Black Canary

Pretty Bird (Nickname)

The Canary, Dinah Queen (Aliases)

Laurel Lance (Mother)

White Canary (Sister)

[[Arrowette (Adopted Stepdaughter)

Arsenal (Adopted Stepson)

Tigress (Adopted Stepdaughter)

Red Arrow (Stepson)

Arrowette (3) (Stepdaughter)

Sin (Adopted Daughter)

Tim Drake (Cousin)

Birds of Prey (Founding Member / Field Leader)

Batman, Inc. (Member)

Justice Society of America (Former Member)

## **History**

### **Dianh Lance: 1976 - 1993**

Dinah had a normal childhood in Gotham. Her dad, Quentin, was a cop and her mother, Laurel Lance, was a florist. When Dinah was eleven, her somewhat idyllic life was strained by the birth of her sister, Sara. After giving birth, Laurel was diagnosed with throat cancer. As the florist shop was the family’s primary source of income, the family’s financial stability dissolved. To make up for this setback and to help cover medical costs, Quentin left Dinah to care for her mother and Sara as he pulled in multiple overtime shifts. This may have kept the family afloat for a few years but it also stressed Quentin to drinking and eventually caused him to work the shift in which he was shot and crippled.

### **Dinah Lance: 1993 - 1997**

To help support her family with her father confined to a wheelchair and her mother still fighting cancer, Dinah dropped out of school at seventeen and began working full-time at the florist shop with Sara chipping in after-school. The stress eventually got to Dinah. After dealing with a rather stressful customer, Dinah let out a scream in front of Sara that shattered every window in the shop. The two sisters blamed the broken windows on hoodlums and since it’s Gotham, the Lances accepted the excuse.

In secret, with Sara acting as a cheerleader and coach, Dinah learned to use her power to render metal and topple over full-size cars. But the gift was not purely destructive, with Sara’s help, Dinah developed an incredible degree of control over her vocal cords, allowing her to generate any sound she desired. Dinah and Sara kept this secret for four years.

### **Dinah Lance: 1997 - 2000**

When Laurel's cancer returned more severe than before, Dinah needed to look for an alternative to the dire financial circumstances. Disguised with a blonde wig, fishnets leggings, and a sexy black dress Dinah applied for a singing job at the Iceberg Lounge.

Rumor has it her audition moved Oswald Cobblepot to tears. Whether that's true or not, Cobblepot hired Dinah immediately, giving her a five night per week contract, and offered her a signing bonus large enough to pay off her parents' outstanding medical bills.

Using the stage name "The Canary," Dinah managed to maintain an air of mystery about her despite her near-instant fame and fortune among Gotham society's elite and criminal elements. With her family bills secured and the florist shop running smoothly, Dinah used her excess wealth to pay for private lessons for Sara and herself at Wildcat Gym. The Lance sisters were exceptional students.

### **Black Canary: 1999 - 2004**

But even among birds, what goes up, must eventually come down; and down it did go, hard and fast, when Dinah realized that the man who had shot her father was none other than Ignatius Ogilvy, the Penguin’s right-hand man. What is it they say about a woman scorned?

### **Black Canary: 2004 - Present**

In her personal life, Dinah and Oliver Queen were first married November 7th, 2005. Though the two had a very passionate courtship and were very much in love and faithful to one another (somehow Dinah has that effect on the usually-philandering Ollie). Ollie’s ex Nyssa al Ghul could not help but interfere in their lives. Just months after Dinah and Ollie were wed Nyssa had manipulated Sara, spiking her with a toxin that fueled Sara’s resentment of Dinah for not allowing her to be an active member of Team Arrow. The result of this was Sara and Dinah having an intense fight where Sara nearly killed Dinah when her own meta-gene activated and Sara fled. The loss of Sara destroyed Dinah for a while and just when she was recovering, a brutal three hit combo rocked her world. The death of Jason Todd had been felt through the hero community but it was followed by Roy Harper quitting the team and then Nyssa al Ghul drugging Ollie and orchestrating him to be found by Dinah sleeping with Sara Lance on Christmas Eve!

Quitting Team Arrow and with the JLA disbanding, Dinah disappeared for close to a year. Dinah doesn’t have much of a digital footprint (due to her distaste for computers), but acting on a hunch, I found her in self-imposed exile. She was working as a trainer at Ted Grant’s gym. Since I was a former student of Ted Grant, he invited me to join them for dinner. Dinah trusted me with the secret as to why she felt the need to disappear. Then within a week after having dinner with me, the Cataclysm hit Gotham and the Canary was trapped like a bird in a cage. But the thing is… the scum of Gotham were trapped in the same cage with Dinah. To help Gotham in the absence of Batman, Dinah joined up with Helena Bertinelli’s new guise as the Huntress and with yours truly to form the Birds of Prey.

After restoring order to Gotham and the Justice League reforming under the United Nations banner, Dinah began to split her time between Gotham and the Watchtower. Over time she slowly began to add Star City, as she and Ollie slowly began to patch things up.

## **Personality**

Dinah Laurel Lance is a strong and obstinate woman, who firmly believes in her skills and capacities and has a good sense of adaptability, which saved her from depression in more than one occasion. Deeply in love with her husband Oliver Queen/Green Arrow, and surrounded by loyal friends and teammates, Black Canary is one of the world’s greatest superheroes, always on the first line in fighting crime.

