Batgirl vol. 2 Part 1

[zechs80]

You thought the nightmare was over fans of Cassandra Cain? You thought that Adam Beechen was done with the character? GUESS AGAIN! The nightmare returns for the first three issues of Batgirl vol. 2!! Oh and glorified Cass nudity of Batman & the Outsiders #3 (though from the trade).


Well, after that brief period of good writing I've returned to deliver you nothing but PAIN and SUFFERING. I present to you.. the first part of the Batgirl mini written by Adam Beechen!!





Cass then interrogates a poor thug into revealing the name of their employer, "Armand Lester" (some alias of David Cain's). Meanwhile:




Cass tries sneaking around the Batcave to use the Bat-computer, only for Dick to interrupt her because he thinks she's up to something EVIL. He won't even let Cass explain herself because of her EVIL intentions. Okay, why is Dick acting like a dick when he stuck his neck out for Ravager?

Anyway, Batman and Robin (Tim) stop Nightwing and explain to him the entire villainous career of Cass. Why yes folks I give you once more.. the WALL OF EXPOSITION:




So many.. words. TO MUCH! It's too much for a normal human being to withstand! *falls over then claws his way back up* Somewhere amongst all that text Cass gets a list of places "Armand Lester" owns. We get a key insight into her mindset at the moment:



#1 ends with Cass finding a room with some of her "sisters" murdered by another "sister".





We then get the origin of Cass's long lost "sister". She was pretty much trained like Cass save for she got a mind of her own early on and decided to kill Poppa Cain the first and best chance she could. The fight continues as we get these sprinkles of her origin.




And with that move Cass has her long enough to reason that they're after the same pair. For now they decide to part ways but meet back later to continue their hunt. It's then Cass notices the blood on the back of her head isn't her own. She returns to the Bat-Cave to use the computer:



Cass then gets a new lead. Oh and yes I'm skipping all the stuff with her "love interest" in this story. It's pointless other than to further cement Cass being able to read and speak better. Yeah also if you didn't get the hints already Beechen appeared to think this was going to be the start of an ongoing. But unlike Batman Beyond this utterly bombed.


So anyway Cass meets back at the same place she met her "sister" earlier.




Their captor happens to be Ravager also looking to kill her daddy.





While the three gals discuss daddy killing they're interrupted by a squad of steroid enhanced daughters of Cain amongst that:




Wow Dick, way to be a dick. As for the fight:




We learn soon after Marque has a Mr. Zsaaz thing going on marking every kill she takes by her arm. The three trace the one daughter who escaped the fight from before to a training center. The three got the element of surprise right? Um...



So there's the first three issues of the Cass mini. Next-up Cass and Rose vs. Slade, the complete ruin of David Cain, daughter vs. father, and Cassandra Wayne? Still I did promise someone a scan of the trade. So here it is!

Comments

[shanejayell]

Yeah, that's pretty horrid writing.

Yay, nude Cass! Thank you.

[celestialchild]

I kinda want a Cass and Rose team-up/besties story now. One with a good writing and an epic plotline.

[bluestar86]

Cass doesn't usually play nice with people who use lethal weapons, even if they are heroes, look at how she acted around Huntress.

[fifthie]

Yeah people tend to forget that the actual Cass that disappeared after OYL and never appeared anywhere, ever again, like, really didn't like murder.

Like, a whole lot, didn't like it.

[bluestar86]

Nah, we saw her once more in Battle For The Cowl: The Network, though I'm not sure who was wearing Huntress' outfit in that issue.

[espanolbot]

And she reappeared in Batman Inc.

[blackruzsa]

Nude Cass, mmm.

[proteus_lives]

Strategic glass!

[omnipotent]

I don't know why but I'm not a fan of Misfit. I don't hate her, I just . . . don't like her either.

Laughing forever at their reactions to Cass' nudity.

[cypherfdp]

Nude Cass is horribly gratuitous, yes, but I'll be damned if I don't want to tap that (former) assassin ass.

[big_daddy_d]

Putting the "ass" in assassin. In fact that's two asses! Someone needs to make a Batman themed "Dat Ass" pic.

[red_menace]

Y'know, it occurs to me that Cass and Jason might be much better off today had they switched places for OYL.

[jaybee3]

You would rather have CASS be turned into a tentacle monster in Bruce Jones' Nightwing?

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

An Asian female tentacle monster. That'd be...different

*vomits*

[red_menace]

Well, no.(and damn you to a thousand screaming hells for reminding me of that).

What I mean is, Jason takes over a league cell and kills Nyssa and alternates between making Tim's life hell and trying to seduce him (to evil, that is), because he has LoA connections already, and has reason to kill Nyssa (for torturing and brainwashing his girlfriend/stepmom). And if he kills Tim, the beloved replacement, daddy Bats hurts. If he gets him to switch sides, Bruce really hurts.

For Cass, you keep the Deathstroke drug angle, but now instead of making pointless plans and grandiose speeches and suddenly becoming unable to fight properly, you've got her running around NY murderizin' folks to get back at Nightwing for getting Rose Wilson to abandon her daddy.

I just think that would have been better than what we got, which was bad stacked on more bad with a side order of tentacly WTF.

[zechs80]

Can't Jason do both to Tim?

[star_of_airdrie]

And the hidden meaning behind the SMUG brand refrigerator is...?

I'm with Cass. Clothes are so optional. I'll never tire of that page...

[star_of_airdrie]

Oh dear Lord, I looked it up... it's a play on the brand SMEG. I can't go there with the nakedness and a fridge named SMEG...

[starwolf_oakley]

NIGHTWING #100 had Flashback!Batman say something like "The life of a criminal is more important than mine or yours."

[superfangirl1]

ROTFL.

I'm suprise nude cass is not a meme. :)

[zechs80]

I blame Tony Daniels for drawing the Raven hypno-ass. It compelled us to worship that as a meme.

[jaybee3]

The non-success of the Batgirl mini at least meant we were spared more of Beechan wrecking her.

I am still mystified why they gave him a Cassandra Cain mini-series (the one single writer most likely to piss off the fanbase that would buy anything with Cass in it), I have heard some people think it was DC (and Beechan)'s way for trying to make up for Evil Cass...but I ain't buying. DC rarely openly "apologizes" for any bad editorial move (if they did the Marvel Family or Wonder Woman might be first in line) and Beechan seemed more determined to do a "Take That" to his detractors and try to justify every single screw-up he made (hence the many Walls of Exposition) than to do a heroic super-hero story to redeem Cass. I mean when the very first thing he has her do is going back to KILLING people (especially her father who she loves in anything non-Beechan written) then you start with fail and go down from there. It's no wonder that the Batgirl mini-series only started tanking after the first issue was released. The first issue itself had numbers comparable to the end of Cass's series (20,000+) despite the fact Beechan was writing it.

And going back to Beechan not doing his homework on the character (what was his excuse this time), Cass is a slob, she throws things all over the place, no place she slept for any length of time (even for just a few hour) would look neat and un-lived in. Alfred knows this - he's the one who usually cleaned up after her (both when she had her own Batcave and when Bruce gave her an apartment). Her messiness was one of her more consistent traits...until Beechan started writing her.

[wizardru]

"I am still mystified why they gave him a Cassandra Cain mini-series (the one single writer most likely to piss off the fanbase that would buy anything with Cass in it)"

Well, if Tom Brevoort is to be believed, it's because an angry fanbase buys comics more than a happy one. Which is sad, if true.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

The smart question would be if is they keep buying. Comics have never sold worse, and editors seem to want to piss fans off more and more. Maybe there's a connection there?

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

Raised by Terminator, Rose? No you weren't.

I guess it's not only Batgirl's backstory Beecham doesn't give a fig for.

(though if we're thinking team-ups, the one I want to see is Rose and Mia)

[featheredserpent]

AH! I finally understand all the jokes about Orange Juice!

[fifthie]

It's amazing the extent to which this demonstrates that Beechen just could not under any circumstances be bothered to read the, what, three or four trades' worth of comics that made up Cass's original series.

[mrstatham]

I don't understand this either. Surely DC have a great big archive with at least three of every comic they've ever published? Why couldn't they just send him down there for a few days and make him read stuff?

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Hell, just one trade, that being her final arc.

[eyz]

I kinda liked this mini. It put things back in order for Cass..though wasn't followed by either a revival series or more appearances for her...

[mrstatham]

I don't personally see how Nightwing's being a dick, there. As much as it's wrapped up in the other bits of bullshit that came along with Cass for OYL, he's right to rag on Oracle for trying to cover up something Cass is trying to do, there. Given she'd just murdered people and led a section of the League of Assassins - even whilst drugged, why wouldn't you be a little dubious if someone was covering for Cass?

[zechs80]

So when Rose was running around doing the same thing for Slade too that was okay? Since after all he freed her and sent her to the Titans to have a life. Dick didn't seem to mind that even though everyone else did.

[fifthie]

If there's one thing in these posts of yours that that makes them slightly less of a human rights violation, it's your continued pointing out that in addition to the shitty writing of Cass in these stories, everyone else is written shittily too.

[heckfire]

That's...pretty Cass-butt. Crude of me, yes, but sweet Highfather, I'd hit that like Darkseid at the Source Wall.

...OK, that was lame. The point still stands.

I dunno, I DO get the impression of someone trying to pull an Author's Saving Throw (/end Tropes Moment) in this more than a "this is why I did it, nyah on you," but as stated there is no consistency with her series (or with Rose's history, either). I see their logic, since an evil Batgirl WOULD have been a Hell of a story...but only is it had been done RIGHT: character consistency, a struggle to return from the darkness, the building on established story beats, ANYTHING.

GYAH...I just keep thinking about Didio's guidelines for when he was in charge of "Beast Machines" and now this new reboot...it's LAZINESS. He was an editor-in-chief who didn't want to be BOTHERED to look up continuity and maintain consistency in the OLDEST comic book universe around.

Fuck...end Didio rant. I'm just gonna stare at pretty Cass-butt and think happy thoughts until I'm not pissed anymore.

[halloweenjack]

This reminds me of the Tesla Strong story where she's dimension-hopping, and briefly visits the one where nudity is the norm and her alterna-dad diagnoses her wearing clothing as a symptom of some society-wide sexual fetish. (That scene was drawn by--this will shock you--J. Scott Campbell.) Also, wasn't there a really early Teen Titans where Starfire was shown to have a casual attitude toward nudity?

[rdfox]

Several, but the most notable would probably be... New Teen Titans v1 #8(?), where they did a "Day in the Life" issue, and we see her walking through Central Park in civvies and thinking that it's a perfect evening for flying, but remembers that Dick had told her to never be seen using her powers in civilian clothes (yes, at the time, people thought that Starfire could have a *secret* identity). So she just stripped down and changed into her work clothes right there in the middle of the park. Casual attitude toward nudity further reinforced by her anger over Miri's nude shoot while posing as her in New Titans #93 being about how sleazy the magazine was, not the nudity.

That, and the scenes in "52," "Countdown to Adventure," and "Titans" #1 that reinforced her not being ashamed at all about bathing in front of Adam Strange and Animal Man, Lobo seeing her topless, or Animal Man's son seeing her sunning nude.