insane Flash Comics story were Dinah saves herself from death by using her magical canary-summoning powers to save the day (see below)!
Because I’m a comics nerd I’m glad to have this but I’m not sure I’d recommend it to someone who isn’t.
EMPRESS OF ART: Catherine the Great and the Transformation of Russia by Suan Jaques shows unsurprisingly that there was more to Catherine the Great than her infamous sex life (though like many royal figures of either sex, hers was lively). Along with expanding Russia’s empire Catherine was an art enthusiast whose accomplishments included spectacular architecture, snatching tons of classic art from under rival European collectors and paying for stunning jewelry. Unfortunately the book turns out to be just a big listicle of art accomplishments and that didn’t do it for me.
THE WOMAN WHO SPLIT THE ATOM: The Life of Lise Meitner by Marissa Moss is a biography of the Jewish physicist who partnered with German chemist Otto Hahn on nuclear research (he needed someone who understood what was happening at the atomic level), watched “Jewish physics” become an anathema, fled to Sweden at the last possible minute and then in correspondence with Han suggested the solution to a baffling problem. Hahn couldn’t figure out why bombarding uranium with neutrons sometimes created a lighter atom, barium, instead of heavier transuranics; Meitner became the first person to realize the answer, that the bombardment was splitting the atoms in two.
Unfortunately Meitner didn’t share Hahn’s nobel for the discovery — Hahn was a Nazi who by that point didn’t want to acknowledge his association with a Jew, and even after the war was shitty about giving her credit (Beginning or the End gives him all the credit). However she wasn’t as unrecognized as I assumed she’d be, being widely respected in her field during her lifetime, which was nice to see. A Y/A bio but suitable for adults.
#SFWApro. Art by Murphy Anderson (t) and Carmine Infantino, all rights to images remain with current holders.
