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DC’s Black Canary: Best of the Best, comes out November 27th, and Megan & Lauren sat down with Tom King (writer) and Ryan Sook (artist) to discuss this amazing upcoming 6 issue run featuring Dinah Lance up against Lady Shiva.
Transcript of the above YouTube video
Megan: Hi I’m Megan with the Vigilante Vibes Podcast, and with Nerd Initiative where we review comics, movies, TV shows, and everything in between.
Lauren: I’m Lauren from Hops GEEK News podcast, and you can also find Megan and I every Wednesday in the Nerd Initiative bullpen reviewing comics, and we are very excited because we both got to read the first 2 issues of Black Canary: Best of the Best. I will say it was absolutely phenomenal and I can’t wait to read the other issues, or should I say the other rounds?
Today we have with us Tom King and Ryan Sook, who are the writer and the artist for this, and we are very excited. So, thank you guys so much for chatting with us. We are ready to talk Black Canary.
Tom: First of all, thank you so much, it’s been a rough day, and I cannot tell you how excited I was to see you all on my calendar and just talk comics for a little while. You’re really bringing up my spirits, I can’t say how much I appreciate you all for talking comics.
Lauren: And we feel you probably more than you probably know as well. Before we dive too much into the comic itself, I want to ask, what made you pick Dinah Lance’s Black Canary as your main character, and what came first, Dinah Lance, or the story?
Tom: It wasn’t like a hard choice, I think Dinah is just one of the most, not underrated, but she has such utter potential, and she’s been a star in the DC universe before, and frankly she deserves more stories. Is the better way to put it. She has an incredible power set, incredible origin story, an incredible look. She’s an iconic character that has had some iconic stories, and now she deserves at least one more. She has that potential to be a pillar of the DC universe. To be another Superman, Batman, Robin, what have you. So, why Dinah, is like why not Dinah. She’s just **** wonderful. I’m sorry I swear too much. She’s F-ing wonderful.
And, the story and her came together. My oldest son became obsessed with WWE, and when I was a kid, I was obsessed with comics, which is probably shocking to hear. But my parents thought it was the dumbest thing anyone could be into. It was very much sort of a trash hobby to them, and I had to do it very quietly by myself. I was not into WWE, but I was determined not to do what my parents did, to my son. So, I was like, let’s watch this together. This is your nerd, like I had my nerd. Let’s do this thing and bond over it. I ended up watching a bunch of WWE with my kids, and I became sort of obsessed, and I can’t believe they’re telling so many stories in the four corners of a ring. That’s just amazing to me. When I write Superman comics, I have an entire universe, I have a multiverse. I can go outside the multiverse. I can punch through a wall of the multiverse, and see what’s out there, and they’re doing all these stories. I was like, I love that challenge. I love that idea, and where do I start with a ring story? I want to start like the best ring stories, like Ollie, or Frasier, Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan. Who are the best fighters in the DC Universe? What if I put them together in the ring, who would be the champion, and who would be the contender? And that was Lady Shiva, Black Canary. That would be number 1 and number 2. That’s where the story started.
Megan: I’m a huge UFC fan, so I absolutely love the constant commentary throughout both comics. So, were they based on real life commentators?
Tom: Yes, a little bit. Based on watching a ton of fights and stuff. But also I’m always trying in my books, new ways to do captions. When you’re writing comics, narrative captions, can be the most boring part of the comic, but if you don’t have them in a fight comic, you’ll end up not paying as much attention to Ryan Sook’s art as you should. You’ll just turn the pages too quickly. I’ve written many comics where you don’t slow down the reader enough because there aren’t enough words in there.
So, I was faced with, how do I put captions on the book to slow the reader down, and still make those captions compelling and not just interior monologue boring captions. I could have these over the top announcers, who are always announcing these things, and use that as my narrators of the entire story. Both the flashbacks and the story in the ring. That’s where it came from. I stole from football announcers, I stole from baseball announcers. I stole from WWE announcers to create these silly characters.
Lauren: You were inspired by, you didn’t steal.
Tom: Inspired by, yes! Wordy John and Mike. Who subtly have different characters and different ways of talking.
Lauren: When I was reading it every time they were speaking, I was hearing it in that announcer voice, like “Oh! Look at this happening now!” So I feel like it really helped me get sucked more into the comic.
