Cassandra "Batgirl" Cain Appreciation Thread

[RoguishGurl]

I wonder if Batgirl can jump like that. I still need to read Batgirl

[Frisky Dingo]

Bruce you dog...

[carabas]

Her father trained her to be an assassin, how is this change a turn to evil?

Her father tried to make her into an assassin. He failed miserably. She's got the skills, but not the mindset. Cass, until One Year Later, was far more anti-killing than Batman and Superman put together ever were.

And then, for the most idiotic reason imaginable, she's a Bond villain happily slaughering whomever.

That image is like an image of Batman chainsawing Robin's head off.

[Teh m0nk3y]

The purists hate Cassie's turn to evil. They simply don't understand that "good" and "evil" are irrelevant to her.

Her father trained her to be an assassin, how is this change a turn to evil?

Her father tried to make her into an assassin. He failed miserably. She's got the skills, but not the mindset. Cass, until One Year Later, was far more anti-killing than Batman and Superman put together ever were.

And then, for the most idiotic reason imaginable, she's a Bond villain happily slaughering whomever.

That image is like an image of Batman chainsawing Robin's head off.

Beechen written Batgirl has indeed no place within a Cassandra Cain Apprecitation thread.

To further explain it in a way that X-23 fans can instantly get:
It's like that time Chris Claremont wrote X-23 during his Uncanny stint.
Only a hundred million times worse.
Or like that story of Mercury in Manifest Destiny where X-23 was written way out of character...
Only a hundred million times worse than that. :P

[FemGeek]

Hurray for Cass, one of the most interesting and unique characters I've ever read about. Whatever happens in the coming months, I hope Cass gets a good deal, I'd hate to see such a great character just fade away.

[timbox]

Her father tried to make her into an assassin. He failed miserably. She's got the skills, but not the mindset. Cass, until One Year Later, was far more anti-killing than Batman and Superman put together ever were.

And then, for the most idiotic reason imaginable, she's a Bond villain happily slaughering whomever.

That image is like an image of Batman chainsawing Robin's head off.

I understand.

I can forgive reasoning if it adds interest to the character. I like when "good" characters are given a chance to go "evil." It adds a new element to the character to be explored.

In the current Messiah War story line, I would love to see X-23 and Elixir become a horseman of Apocalypse. It would be a new avenue on which to tell more stories. Now if the stories were badly written, I could see being upset. But that is the case with any poorly written story.

[carabas]

I can forgive reasoning if it adds interest to the character.

Let's put it this way: they canceled her okey doing ongoing series so she could be a minor Robin villain.

[Blind pugh]

Sorry, looking good can never be cast aside for any sort of "practicality".

Only bulldog-visaged lesbians should don combat boots if no irony is involved.

Best post ever!

[Spiffy]

This thread is to celebrate the glorious character that is Cassandra Cain, the one true Batgirl.

Here is Cassandra paying her father back with death:

In other words, one of the biggest pieces of crap written for the character. A slap in the face of all of the earlier good writing.

Batgirl teaches not to trust men, and to keep your lackeys in line.

No. Not Batgirl. The Adam Beechen version of Batgirl. Totally different thing. It means it was out of character compared to all of her earlier uses and appearances.

The purists hate Cassie's turn to evil. They simply don't understand that "good" and "evil" are irrelevant to her.

Wrong.

She's shown she's very aware of evil and very against it. At least until a bad writer got ahold of her.

Her father trained her to be an assassin, how is this change a turn to evil?

Because his training failed. She had the skill to kill but was inherently a good person and even raised without normal human social mores was repulsed by the act of killing (something, before Beechen got his hands on her, she'd done exactly ONCE--at her father's bidding). It was the keystone of her entire character and Mr. Beechen just didn't get it. Even beyond her own disgust at killing, she also understood the idea of risking her own life to save another---that's the ONLY reason Batman took her on as a protege. In other words, she was the opposite of a Natural Born Killer--she was a Natural Born Hero. It's what made her character.

[Spiffy]

Hurray for Cass, one of the most interesting and unique characters I've ever read about. Whatever happens in the coming months, I hope Cass gets a good deal, I'd hate to see such a great character just fade away.

Here's what I find both encouraging AND scary at the same time.

In BFTC: The Network we get the single most "in-character" appearance of Cassandra we've been blessed with in a LONG time. Silent and a bit spooky, intense, but moral to the point of actually being a bit pig-headed. It's that LAST part that was even the best part of it. Cassandra written poorly could have just been one of those lame heroes who make some long winded inspirational speech about how heroes don't kill. But Cassandra written correctly is too certain of herself to waste time with crap like that. "No" and a certainty that it shouldn't be debated made it exactly right. Cassandra doesn't need wrong and right explained to her--she just knows--and she fully expects the same of others.

Yet there's all this smoke and mirrors around the new Batgirl book, with all these hints being tossed around about various Batgirls and the apparent creative team is a total unknown quantity.

I'm encouraged that the "Network" scribe Fabian Nicieza was allowed to sit down and write us a good Cassandra this one final time, but I'm also afraid it could be a swan song.

[Captain Jim]

Just a thought. I wonder if any of the Beechen haters may have ever entertained the thought that perhaps he wrote what editorial told him to write?

[jerrymcl89]

Just a thought. I wonder if any of the Beechen haters may have ever entertained the thought that perhaps he wrote what editorial told him to write?

I've always thought he did. But even given an editorial mandate to make her a villian, I don't think he did so in a way that made use of what had already been established for the character (and Gabych had established reasons why she could go rogue before her series ended). And his stab at redempion in the mini-series also didn't really show much understanding of who she is as a character.

[Spiffy]

Just a thought. I wonder if any of the Beechen haters may have ever entertained the thought that perhaps he wrote what editorial told him to write?

I can't speak for anyone else but myself.

The answer is "not completely".

They could designate the broad strokes, sure. "Make her a villain".

What they didn't do... couldn't do... is instruct him to build a sloppy, lazy badly thought out framework for that.

Any character can be flipped as a villain--even one as well thought out in their heroism as Cassandra. But Beechen did a spectacularly bad job at explaining how and why she became what he made her.

When he took her on after her own series got canned, he never took the time, never even bothered to do even the most basic research, to understand the character. Even worse, when he was given a chance to "fix" what he'd done with an undeserved miniseries, he showed even less understanding. All he seemed to absorb was that fans were upset and demanding some kind of redemption. He never really seemed to fully understand what he'd done wrong in the first place, or what the character actually needed to be like.

In contrast, in ONE try, a few pages of a single issue, Fabian Nicieza somehow "magically" managed to get it right. Not just the fact that she wouldn't kill (the obvious thing), but the other less obvious aspects of her character. That she's monosyllabic and kind of creepy omniscient. That she's a moral absolutist--rather stubbornly (and from the point of an outsider it might actually come off as arrogance, or at the very least stubborness). That she assumes that morality is perfectly obvious, and that a simple "No" communicates what needs to be said.

Now I don't know what Nicieza would have done if his assignment had been to make Cassandra a villain instead of re-establishing her with her real personality. But I certainly know that given the SAME assignment, "fix it", Beechen mucked up five issues, whereas Nicieza got in right in less than 5 pages.

[timbox]

What is your favorite Cassie story arc?

[Henker]

I don't know about story arc, but my favorite single issue is the father's day one (#65). I think it perfectly highlights the complex love/hate relationship Cass has with her father.

Also, since X-23 has seeped into this thread, here's Cass doing her best impression: