Robin OYL Part 1

[zechs80]

Be warned this post is going to have sixteen scans (of four issues). Oh and this is the infamous story involving Cassandra Cain written by Adam Beechen (Robin #148-149 plus Batgirl #52 & 73). You'll probably find yourself a member of the Red Lantern Corp after reading these scans if you're a fan of Cassandra Cain or Tim Drake. You've been warned.


I digress, before Gates of Gotham I reread this arc for a good laugh and I've been meaning to post it here (maybe there's a little Doctor Clayton Forrester in me to see if can drive any sane being truly mad). For you to look upon it with new eyes. Not ones tainted by rage, which ironically I was just that when this first came out (but then what fan wasn't after reading this).

Consider this a more rational look at why DC did what they did. And just how bad this story was equally bad for Tim then just Cass.

Now before this infamous issue this was the last time we saw Cassandra Cain was the final issue of her ongoing:



Just a mere three months later cue the One Year Later event:




Okay on one hand this is a loss to someone who played an important role in Tim's life. But on the other hand, this is to many plot hole number one given that in Cass's very own series (Batgirl #56 to be specific):



I don't think this has still ever been explained either by Beechen. How a dead girl ended up alive a year later and dead again. Still Beechen at least gives time to reflect on this poor soul who Tim once knew:




Okay, I can't help but imagine that if Tim a good detective can figure out the body has been dead for over three hours, I think a medical examiner could determine this fact as well. So why would Tim bother with this? The time of death would clear him of any wrong doing for the most part.

So anyway, Babs finds out via the police radio and informs the entire Bat Family of the news. One of the few things I actually appreciated was one person's reaction:




Really, the only thing I think Beechen ever got fully right with Cass was her relationship with Alfred. Maybe Gotham Knights was the only Cass book he read when doing research? Who knows.

The second thing about this page when re-reading this: who is that in the final panel? Shiva? Cass? I have to assume the former since at the time she was working for Babs due to a bet she had with Dinah (really one of the few OYL stories that actually was good).

Anyway, we then cut to a figure who was very prominent in Cass's last adventure as Batgirl:




Now okay, supposedly Cass was the one who killed Nyssa here. But unless she has the powers of the Flash she didn't commit this crime. So yeah maybe her ninja lackeys probably did. I still wonder and be damned if this could have been a better plot twist when eventually revealed. That in actuality this hit came from Slade, not Cass who did it as a favor to Talia. Considering what Nyssa did to her, you'd think the moment she snapped out of her funk she hire someone to do the deed.

Given that Talia went exactly to Slade during an arc of Batman & Robin, besides the whole Injustice League perhaps the partnership was a recurring one. Also technically, if you think about it Slade was in control of this sect of the League, not really Cass his "puppet".

Still, poor Nyssa. Really she's only mentioned one more time in this arc and that's it she's swept under the rug, never to be mentioned again period by anyone again.

Anyway back to the story. Tim decides to meet Bruce and inform him what's going on:



Tim then gives the let me prove I'm innocent and Bruce allows this. However curiously someone is watching them:



Okay that surely is Cass, but really we get no explanation from Beechen as to why she was watching him. I guess you could chalk it up to her just being curious and stalking Tim until he hit the showers (more on her infamous "obsession" with Tim in part 2).

So how does Tim decide to prove he's innocent? Why breaking into the police precinct that has Lynx's body.





Yeah it doesn't go as planned so not even two steps into the place he's fighting cops and later a special division of cops designed to handle Metahumans called the Specials. Still, he gets a piece of paper he finds in the mask Lynx wore. Meanwhile:






*sigh* Cass's second kill. Though again I have to ask about the time table of this story arc. Okay part 1 we see Cass actually stalking Tim. Yet it's only been a few hours or less since Tim's now playing hide and seek with cops. Yet, Cass seems to have acquired the powers of a speedster. Cause there's no other explanation other than super fast super sneaky ninja helicopter I'll accept.

As for Tim, he tricks the Specials with the oldest trick of the book:





I guess the Gotham Police Department really must be recruiting young to patrol the streets. So Tim goes back to his pad at Wayne Manor when he's paid a visit by Shiva. On the bright side it isn't in his bed. Still, she informs him of Nyssa being dead and won't say anything further. They then have a laced sub textual scuffle before Shiva exits.





You just gotta love that. I'm not even gonna touch the Navajo plot hole given it's been driven into the ground. But after watching an episode of Attack of the Fourth Wall, I think Linkara has it wrong. This has got to be the worst planned scheme someone has ever thought up.

I mean seriously, you kill an already dead person again. Frame Tim with the murder, yet stash a piece of paper in the mask betting that Tim would find it before the medical examiner would. Then make the dude who was framed for a previous crime commit an actual second crime (the first breaking into the police station above). And what is the entire point? Well as the caption says it'll be a "hard answers".

Part Two to be posted tomorrow.

Comments

[jaybee3]

I'd like to thank you for posting this - if only because it brings understanding to people who don't understand the widespread loathing of what DC/Beechan did to Cassandra Cain and why the reaction was so vehement (and this isn't even the worst of it).

