Birds of Prey - Black Canary & Oracle - One Man's Hell

The Establishment.

The team was formed in 1996.
Their first adventures have not appeared in serial form, but in a separate booklet. The disabled computer guru, BarbaraGordon, former Batgirl, now Oracle, takes her side helpers Dinah Lance, Black Canary (not in traffic, but the sin hunting). We actually nothing know about Dinah's past from this booklet, but she is commonly known as Black Canary. Her character gets a minor reboot. She moves from Seattle to Gotham City, and a new outfit replaces the old, rather slutty. She says goodbye the fishnet pantyhose (unfortunately the garment will again fashionable, and she will get it back later) and a new hotter dress (with a pair of earrings headset and a necklace microphone, which is formed the team badge, a stylized bird form). So far, Dinah had black hair, and wore blond wig as Canary, but now she repaints her hair blond.

Here's the old outfit (it was Dinah’s street clothe too, just without the wig): 

And it is the new (but where are the earrings?):

However we more learn about Oracle’s past. The front page is screaming that she was Batgirl, and a one-page flashback plays TheKilling Joke.

Unlike us, however, Dinah knows nothing about her female partner, real name either, and does not even see her.

In their early days the girls are usually engaged in a form of a human rights struggle in third world countries, they fight against oppression and exploitation of people. The opening piece takes this line. The villain (a handsome but annoying American businessman) carry out sabotage against his third world investments, thereby concealing that they are too poor in quality. The story is well constructed, it is easy to guess that the female bodyguard chief of our businessman, Lynx, is related to the saboteur eco terrorists (we can find out this before the girls, so we can pretty proud ourselves), but it is not so clear, that why does our businessman destroy his own investments. The fun parts of the story are Dinah’s cool taunts, and it’s constant gag in the beginning of the series that Oracle gives anxious advices in the most action full situations to the pretty brave Canary, therefore Dinah is very upset, and closes the connection, which she should not of course. But the overall picture of the story is quite grim story because of the mass disasters.

The team's adventures so do not start too superhero like, especially because Dinah lost her only superpower, the canary cry (although there is no reference to anything about this in the comics). The 54-page booklet is more than twice and a half length the average twenty-page comics. The last pages are indications that the island of Santa Prisca adventures will continue. The story has been written by Chuck Dixon and penciled by GaryFrank is. The latter’s drawing style is quite good (I mean good for me), but rather Dinah is pretty transvestite like in some picture.

The original (hungarian) post is here.