Cassandra "Batgirl" Cain Appreciation Thread

**shanealt** · 05-11-2009, 11:11 AM

Oh right, on topic, um. That Cass Cail, she suuuuuuuuuure is something.

**Pixie_Solanas** · 05-11-2009, 11:17 AM

Originally Posted by The Cool Thatguy

Good God no. Yost would gleefully strip Cass of her humanity. Once was enough.

This sounds hotter than hades. Yost, get to scriptin' and dehumanize her in the basest way possible.

**Blight** · 05-11-2009, 11:30 AM

Even though it is fun to tease the newton. Back to the subject at hand.

**FemGeek** · 05-11-2009, 12:01 PM

That was one of her best moments, after her fight with Batman, it really showed what the character stood for. It's one of the reasons I find it odd that she would give up being Batgirl, since it means more to her than anything ever did.

**Midnight Lion** · 05-11-2009, 12:49 PM

Originally Posted by FemGeek

That was one of her best moments, after her fight with Batman, it really showed what the character stood for. It's one of the reasons I find it odd that she would give up being Batgirl, since it means more to her than anything ever did.

Along those same lines, my question is: does anyone else cherish the secret dream that one day Cass will be Batman?

I know, the likelihood of that happening is about equal to that of her actually being another Kryptonian, but she'd be perfect for it (IMHO).

**Spiffy** · 05-11-2009, 01:04 PM

Originally Posted by The Cool Thatguy

Sigh...how many times do we have to go over this?

Beechen admitted that DC told him to make Cass a villain. But he also stated that how he want about that was left up to him.

He barely spent 5 minutes on research, so much so that he literally got almost every important element about Cassandra's character wrong. I don't mean wrong as in "She'd never do that!", I mean wrong as in factually wrong.

In this information age, he really has no excuse. He's earned all the loathing that's been leveled at him. If he'd decided to actually earn his paycheck instead of half assing it, I think alot of people would feel differently about his writing.

And I personally could have gotten over this if he hadn't lobbied for a miniseries to "fix it" and then, in a way, gotten it even worse. Making Cassandra verbose, morally confused (if not an outright killer, at least someone dead set on using murder to fix a problem), and at odds with Nightwing.

So even when he DID do his research, he didn't get it. Whereas Nicieza clearly does.

So in the spirit of looking forward instead of back... while we know Nicieza isn't getting the new Batgirl series (nor who's even starring in it), do we hold out hopes perhaps that no matter what codename she uses (presuming they don't kill her) that perhaps other writers will pay attention to what Fabian did with her and absorb it? While I've got small issues with what he did with Huntress, at the very least other writers have a good recent core-Bat-book template (I'm considering all of the BFTC stuff, even the one-shots as core Bat stuff) for Cass if they are too lazy to look up five years worth of earlier issues of her own book.

**carabas** · 05-11-2009, 01:10 PM

Originally Posted by Spiffy

And I personally could have gotten over this if he hadn't lobbied for a miniseries to "fix it"...

What? He actually lobbied for that? Seriously?

**shanealt** · 05-11-2009, 01:20 PM

I don't believe it was outright stated as such, but that was a theory going around based on several comments made.

**shanealt** · 05-11-2009, 05:39 PM

That wasn't the problem, actually. It was the fact that she did a complete heel-turn as a character. At the end of her series, she went on her own path, away from Batman and from Gotham, to forge her own path--after making a big show of the fact that she would never, ever kill, even if it meant her own death. Even after she discovered that her father had other children.

And then come Robin One Year Later...she learns that her father had another children, flips out, and starts murdering people so that she and Robin can lead the League of Assassins.

It...it did not mesh.

**Spiffy** · 05-11-2009, 10:23 PM

Guys... we should all know by now that there's little point to arguing with d.newton about Mr. Beechen. His devotion is well documented by now and it seems pretty futile to try and actually persaude him of anything (or expect decent arguments in return).

Back to Cassandra. Lets do a what if. If the "new" Batgirl is Stephanie, as has been widely speculated, what are our current theories about what DC does with Cassandra?

Do they...

1.) Kill her and stick the body in a refrigerator.
2.) Make her go Eeeevil again.
3.) Have her decide she's "tired" of being a hero, and she takes a vacation to Aruba.
4.) Nu Batman suggests to her that "we don't want you anymore", she shrugs, takes off the costume, and from then on continues her adventures dressed like a ninja, calling herself "Jade Canary".
5.) She finds a time machine and goes back in time to "find" the real Batman.
6.) DC does a pocket veto on her. We get a new Batgirl and the old one is simply never mentioned again (until months later, after thousands of letters of protest, after which there's a patch up job done to reveal what really happened).
7.) Barbara goes on vacation and deputizes Cassandra as the new Oracle. Her logic? She argues that the Oracle of Delphi was named Cassandra, ergo, Cass is probably fated for the job. Cassandra's lack of verbal skills are swept under the rug, and next thing we know she's on the horn giving advice to all kinds of heroes.

**Midnight Lion** · 05-11-2009, 10:25 PM

Originally Posted by d newton

But Cass had:
A) lost her best friend (thanks to Black Mask / Leslie Thompkins).
B) lost her home town (thanks to Chemo).

I'll be honest: I don't understand how any of this would indicate that major character!fail was in her future. A lot of other characters went through the same thing (or similar enough), and none of them turned their backs on everything they believed in.

**Midnight Lion** · 05-11-2009, 10:28 PM

Originally Posted by Spiffy

Back to Cassandra. Lets do a what if. If the "new" Batgirl is Stephanie, as has been widely speculated, what are our current theories about what DC does with Cassandra?

Do they...

4.) Nu Batman suggests to her that "we don't want you anymore", she shrugs, takes off the costume, and from then on continues her adventures dressed like a ninja, calling herself "Jade Canary".

I'm [still] clinging to the [admittedly deranged] hope that Cass will be the new Batman. Gendered terms aside, it's the title that's important. She'd be awesome.