I heard recently that Dinah was at one point supposed to say something along the lines of being "70% heterosexual" in the comics but something happened and the line got dropped- is that true?

Yeah, and it was mostly my fault, if the truth be told.

This story sucks, I feel terrible every time I think of it.

Okay, this is the honest truth, so it’s a little messy sounding. 

I was writing Bop. At the time, it had mostly been written by a super-talented but very Conservative writer who would never have deliberately made a long-running DC mainstream character gay (this isn’t me saying it, he’s said so himself, that he felt it was inappropriate to add that stuff to these all-ages characters).   Canary and Oracle were super-close friends and many people sort of detected a slightly queer vibe about them but it was never anything in canon, or even likely intentional.

I came on the book and my feeling was that Dinah was likely bi-. I can’t say I remember what it was that made me feel that, except that she reminded me a lot of some of the awesome gay women I knew from the bay area of California, many of whom rode motorcycles and some of whom could fight and wore leather, all of which reminded me of Dinah. OR maybe I just, along with so many others, sort of fan-ficced that aspect entirely based on the artwork, reading between the lines.

At some point in the story, and I barely remember, Dinah goes up against a femme fatale-type character. And I, in my first draft, had Dinah’s cap saying something about how this woman’s allure wasn’t really working on her because she (the Canary) was, ‘70% heterosexual.’ It was meant to be light-hearted, an off-the-cuff remark to a fight situation, but I was also well aware that it meant a serious step for DC, to have a major female character come out as bi-, and that seemed important.

Here’s where I fucked up. I didn’t like the way the line read, it just didn’t seem to read right. There’s a thing in scripting called ‘placeholder dialogue’ where you put SOMETHING in the panel because you know you need to fix it later. And I wanted something that ended with impact on the last word, like yadda yadda yadda yadda YADDA.

So I wrote her saying, “…and heterosexual to the BONE,” knowing I would change it in the final lettering. It wasn’t what we were going with, but the rhythm was closer to what I wanted.

The art came in, and it didn’t match the original wording, it didn’t feel right. But I knew I could change it back because my editors ALWAYS give me a last dialogue pass after the art comes in, so that I can make sure the dialogue and art flow smoothly. This is where you fix all the placeholder dialogue, among other things.

Only, the first and ONLY time on my entire bop run, they sent the book out without those fixes. I made them, they didn’t get put on the page. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but if you look at that issue, you can see a few other little mistakes and art/script clashes that normally, we would have taken out immediately.

So it still breaks my heart. I can’t read that issue. Every time I see it, I cringe. It was supposed to be Dinah’s moment to come out as bisexual, and instead, it’s the opposite. We tried to get it fixed for the trade, not sure if that ever happened, either. 

This is what sucks about serial comics. You are always on a deadline, somehow, some time, someone will screw up. In this case, I messed up by putting in something in a frantic placeholder bit, and either editorial or production (I never found out who) screwed up by not putting the issue fixes in.

If I ever do write Canary again, I plan to make it right. I think there’s plenty in her history to justify her being bi-. It’s not like it comes from nowhere.

Anyway, I have two or three things that will always bother me that have happened despite all the best intentions (one was one of the covers to Swords of Sorrow, we worked our asses off on that and the cover did NOT match). But this one really bugs me.