Why was Black Canary's scream hardly used back in the Satellite era?

[caj]

My favourite JLA runs are Fox, Friedrich, Englehart and Wein.

Yeah, Wein and Englehart's runs were way, way too short. Unfortunately, Conway's run went on forever.

[Flash Gordon]

Black Canary is always underutilized.

[marshal88]

in the satellite league , it's not like she was used in every story, only a couple of times. most of the time, she just used her martial arts which was big in the 70s...

[caj]

I don't think the writers ever did a good job of explaining how she could use her powers against a villain without it affecting all the other people in the vicinity, including her fellow heroes.

But it was a unique power and a powerful weapon when used.

[Jim Kelly]

in the satellite league , it's not like she was used in every story, only a couple of times. most of the time, she just used her martial arts which was big in the 70s...

I thought that art looked like Rich Buckler and not Dick Dillin and I was right--which puts it in the 1980s--JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 189 (April 1981) to be exact. The one about Starro the Conqueror's starfish getting on everybody's face. Pretty late in the satellite run.

[RBerman]

I sometimes wish we could go back to that a bit. Not the Mod Diana Prince, but dial Superman back to something closer to S&S' original and adjust everyone else on a similar scale. There's a lot more drama available to a hero that isn't infinitely capable.

Grant Morrison did this with his recentish Action Comics run. It's also like that in special projects like Superman: Secret Identity.

[RBerman]

Not sure, but after it was introduced, I think it was not used for a couple of years -- until Len Wein had her use it in his run. Thereafter, she used it more regularly. She mentioned a sonic whammy power in Brave & the Bold, and I had no idea what she was talking about. I figured it was some kind of difficult judo move. Then a few months later, she kinda used it in that JLA story -- but not in the typical destructive sense -- it was used to negate the effects of a carousel that was spewing deadly gas.

It was called the "sonic whammy" for most of the 1970s in JLA as well. Gerry Conway appears to have been the one to rechristen it her "canary cry" when he took over for Steve Englehart in 1977.