The worst part I think is that Beechan said in interviews that he and his editors (Berganza/Tomasi) had actually come up with a reasonable explanation of her behavior and that based on where the Batgirl series had left this was all a "natural" part of the progression of her character (which showed he read none of Anderson Gabrych's final Batgirl run except maybe the final issue). All that was dropped within months as DC backpedaled and made her brainwashed by Deathstroke (whose magic evil juice apparently makes former multi-faceted heroes into over the top James Bond-ish villians) and then Beechan writes a mini trying to justify all this stuff even with the magic evil juice retcon.

So we have - 1) Cass (she was rarely called "Cassie", Mr. Beechan except by Oracle, "Cassie" to Tim is Wonder Girl) is killed and we see no REAL reaction (outside of Tim) from any of the Bat-Crew especially Bruce and Babs (the 2 closest to her).

2) A multi-racial legacy female hero (who was created not in the Silver Age but in the 90s) and who had supported her own solo title for 73 issues (and was still selling 23,000+) is reduced within the space of a few months to a B-Level Villian for Robin... (that says it all).

3) Nyssa, the new Demon Head, who had been set-up in several stories as a giant Big Bad in the future of the DCU, who had killed Ra's, killed/revived and brainwashed Talia, took over the League of Assassins is easily disposed of in the space of a handful of panels.

4) Navajo. Just...Navajo. A girl who in her own series (which Beechan clearly could not be bothered to even skim through and his editors obviously cared less) spent an entire issue TRYING to read one English word ("Why") now is taught fluent Najavo (one of the hardest languages in the world) by Bruce (since when does he bother with that?) OFF-PANEL no less.

I really would like to understand from a "rational" POV why DC did what they did to her (which made the character radio-active from then to now) but I still don't get it. I'd like to know what others think. For me, the DC Editors obviously could have cared less if Beechan made her motivations or past history (Najavo!) make any sense - which showed me (as a reader) that they really didn't care about the character at all. They just had no use for her (her title was said to be cancelled to make for the Batwoman series which never happened) and decided to make her a villain (and a bad one at that). Just as they recently did with Roy Harper (only to a more sadder degree)

Sorry about the rants - this story just makes me so mad even years later.

[zechs80]

1) Actually there is reaction of Babs and she's broken up by it. I just couldn't post the page and focused on Alfred and ? (Shiva). Huntress also hears the news but doesn't really give any emotion.
3) I think it was just to start the ball rolling on Ra's returning.
4) Worse than just a few months. Three. Cass's series ended in February with Beechen's run starting in June.

I've grown to laugh at this story. I'm sure espanolbot and others at Superdickery can attest to the numerous times of how badly I reacted to this story.

[espanolbot]

I know that I did, that's why I'm still complaining about it five years later.

[fifthie]

2) A multi-racial legacy female hero (who was created not in the Silver Age but in the 90s) and who had supported her own solo title for 73 issues (and was still selling 23,000+) is reduced within the space of a few months to a B-Level Villian for Robin... (that says it all).

It still gets me that they took a character who was actually a really well-executed subversion/deconstruction of a whole set of awful racial stereotypes, threw all that out, and jammed her as hamfistedly as possible into a completely different set of awful racial stereotypes.

[espanolbot]

I pretty much think that they did it to,
1. Prevent people from confusing her with Kate Kane, and despite them emphasising that the new Batwoman was Jewish, gay and a redhead THERE WERE STILL PEOPLE COMPLAINING BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT SHE WAS CASS!

2. Due to Cass' series selling more than the higher profile series like Catwoman and the Authority, the chances are they thought that by adding her to Tim's rogue gallery would improve his numbers by adding Cass' audience to Tim's as they kept buying issues to see what the heck was going on... that kind of worked.

3. Tim didn't really have that much of a Rogues Gallery, and they thought that by adding Cass to his villian list, her resources would basically make her Tim's version of Ra's al Ghul while the (hamfisted) addition of the "revelation" that Cass was yet another woman who wanted to bone Tim put her into the Catwoman/Talia category. The fact that they were trying to build up a relationship with a "good girl" in the form of Zoanne in the books at the time made it look like they were trying to go for some kind of love triangle deal here.

The fact that Beechen/Geoff Johns had Cass attacking all gropey at Tim prior to the reveal that Slade had been drugging her, and how she never repeated those feelings since she was cured kind of says unsettling things about what exactly the drug made Cass do besides "merely" murdering people. XP Eck.

In fact, I just figured out what my problem was with her characterisation here.

They turned her into Cheshire.

Which is kind of apt, as in the Young Justice tv show they seem to have turned Cheshire into Lady Shiva.

[ebailey140]

Oh, characters have had it worse. Stephanie Brown comes to mind. And remember Linda Danvers? Her book had a longer run than Cass's.

