Synopsis: Gan Nguyen, a socially active talk-radio host gets fed up with all the gang activity moving into Seattle neighborhoods, and beats up a deal after work. Across town, Dinah Lance suits up as her alter ego, Black Canary, and puts herself through a martial arts workout. The next morning, having fallen asleep doing bills (Sherwood Florist is $879.50 short of making ends meet this month) an arrow flying through the window awakens Dinah. Her significant other, Oliver Queen, aka Green Arrow, is playing with a $500 crossbow he'd just bought. Dinah's furious, since that impulse expendature blew their budget. Fuming, she leaves him at home to figure out where the extra money's going to come from while she heads out to the mountains to unwind. She goes hiking with Aunt Wren, an Native American wise woman on the Quinault indian reservation. They meet Gan on the way. There's something of an ecology sermon, and Gan flirts with Dinah. She gives him a lift back to Seattle (he rode a bike to the reservation) and unknown to them, that gives two hit men the slip the drug gangs had sent after Gan. They reach the ferry, and stop to get coffee. Unfortunately, the frustrated hit men catch the same ferry. When Dinah goes to the ladies' room, the gang bangers pummel Gan. Dinah changes into Black Canary and smacks them around, throwing them overboard. When Gan comes to and finishes answering the Port Authority's questions, he finds Dinah pretending to be asleep in her car. He pokes holes in her cover story, and finds a few strands of hair from her blonde wig, easily exposing her secret identity. Elsewhere, in the quaint seaside town of Sandbar, a survivalist father is ordering his son to assasinate a guy circled in a photograph.

Yeah, But Is It Good? Other than a vague notion that this story is going to tackle gangs and the nation's drug problem, it's really hard to tell where this is going. The story's not focused, but that's not so bad, because it's not confusing, like, say, the Brave and the Bold miniseries that came out about the same time. The one place that's kind of baffling is the whole ferry scene. There aren't that many visual clues that they're actually aboard a boat, which gives the reader the impression that the gangbanger thugs just *magically* happened to head to the same coffee shop Gan and Dinah stopped at. Of course, there's only one coffee shop on the ferry... Byam uses this issue to introduce Gan and Wren, and build a world for Dinah Lance that's independent of Oliver Queen. Her interaction with Ollie is dead-on, as it was in the Green Arrow annual she pens the following year, even if Ollie is a bit on the irresponsible side. I get the feeling she doesn't approve of Dinah's relationship with Ollie, and is trying to set her up with Gan for the future. The entire tone reminds me a lot of Mike Grell's Green Arrow: The Wonder Year in that the approach is very deliberate and "realistic," with no flying, costumed, super-powered baddies showing up. It's good that Black Canary finally got her own title, and this, I'm convinced, helped set the stage for the popular Birds of Prey monthly in a big way.

Synopsis: Gan and Dinah talk about the problems of drug trafficking in the Seattle area, and Gan vents his displeasure about Senator Garrenger, who's "War on Drugs" has been mostly hype and little substance. Elsewhere, the survivlaist father is yelling at his son during target practice. Their family is one of fishermen, but five years earlier they were barred from their traditional waters by an Indian Treaty. Senator Garrenger's son then shows up, and gives the survivalist father a picture of Gan -- obviously an assasination job. Gan gets the Senator on his radio show, and there's something of a confrontation. That sparks a memory in Dinah, who'd been listening, and she digs up an old newspaper article on the Senator's son, who'd been "mistakenly" arrested in a drug bust several months before. She takes the info to Gan, who argues that it doesn't prove the Senator is crooked, just a bad father. Dinah then rants about being helpless during her torture in The Longbow Hunters. The next day, Gan stages a live remot outside a crackhouse. A mob gathers, then the police, and a sniper shoots Gan in the arm. Canary arrives, and she and Gan go in and bust up the drug dealers inside the crackhouse. Mr. Drake, a suit connected to the Senator's son, is in another room. He shoots everyone in there, and makes it look like one of the crackheads did it, escaping through the basement into the sewer. After everything settles down, Dinah goes into the park across the street and finds the spent shell casings left by the sniper -- proving the shots didn't come from the crackhouse.