Tom: I channeled my inner Stan Lee. You know Stan Lee hated periods, and only put exclamation points at the end of every sentence he ever wrote. So every sentence the announcers have, has an exclamation point at the end. Very 1960s Marvel.
Megan: It adds to the vibe.
Lauren: 100%.
Ryan, the art in these fight scenes was absolutely phenomenal and it really captures the brutality and the detail in the fight. What inspired this art for you? Are you also a WWE fan? Is it a little bit of UFC?
Ryan: Yea, both. But mainly the UFC stuff is what I was referencing because when I read the script, this fight is a brutal fight. There is no play acting involved. And despite the athleticism of all of them. Like, Tom was saying, they tell stories in the ring. But when you get into UFC, and MMA fights, and stuff, it was brutal to go and look at that stuff for reference. Because, I’d seen boxing and stuff over the years, not a huge follower, but seen them, and you get punched in a ring in a boxing match, they count until someone gets back up or is knocked out, and in UFC they jump on you and beat you until you can’t move, and it’s so brutal. And shockingly brutal. It’s hard to watch, but that’s what this fight is. This fight is a fight to the finish, so that was great reference for me. Shockingly brutal reference for me.
Obviously when you see stuff like that, and you’re trying to draw these scenes that Tom laid out, it’s such a source of inspiration to try and bring that across. Commentators are narrating the flashback scenes and the fight. The flashbacks and the scenes that take place outside of the ring are so emotional. They’re very emotional scenes, and there’s a lot going on. It’s a lot of heartfelt stuff and it carries right into the ring. So when you’re in the ring, you don’t get to draw emotion. There’s no emotion there. It’s just bare knuckles, and blood, and guts. You strip it all down to the fight. Then you can dance between that and those emotional scenes. It’s really fun.
Lauren: I think drawing these comic book characters, and making somebody have that visceral reaction when someone gets punched in the gut, has got to be a difficult feat, and I will say you accomplished that. I was reading it, and at one point when Dinah got punched, I literally said aloud, “Off!” Like I felt that as if I was watching it live. I do want to mention, before I kick it back to Megan, I’m not a WWE fan, I’m not a UFC fan, [Megan is] into this stuff, and I think we both equally fell in love with this comic immediately. It was such a great way to tell a story.
Tom: That’s so awesome. That’s the best thing. I appreciate that.
Megan: It showed so raw throughout the comic. Like when Dinah is in the corner with her coach and she’s just dead in the eyes. Just has one motivation on her, and it’s to beat Shiva. I thought the writing was phenomenal. The art work was phenomenal. It showed so well, and I see that every saturday when I watch the fights. It was so so perfectly handled.
Lauren: Absolutely
Tom: We’re working on 3 now, and there’s a moment in 3 where Ryan drew the after effects of one of these blows, and I can’t tell you. It tears me raw when I see it. I see Ryan’s art, and I feel the wounds on my face. It only gets more desperate and more brutal as we go along. That’s the point of the fight. This is something she doesn’t just have to win. She has to survive. Both characters.
Lauren: Now this comic, obviously, isn’t just about the fight. It’s also a lot about her relationship with her mother. So, with her mother playing a big role in this story, as all mothers due in a child’s life, whether they’re there or not, she shaped Dinah in many ways. Physically and emotionally, and she was the original Black Canary. She also has a very unique parenting style. How are you hoping that readers perceive her mother, and do you think it will shape how people will view Dinah going forward?
Tom: What I most hope from readers is they see a little bit of their relationship with their mother, in this relationship. As messed up as it is. The brilliance of comics, and my favorite part of comics, is that we can kind of go to extremes to use metaphors for what feels extreme in our lives. What are microaggressions that tear us apart in the real world, we can present in comics as macroaggressions, so you can kind of experience in a cathartic way. So this book is about the fight in the ring, but what you’re seeing in the ring, the fight between lady shiva and Dinah, is a metaphor for the fight between Dinah and her mother.
This is a brutal, impactful, to the mat, to the extreme love story between a mother and a daughter. Which seems contradictory, but I think if anyone has experienced a mother daughter relationship, it can kind of feel like that sometimes. There’s no love and no hate like that shared between a mother and a daughter. That’s what I was going for in the book. That’s the heart of the book. That’s what the book is about. It’s about Dinah’s relationship with her mother, who was a superhero before her. I think the best part of DC is our emphasis on legacy, and to talk about what it means to grow up as a daughter of a superhero, and living her legacy, and having your own, and all of those issues. That’s where you start and end in this book, is Dinah and her mother.