## **Powers, Abilities, and Equipment, Weaknesses**

### **Powers:**

**Metahuman Physiology:**

* **Sound Manipulation:** She creates powerful sonic waves with her voice with which she could achieve various effects, often with the assistance of psionic abilities which function only in unison with her sonic abilities.
	+ **Sonic Scream:** Dinah possesses a meta-gene that gives her a potent sonic attack, able to damage and stun foes or objects, to the point of shattering metal. She has the ability to shatter solid objects with an incredibly loud and destructive sonic scream. The Canary Cry has been able to reach 300 decibels, which is enough to make a person's ears start bleeding even if they're not the attack target. A direct hit from her sonic blast can tear through steel like it was wet paper machete.
	+ **Vocal Replication:** She possesses a incredible degree of control over her vocal cords. This enables her to mimic sounds and generate any sound she desires. She is able to mimic the voices of others or imitate sounds such as animal noises and explosions. Any sound she hears she can replicate with perfect clarity along with any manner the sound was made.
	+ **Flight:** With significant practice, Dinah has learned to use her Cry for a number of special effects, such as screaming downward while falling to slow her descent and cushion her landing from a fatal height. She has the ability to fly at subsonic speeds by using her voice to propel her through the air and ride via sound waves.
	+ **Echolocation:** By giving off a supersonic pulse, Dinah has developed the ability to utilize a 'bat-like' echolocation sense, enabling her to get a rough 360-degree of her surroundings, even when visibility is low. This grants her hearing on par with Superman and has demonstrated herself to be more proficient in the interpretations and recognition of various sounds than the Man of Steel.
	+ **Sound Shield Construction:** She could tighten sound waves around herself or others near her, making a barrier against outside attack.
	+ **Vertigo Inducement:** She has the ability to change someone’s balance, by affecting their equilibrium using her sonic scream.
	+ **Vocal Mind Control:** She has the ability to subtly influence people's subconscious mind by changing the tones and vibrations of her voice using hypersonic suggestions and persuasive abilities.
	+ **Neurocognitive Deficit:** She has the ability to affect the fluid in someone’s ear causing the person to go unconscious.
	+ **Sound Immunity:** Canary's hearing and equilibrium were unaffected by her hypersonic abilities or other similar sound/sonic-based abilities. Another one up she has on Big Blue is that her heightened hearing has a sort of 'sensory shield' which protects her ears from excessive noise (such as her Canary Cry).
	+ **Enhanced Lung Capacity:** She possesses superhuman stamina in her lungs, throat, and vocal cords.

## **Trivia**

* BC's scream has been shown to be strong enough to make Superman's ears bleed so. Barbara took some liberties and decided a combination of a direct hit at full power, with the sensory overload of a guy with superhearing... yeah, that could knock out Big Blue.
* In her "Canary" persona, Dinah wears a blond wig to hide her identity and mislead her enemies. This is something she did back as a nightclub singer at the Iceberg Lounge.
* In her early career, Dinah wore a mask but has since given up on it, though the fact that Huntress' own mask resembles her old one has not gone unnoticed by her and serves as a constant source for friendly banter.
* Dinah plays a harmonica which she uses to strengthen her breathing and vocal cords.
* When not active as a hero, Dinah works a physical education volunteer instructor for the Meadowhill School District here in Gotham City. She also volunteers as a substance abuse treatment coach in both Gotham and Star City.
* Dinah and Zatanna have gone in together to purchase a considerable bulk supply of fishnets.
* While Dinah is a social drinker, she doesn't indulge as much her husband does. In fact, due to her father's disability following his run-in with Ignatius Ogilvy and his subsequent dependency on his pain medication, Dinah has developed a paranoia regarding narcotic drugs. She's even been known to reject painkillers for work related injuries.
* She has a "relaxed" approach to her identity.
* Her archenemy is Lady Shiva.
* She's distantly related to Siobhan Smythe, Holly & Dawn Granger, and Rebecca Carstairs.
* She's a subject of an episode of Capes, a Webpix Signature Series.
* Black Canary hooked up once with Batman but keeps the secret from Ollie. As B.C. put it, that's a pot of drama that shouldn't be stirred up. Oliver is a billionaire that's not as rich as Bruce Wayne. Oliver is an unpowered vigilante determined to clean up his city that is considerably less iconic than Batman. Oliver even had his lair called the "Arrow Cave" despite the fact that it makes no sense (and as Harley Quinn pointed out a better name would be 'The Quiver'). Oliver has villains that get bored of Green Arrow and go to Gotham, case in point: Onomatopoeia. So if G.A. learned that his own gal-pal got chummy with the Bats, well... The Justice League might get called in to break up an epic fight in the midst of Gotham.
* Batman supposedly keeps Black Canary from killing Penguin; But she wouldn't really kill him. She crippled him for crippling her father... but Penguin doesn't know that and if that fear keeps him in check, then that's what they use. On the other hand, she, with Ogilvy, she nearly killed him but at the last second thought better about it and let him live. Still, she has to constantly remind herself not to go too far whenever she encounters him in the field.
* Dinah's blood type is AB-, the same as Oliver Queen's.
* Dinah had Ollie buy the location where her mother's Sherwood Florist was located. While it remains closed, Dinah has outfitted the backroom of the shop into an emergency armory and field supply station.
* Oliver Queen proposed again to Dinah July 5th 2017, which she accepted