Yeah, But Is It Good? It's picking up steam. The drugs-Senator connection is giving this story some meat, and it's pretty juicy meat at that. Dinah's center-stage soliloquy about being helpless and tortured was more than a tad melodramatic, though. And by Gan's comforting reaction, the intimacy he holds her with... they just met like the day before, right? It's pretty obvious that Byam doesn't like Oliver Queen at all. Every reference to him in this series has been negative, and Byam's doing her damnedest to hook Dinah up with another guy. It rings pretty hollow, because, of course, there is no deeper relationship with Gan in the works. He's an interesting character, though. The whole relationship angle is very much a disappointment, detracting from the overall coolness of the story, especially in light of the deft way she nailed Oliver and Dinah's personal dynamics in Green Arrow Annual No. 5.

Synopsis: The Senator's son is ticked that the assasination attempt failed, but he soon hatches another plan, sending his lackey to make a drop in the subterranean undercity of Seattle. In Lieutenant Cameron's office, Dinah explains that she believes the shooting wasn't from a panicked junkie, but rather orchestrated. Dinah and Gan then argue about his protest stunt. Gan takes an overdosed junkie to the hospital and Dinah suits up as Black Canary and heads underground. In a nicer part of Seattle, the Senator rails at his weasly, druggie son about how hard it's going to be to cover up this latest drug incident. His son then tells him about a pending drug deal at the waterfront, which is a setup to sting one of his enemies. Gan follows Canary into the undercity, where they locate the real deal site. After a messy fight (literally) they subdue the son's lackey and take him to Cameron at the waterfront. The white supremacist sniper kills the lackey. The ship docked at the waterfront is impounded and cocaine discovered. Dinah discoveres a phone number connected with a white supremacist compound, and infiltrates it at night while Gan waits outside in the car. As she's going through the files, the door flies open and the goons are there, holding a beaten Gan.

Yeah, But Is It Good? Yup. The Senator is just as slimy as his son, and the racist angle is well-done. The story flows more naturally than my synopsis would indicate, although no reason is given for Dinah and Gan to know there's a bust going on at the docks, and even less reason to take their prisoner there. Wouldn't it make for sense to take him to, oh, a Police Station? And Canary doesn't fight all that well down in the undercity, either.

Synopsis: The Senator's son is involved in a drug smuggling ring that uses Hercules suitcases in an ingenious way to ship drugs. The white supremacists cut Gan. Canary distracts them by throwing an oil lantern on a stack of drug money. Elsewhere, the main white supremacist/sniper's son leaves home. Gan and Canary flee into the woods, and Gan beats a gunman to within an inch of his life, which provokes one of those poignant conversations with Canary about how hurting the bad guys doesn't make the pain go away. The white supremacist's son gives them a lift. Canary tries to warn the sheriff about the cocaine shipment, but he blows her off. Canary see a swastika sketched onto a sheet of paper and realizes he's in cahoots. At the waterfront, Canary does herself up to look like a floozy college co-ed, and hotwires a speedboat to take on 12 armed men "with nothing but my good looks and quick wit." Gan retreats to Auntie Wren's place, where the supremacist's son explains how the drugs are smuggled Canary crashes her boat and plays unconscious when the smugglers fish her out. They lock her in a cabin, but she breaks out and subdues most of the crew before Gan and the Coast Guard arrive. The white supremacist jumps her, but his son, who's with Gan, shoots him dead. The Senator's son isn't around, and the only people who can implicate him are dead.

Yeah, But Is It Good? It's a bit confusing. For a while, it seems like they're saying the Senator is behind the drug ring, then his son, then neither... not clear at all. And you never really see where the heroes figure out where and when the drop is being made. It doesn't seem rushed, but rather this is just the first or second draft of the issue. Still, it's coherent enough to make sense despite its flaws, and is a satisfying ending to the mini.