Stories that make you go "Awwww!": Cass Cain Speaks Her Philosophy

[espanolbot]

From Batgirl: Secret Files

Cass is out Batgirling it up when she spies a kid in his midteens trying to shoot at a wealthy man's car, so he naturally goes down to stop him... only to have to disarm the guy's bodyguards when they attempt to gun down the kid after Cass has laid him out.

It turns out that the guy who was being shot at was a member of the Gotham Underworld, and the boy's dad used to work for him until he was deemed to be no longer useful and was then abruptly Whacked. The kid turns out to have been attempting to murder the gangster in revenge for his father's death.

Taking this to heart, Cass first breaks into the gangster's house and makes him promise not to have the kid murdered in retaliation, on the basis that she's Cass Cain and there would be no where he could hide from her if he tried.

Then she breaks into the juvenile detention centre the boy's ended up in as a result of him, you know, trying to murder someone.

Comments

[sharky_chan]

Dammit, DC, this is why we can't have nice things :\.

[sharky_chan]

Oh, okay, I should update my reply to reflect what's currently here rather than the poor characterization that's now removed.

Yay! Cass! So cute!! She's the best :D:D:D:D.

[salinea]

It's not a "thing that make you go "awww" if after the "aww" you gonna post things that make you "GRRRRRR" :/

[espanolbot]

Yeah, I'm removing them after I pondered about it for a while. Wanted to demonstrate how badly the writers viered off in a weird direction after her series ended.

[salinea]

Thanks!

It's not that I disagree with the how badly things were handled and that it shouldn't be pointed out; but not in a post about things that make you go "aww".

[ar_feiniel]

Cass love!

[jaybee3]

Sometimes I look at scenes like this and then I remember what was done to Cass as a character (starting with Beechan who got his orders from on high but continuing to her present non-existence in the DCU) and I truly wonder what it is about the character that DC higher-ups seem to loathe. For me she is truly the most Batman-ish character (in terms of overall "oh, crap" scariness and psychological make-up) not named Bruce Wayne that DC ever came up with. Being a female POC with a learning disability only added to make her MORE interesting.

[full_metal_ox]

I fear that a lot of it may be that the Powers That Be at DC consider portraying the mindset of a character with an overwhelmingly nonverbal intelligence to be so haaarrrd!--and never mind that a pictorial medium is an optimum place to do so. (It may be significant that Jericho, voiceless in a different sense and for different reasons, was similarly shafted by the narrative.)

(Not, of course, that being female, of color, and not around during the Silver Age helps.)

[kingofmadcows]

DC is not a place for redemption, hope, or compassion.

[philippos42]

So...DC is Apokalips?

[kingofmadcows]

There's plenty of redemption, hope, and compassion on Apokolips. Darkseid allows such things to exist so that he may crush them.

[bj_l]

Eh. I just can't get the Cass love. There's really nothing interesting there (and I don't mean just these scans).

Ooh, look a hero that despises killing has faith in people that do bad things! