Biography

Early Life

Dinah Laurel Lance was born in Gotham City in 1975 to Detective Larry Lance and vigilante Dinah Drake Lance, the original Black Canary. From an early age, Dinah was drawn to the dual legacies of her parents, her father’s commitment to justice within the law and her mother’s pursuit of it from the shadows. But growing up under the roof of a legend came with its shadows. Her mother was rarely home, always pulled away by the demands of her life as a hero. At just six years old, Dinah had her first solo in a school choir concert. She invited her mother with excitement and hope but that night, crime won again. Her mother never came.

Everything changed when Dinah was ten. Her father was killed in the line of duty, a moment that shattered her world. Her mother spiraled into grief, and Dinah often returned home to find her passed out, a bottle slipping from her hand. The once-golden idea of heroism had lost its shine and Dinah was left to navigate her youth in the wreckage of a household haunted by loss and legacy. But that all changed when she was fifteen.

One day, while working in the family flower shop, Dinah met Ted Grant, the man once known as Wildcat. He immediately noticed the resemblance to someone he thought he’d lost long ago. When Dinah’s mother walked in and saw Ted standing there, she broke down. The past had come rushing back. That day, Dinah learned the impossible truth: her mother was not just a costumed vigilante, but a time-lost warrior from the 1940s, a member of the legendary Justice Society of America. She had fought against Nazi science, wielded fists alongside mystical specters, and had been flung forward in time by a device created by the time-manipulating villain Per Degaton.

Days later, Dinah’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. At Ted’s urging, the three of them relocated to his home in Philadelphia. There, Ted, once a heavyweight champion and still every bit the fighter, took Dinah under his wing. He didn’t train her just to throw punches; he taught her philosophy, discipline, and how to carry a legacy without being crushed by it. As her mother’s condition worsened, Dinah found a new parental bond forming with Ted. When her mother passed away the following year, Ted became her legal guardian and godfather.

Though she mourned her mother, the grief was complicated. Their bond had always been strained, Dinah had been raised more by the myth of the Black Canary than by the woman herself. Life, in some ways, felt unchanged.

At eighteen, Dinah took a bold step away from the world of heroes and into one of her own making. She left Philadelphia to tour with her band named The Black Canarys in tribute to her mother.