Cass got the Hal Jordan treatment. This is the Emerald Twilight of the Bat books. Cass was a series lead for six years. Hal was a series lead for 35 years before getting that treatment. At least they realized they'd gone in the wrong direction quickly, in Cass's case, instead of taking a decade to fix things.

Also, Beechen being the one to do this may have been a blessing in disguise, since he screwed it up so royally. Imagine if Winick had been the Robin writer tasked to do this at the time. He'd have made it into something that made sense and stuck, and we'd now have Cass as a sexy badass violent anti-heroine in a leather jacket. :)

[flint_marko]

Stephanie was just killed off; I don't think she was written horribly OOC. And Linda was just cancelled.

Hal at least had a decent reason for snapping; his entire city was nuked. Cass's reasons (she snapped after she discovered Cain had worked with other kids while he was raising her) made no sense.

And their way of 'fixing' Cass was to give the guy who ruined her a mini, where he made things even worse.

[ebailey140]

Steph was degraded before she was fridged. The talented working class crimefighter was suddenly portrayed as not good enough. She was treated WAY worse than Cass.

Linda, like Cass, was a Legacy Heroine. Like Cass, she had a devoted following. She had a longer running series than Cass.

And, Cass had a decent reason to turn against Bruce, what Beechen should have focused on rather than the rest of it: Steph's death, and Cass coming to see Bruce as making her nothing more than a living weapon exactly as her biological father had done. That actually had a basis in Cass's character and history. Cass fans get on Barbara for not continuing being motherly, but that was because Bruce forceably kept Cass away from Babs because Babs was making Cass into a functional human being instead of just a living weapon.

There was no need for any of that other stuff. She was perfectly justified to go all Red Hood on Bruce. With a better writer, we'd have had a plot that made sense and consistant characterization.

Which means that, with a better writer, she'd be an antihero adversary, today. In other words, it's a good thing it was Beechem, in a way. He screwed up the execution so completely they couldn't keep her a bad guy.

Because, the real issue was turning her into an adversary in the first place. A very well written heel turn would have made that stick.

[flint_marko]

Steph was degraded before she was fridged. The talented working class crimefighter was suddenly portrayed as not good enough. She was treated WAY worse than Cass.

Hasn't she always been sort of incompetent?

Linda, like Cass, was a Legacy Heroine. Like Cass, she had a devoted following. She had a longer running series than Cass.

But her character wasn't ruined. Her series was just cancelled.

Because, the real issue was turning her into an adversary in the first place. A very well written heel turn would have made that stick.

I don't think I would have been as upset if it had been handled well, like how the end of her series seemed to be setting up.

[mrstatham]

No. The incompetence thing only mysteriously suddenly started plaguing Steph around War Games and the time she became Robin, and has kind-of stuck since, until she became Batgirl.

[ebailey140]

Hasn't she always been sort of incompetent?

Not for the first decade of her existence. She only was turned into a chump for that last year before War Games, initially to make Cass look good, much like they did to Helena during BftC. You see, it wasn't enough for Cass to be awesome. Every other Bat female had to be made to look like shit.

Dixon wrote Steph as filling the classic Batgirl role in all but name. Of course, that also made her fun, and in the Grimdark Age, there was no room for that.

But no, if she'd always been portrayed as incompetent, she wouldn't have been so popular. Defining Steph by that year is like defining Cass by Beechem.

But her character wasn't ruined. Her series was just cancelled.

As was Cass's, until Beechem.

[flint_marko]

If all they did to Cass was cancel her series, I wouldn't be as pissed as I am.

[harbringer]

coming to see Bruce as making her nothing more than a living weapon exactly as her biological father had done

except that's not what Bruce did at all.

also bringing up the whole BUT THAT POOR WHITE GIRL argument in a thread about a WoC is sort of a dick move, jysk

[ebailey140]

Um, what does other chaacters getting screwed over, some worse than Cass, have to do with her ethnicity? The fact is, screwing over characters knows no racial lines. I call this the Emerald Twilight of the Bat books because that's exactly what it was.

[harbringer]

1. that's your opinion

2. we're talking about the one person of color in the batfamily getting shoehorned into just about every imaginable racial stereotype in comics, before disappearing completely from comics for several years all together.

then Stephanie Got Better. and her own new series. oh no.

[ebailey140]

Cass got a badly written heel turn, which was undone shortly thereafter. Also, the time between Wonder Woman #600 and Red Robin #17 was five months, not "several years" as you claim.

Steph got a badly written degrading, followed by a badly written fridging, that actually did last for years.

Hal got a badly written heel turn, then the fridging. Wasn't recovered for a decade.

Mary Marvel got a badly written heel turn, followed by an even worse costume and hair style. She still hasn't been recovered.

Roy Harper. Period. Evil!Cass got lightsabers. Evil!Roy got a dead cat. Lightsabers > dead cats as cool weapons if one must have a badly written heel turn.

Over at Marvel, there's anybody who's had the misfortune to be related to Magneto. In Lorna's case,they retconned her as being Magneto's daughter just to give her a heel turn, as that alone was considered justification for it.

And yes, a temporary Dork Age is better than being fridged.