Ryan: Tom nailed it. I was really impressed when I read the script and the reaction and the dialogue and the reality between Dinah and her mom. I have a wife, and 2 daughters, and a sister and a mom, and the reality of their interactions it really weighs on me. And the cool part about this book, is outside of the ring. To draw and make these characters real. Set them in the real world, and have them live this real life, and then bring all of that weight into the ring. Here’s a character like Dinah Lance, who has fought aliens, and fought super powers, and has super powers, and still she wants to live up to mom. She wants to make mom love her, and make mom happy. And kind of hate that she does at the same time. That is something really hard to bring across, and [Tom] did it great.
Lauren: A lot of it was in the faces of the characters too. You see the trauma and shock on both their faces at different times. You both did a great job with that.
Megan: I found it really interesting that Dinah’s mother has been training her since she was a child. Do you think she always wanted Dinah to be the next Black Canary?
Tom: I would say she wanted Dinah to be as strong as she was. Is the way I would put it. I think when you’re a superhero, like Dinah Drake was, the senior Dinah, you see the evils of the world. You see the worst in people, and you’re trying to get better. I think when you’re constantly exposed to that, you want your loved ones to be as strong as you are because you think they have to be as strong as you are to survive. I think that’s the parental metaphor I was going for. This sort of generational idea that I’ve been through trauma, and you’re gonna go through trauma as well, and I have to prepare you for that. In preparing you, I am gonna induce trauma in you. Which is kind of the perpetual cycle of a lot of parent child relationships, going back generations.
This sounds like such a heavy book when I talk about it. I apologize. I swear to God it’s super fun, and it’s funny, and there’s just laughing, while I’m talking about trauma and generations. This is a fight book with lots of jokes. But, like with Supergirl, Mr. Miracle, this is a book book you can enjoy on one level as a fun read with amazing art. On another level you an enjoy this as you would any novel. There are big themes here. Comics have the smartest readers in the world, and they are for people who want to see them.
Lauren: It definitely has layers for sure. Now going back to the art for a second. There is one scene with a ton of cameos. I don’t want to say who is there, or what they are doing, I don’t want to spoil anything, but it was such a fun page to go through and try to find everybody, and look at all of it. Ryan, how much detail and/or freedom were you given to create that page. And how fun was that?
Ryan: I feel like i got nothing but freedom and support from Tom and DC, and everything like that. That said, I just drew what he wrote. Tom’s a great writer. I read the page, and it’s set up that way. He set it up that way. Which makes it fun for me to do the detail stuff that can’t be written into a script. Like, who wears what casually when they’re not jumping on a roof, or shooting laser beams, or slaying arrows.. Hint, hint. But when we do those kind of things, it is fun to put those characters into a real world setting, and look at them, and have fun going, that is what they would be doing. That is how they would be dressing, and that’s definitely what would be going on at that party. That’s always fun. I love taking those characters and putting them into human context. It’s fun.
Lauren: And it makes the characters more relatable, which I always think is so much fun, and makes the story all that much more deeper.
Tom: I grew up on X-Men, Avengers softball games, and all that stuff. I think I was kind of channeling that. Ryan is being way too modest. I think my instructions were something like, they’re in a living room watching TV, Batman is not there, go crazy. It was something like that. When they say the artist is sort of the director, the DP, the costume, that’s all Ryan. Every gag and cool moment in there, that’s Sook being Sook.
Megan: You mentioned that there’s so many tones throughout Black Canary: Best of the Best. There’s trauma, there is humor, and it shows a lot the most when they’re switching the scenes from the past to the present during the fight. Do you find it challenging to switch back and forth while keeping the overall tone aligned?
Tom: No, I find that to be sort of the most fun part of the books, and it makes it a lot easier to write. When I’m writing a 3 page fight scene I can cut to a flashback. As you guys know, better than I do, comics are all about sort of the images that exist in between the panels and the gutters.
