Twice-Told-Tales: Daring Damsels Destroy Destructive Dreams

Dinah "Black Canary" Lance and Helena "Huntress" Wayne were two women with remarkable parallels in their lives. Both ladies were born on Earth-Two, second generation superheroines, living up to the legacies of their parents. Each lass lost both her mother and father to tragic events, motivating them to adopt their heroic alter egos. While the Earth-One counterparts of Dinah and Helena, Helen "Silver Swan" Alexandros and Barbara "Batgirl" Gordon, were their own women with different backgrounds and motivations from this cosmic twins... Dinah and Helena were tied in crucial ways. And in one other key aspect: their destructive dreams!

Dinah was the first who became susceptible to dreams, when she fantasized while sleeping that Larry Lance was still alive. Seeking the assistance of her Justice League teammate Superman to help her access this "Dream Dimension" to find Larry, the two Leaguers journeyed through the barrier between realities where they indeed found a version of Lance. But was this the Larry Lance who perished while protecting his Earth-Two from a cosmic threat in Aquarius... or something else?

Helena would months after this also be consumed by dreams, as she dreamt of her father Batman and mother Catwoman. Each parent appeared in the form of a bat and cat avatar, seeking to consume Helena into their individual legacies. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to call upon her teammates of the Justice Society to assist her, only police detective Gary Minelli was able to support her from the outside world.

The villains behind our marvelous maidens' dream dilemmas were individuals resding in the Arkham Asylums outside of both Earth's Gotham Cities. The first was a skeletal cloaked criminal Doctor Destiny... a long-time Justice League adversary... who manufactured his Dream Dimension, which Black Canary found herself within, through his Materioptikon devise.

Another skeletal cloaked individual* was a manifestation of the former foe of Batman and the Justice Society Doctor Elba, who used Solution K to cause his victims to go insane and which Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether used on the Huntress. Thankfully, through their sheer force of willpower, Black Canary and Huntress were able to destroy these Dream Dimensions from within and vanquish their foes.

* This skeletal nightmare might have been a subconscious manifestation of Helena’s recollection of an experience, related to her by her father of the “Painter of Death”, who ended up being a skull-masked Doctor Elba… inventor of the Solution K that was now injected in her body.