Larry Lance
67 years ago - Larry Lance is born in New Orleans to jazz musicians.
62 years ago - 5-year-old Larry first starts playing piano.
53 years ago - 14-year-old Larry starts playing as a session musician.
51 years ago - 16-year-old Larry moves to New York to start playing in the post-punk scene.
49 years ago - 18-year-old Larry's friend is robbed and beaten. He attends Borough of Manhattan College, studying criminal justice.
47 years ago - 20-year-old Larry joins the police academy, and becomes a uniformed officer.
42 years ago - 25-year-old Larry sees how much Laurel Drake's need for justice mirrors his own, and how no one will listen to her. When he discovers her working as Black Canary he decides to help her. When they successfully find their quarry and expose a ring of police corruption, they become partners. He is promoted to the Detective Bureau.
41 years ago - 26-year-old Larry returns to working as a studio musician with the encouragement of Laurel Drake, and becomes a better detective because of it.
39 years ago - 28-year-old Larry & Laurel Drake are married.
38 years ago - 27-year-old Larry first meets Ted Grant when Laurel Drake helps found the All-Star Squadron, becoming friends with his favorite boxer.
32 years ago - 35-year-old Larry starts teaching Dinah Lance to play piano.
30 years ago - 37-year-old Larry encourages Dinah Lance to train with Ted Grant, supporting her desire to someday be a hero like her mom.
28 years ago - 39-year-old Larry is promoted to Lieutenant. When Laurel Drake is injured while fighting William Asmodeus Zard, they decide for her to retire as Black Canary.
26 years ago - 41-year-old Larry’s wife Laurel Drake & Ted Grant are attacked by the Monkey Fist Cult.
24 years ago - 43-year-old Larry stays in Manhattan while Laurel Drake & Dinah Lance travel to Japan with Ted Grant to meet O-Sensai, insisting that it will help Dinah achieve her dream of being a hero like her mom.
22 years ago - 45-year-old Larry is killed in the line of duty.
It's fashionable to look back on old-fashioned ideas from our comfortable seat here in the future and be critical of stuff that wouldn't fly today. Most of the work of Robert Kanigher falls under this umbrella; the man worked for a long time to try to get more representation of women and people of color in comics, and unlike contemporaries like William Marston who clearly did not care what people thought of his radical ideas about the personhood of women, Kanigher packaged his representation with an eye to make it marketable in the time he actually lived in.
Which is why a butt-kicking lady superhero like Black Canary naturally came pre-packaged with a hat-wearing, wisecracking private eye boyfriend, because it was basically required at the time. We can be critical of the fact that it WAS required, but in practice Larry Lance winds up being a pretty forward-thinking character. Even at the time, he was recognizing that there was inequality happening, and using his own privilege to help level the playing field. This makes him a fairly good feminist ally on paper, and these are comics, so EVERYTHING is on paper.
Which is why a butt-kicking lady superhero like Black Canary naturally came pre-packaged with a hat-wearing, wisecracking private eye boyfriend, because it was basically required at the time. We can be critical of the fact that it WAS required, but in practice Larry Lance winds up being a pretty forward-thinking character. Even at the time, he was recognizing that there was inequality happening, and using his own privilege to help level the playing field. This makes him a fairly good feminist ally on paper, and these are comics, so EVERYTHING is on paper.
Larry Lance's Comic HistoryLarry Lance appeared for the first time in Flash Comics #92, in the first Black Canary story, a cop on the trail of some hijackers who winds up working with the mysterious vigilante. Like a classic comic book couple, he doesn't know who Black Canary is even while patronizing the flower shop of a certain Miss Dinah Drake. Larry is a classic supporting boyfriend figure from that era... in that Dinah is often more irritated with his antics than anything else, but when they invariably find themselves in dire straits he defaults to trusting Black Canary to hold her own and save the day. They appeared in all of the final issues of Flash Comics, but it wasn't until their later appearances in Brave and the Bold, once it was established that they were Earth 2 characters, that it's revealed that Larry & Dinah had been married in the interim.
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Dinah made regular appearances in the pages of Justice League of America through the sixties as the team regularly crossed over with the Earth 2 Justice Society, but Larry didn't appear until issue #73, when he sacrificed himself to save Dinah, setting up the circumstances that would lead to her permanently moving to Earth 1 and joining the Justice League.
After the Crisis of Infinite Earths, as it's established that Larry & Dinah have always been from the same Earth, it's established that they were parents to the modern Black Canary Dinah Laurel Lance. Most of Larry's appearances at that point are all in flashback as he's established to have already died as part of Dinah's backstory, but he's considered to be a beloved parent and supportive partner to his superhero wife. Since Black Canary is meant to have operated in the Gotham City in the past, you sometimes see references to Larry actually working with a young Jim Gordon. |
Our Larry Lance StoryThe most important thing for us is to make sure Larry supports both of the women in his life, the original Black Canary (who in our timeline is named Laurel), and his daughter Dinah, the modern Black Canary. We're using the ideas established in the post-crisis stories that he is part of Laurel becoming Black Canary from the very beginning, working with her for her whole career. He's also Dinah's original champion. There's meant to be a lot of drama between Dinah and Laurel as she gets older and the idea of her following in her mom's footsteps gets complicated, but it should always be really simple for Larry. He should always, until his death, be 100% committed to supporting his kid being a hero just like her mom.
We've also added something to Larry's story, specifically because it helps us build Dinah. We want her career as a musician and rockstar to be a significant part of her life from the very beginning, something that is as much a part of her as fighting badguys, so we made it something she learned from her dad. We also, just for fun, made him blonde... for reasons that I think should be fairly obvious. |
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