Our characters don’t move. They don’t talk. You can’t hear them. We’re inducing things that go into your head, and then you’re imaging the rest of the book. So, if I can give you, per one round, 10 pages of a fight. That’s only like 3 seconds. You have to put in the other minutes. By cutting away, I get to imply what is going on in the rest of the ring, and your imagination is like what is going on, when you’re back in the ring. So it helps the fight better. I didn’t find switching tones hard, because they were very yin and yang. They played off each other very well. Going from loud to quiet, made the quiet quieter and the loud louder. So, it was easier. It flowed very well one into the other.
Ryan: That made it fun to draw to that narrative continuity with visual contrasts, makes it really really fun, when you know what the captions are, and you know what you’re reading. And what they’re describing happening in the ring, but you’re looking at something very different. I thought that was a blast to draw. And some of the scene changes, the way they were written in the script, like when Dinah Lance comes into her mom’s shop, and rings the counter bell, and the fight begins. DING! Here we go and we’re off to the races. I just thought that was fun. To make it when you’re reading a story like that, to have those sort of narrative transtiioins and continuity and stuff. It just makes it fun. It’s not what I expect, yet it’s just flows very smoothly and makes for a fun rad.
Tom: And it’s very comic booky. It wouldn’t work in television to have a quiet scene in a Washington island, and then run the narration of these over the top commentators in the background. It’s not something you can do. I started out as a novelist, and that’s not something you can even start to comprehend. Only in comics can we do these kind of transitions, and we’ve got to take advantage of what’s the best.
Lauren: I think that’s why it’s so important to have comics for every age group because there are so many great stories you just can’t tell otherwise.
As we begin to wrap up, we both, obviously, loved this so much, we’ve made that comment more than once. This story is expected to go 6 issues, or 6 rounds you could say, will we say more of this story grow in the future? Or is that up to us as the readers?
Tom: I told Ryan, whatever he wants to do next, I’ll do whatever he wants to do, so if he’s like Tom I really want to do more fight scenes, I’ll find a way to write it. But, no this is a self contained story. If you’ve read The Human Target, or Mr. Miracle, you’re gonna get a beginning, and a middle, and an end. You’re gonna get a thrilling ride, and you’re gonna get some tears along the way, and it will wrap up in 6. There is no to be continued at the end.
Lauren: Already so much has happened in the first 2 issues. Before Megan closes us out, is there anything else you guys would like to say other than this comes out November 27th, and everyone should go pick it up?
Tom: I said this at the beginning and I’ll say it at the end. Thank you thank you to your listeners. This is a comic that, Black Canary doesn’t have a tradition of being purchased, so a lot of people going into comic stores don’t say, and say, hey anything Black Canary let me have it because she just doesn’t have a title that you’d say that. Having worked on Batman and Superman titles. So I just so appreciate you all getting the word out. Just cause I love this comic so much and I want to stand behind it, and say that this could be the next Supergirl. This is a comic that needs recommendations. It needs to be sort of hand sold. From the bottom of my heart, I appreciate ya’ll doing this.
Ryan: I’m right there with Tom with that. Thank you so much helping us promote the book because it’s a great book. I get the lettering comps back from editorial, and I’m really proud to be a part of the book. It’s a cool comic. And you always do your best work, but it’s great when you do your best work, and you know the book is good, and this one is so good. That’s something I appreciate you guys taking the time to help us let people know that.
Lauren: Absolutely. Anybody still on the fence, this has action, it has comedy, it has drama, it has toxic parenting, it’s got gorgeous artwork. I don’t know what else you need.
Tom: That is our cover quote. Please make sure to record that and put that right there on the cover. That’s better than anything I said this whole 30 minutes.
Ryan: That’s our next title Tom, Toxic Parenting.
Megan: We want to thank you Tom and Ryan in giving us the time to talk about this. We loved it. It was phenomenal from beginning to end. I can’t wait to read more. Black Canary is one of my favorite characters. This was such a pleasure.
Everyone hit up those local shops, and go find those Black Canary comics. We got to to keep this going because his is something really special. Black Canary: Best of the Best will hit shelves November 27th. Thank you Tom and Ryan.
Make sure you’re following Nerd Initiative on all socials to stay up to date on all things nerdy.
Lauren: In the show notes, you can also find where to follow Tom and Ryan. You can also find Megan and I through Vigilante Vibes podcast, and Hops GEEK News podcast.
Black Canary: Best Of The Best #1 drops on November 27th via DC Comics. Make sure to get your copy from your LCS!
