Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: black canary, bruce wayne, chuck dixon, detective comics, dinah lance, Tom King, Tom Taylor

If Tom Taylor Is A Tourist, Chuck Dixon Is An Expat: Bruce Vs Dinah

If Tom Taylor Is A Tourist, Chuck Dixon Is An Expat: Batman Vs Black Canary, the fight goes on...

Tom Taylor is the current writer of Detective Comics, currently featuring Batman, Black Canary and Green Arrow. Bruce Wayne, Dinah Lance and Oliver Queen. He was challenged this week online by a reader who said, "You make a random young man outrace Bruce in the first arc of your run. You like to sell Chimp as DC's best detective, not Batman. Now, you're gaslighting people into thinking Dinah is better than him in hand-to-hand combat. Just admit you hate Batman, man." and citing this scene from the most recent Detective Comics #1107 by Tom Taylor and Pete Woods. 

With Dinah Lance, in the boxing gym she grew up in and inherited from Wildcat, Ted Kord, and the wider Batman and Green Arrow family. And a challenge made… a boxing match in which no one actually hits each other, but the boxing intent itself is judged by Cassandra Cain.

And of that match? Dinah Lance, the Black Canary, wins.

Tom stated, "I love Batman. I'm literally the writer of Detective Comics. He's one of the top heroes in the world. Dinah Lance is a better fighter than him. So is Cass Cain. Batman doesn't need you to defend him. He's Batman."

When another reader responded saying, "Sorry, I have to agree with him on this one", Tom replied, "It's not an opinion. It's canon." But then Chuck Dixon entered the fray. Accompanied by just the double page spread of the fight above, without the context that no blows were actually exchanged, he posted, "Dinah Lance could not win a boxing match with Batman. Full stop." And when shown a screencap of Tom's response about canon, he said, "You have to earn canon. This tourist isn't writing canon."

Tom Taylor, co-creator, writer and executive producer of the animated series The Deep, based on his graphic novels, has only been writing comics since 2009 with Flinch, Rombies and The Example. He has also written widely in comics including a tonne of Star Wars, but also including Batman/Superman, Titans, Earth Two, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Dark Knights Of Steel, Batman One Bad Day, DCeased, Batman: The Detective, The Joker, Black Mask and Legends Of The Dark Knight, Nightwing solo and won an Eisner for Detective Comics last year.

Now, Chuck Dixon is one of the most prolific Batman comic book writers, and may be the most prolific comic book writer of all. He started in 1984, writing his then-wife's comic Evangeline, before being picked up by Marvel for Conan. His work on Punisher for Marvel landed him the Batbooks gig from Dennis O'Neill in the nineties, first on Robin, and then Detective Comics, Nightwing, Batgirl, Catwoman as well as creating Birds Of Prey, along with being a lead writer on Knightfall and KnightsEnd, co-creating characters Bane, The Electrocutioner and Stephanie Brown, as well as writing Contagion, Legacy, Cataclysm and No Man's Land. He wrote the Punisher/Batman crossover and the Batman/Spawn crossover. He left for Crossgen but returned in the noughties on Nightwing, Robin, Batman and the Outsiders, but in 2008, Dixon announced that he was no longer "employed by DC Comics in any capacity." He later returned in 2017 for the Bane: Conquest limited series and for Robin's 80th anniversary.

So Chuck has written many more comics, and for longer than Tom. But Chuck hasn't written regularly for DC in almost twenty years, and what he did, ten years ago, well, wasn't canon to the Batman comics at the time. If Tom Taylor is a tourist after writing for DC Comics for fifteen years and Batman titles almost as long, then Chuck Dixon has to be regarded as an expat. An expatriate, a person who resides outside their native country…

And of course everyone kicked off all over the place, whether or not Bruce Wayne could beat Dinah Lance in boxing, whether Dinah trained Bruce in hand-to-hand combat, and none of them recognised that in the actual comic book as published, upper body strength doesn't come into it. The recent Black Canary boxing comic, The Best Of The Best, with Dinah taking on Lady Shiva, from Tom King and Ryan Sook, is being cited…

…with Dinah Lance going to extremes in the ring, as well as this scene from Justice League Of America #190 from 1981 written by Gerry Conway, one of the longest comic book writers, with Batman only defeating Black Canary in combat because she was possessed by Starro, and recognising that Black Canary was his equal or better in such combat…

Tom Taylor came back on to say, "I don't use Twitter much anymore. I tweeted this & walked away & worked on a new comic series. Logged in a day later, giggled at the absurdity of people getting worked up about this. Remembered why I don't use twitter much anymore, then flew interstate to work on a feature film. This is a site that rewards rage and outrage. A site where someone can claim to be a fan of superheroes while, in the same tweet, spew bile that sounds like it's come from the most unimaginative, edgelord supervillain. I can't take any of it too seriously." It's true, this is comic books, folks. It's not a matter of life or death… It's much more important than that.

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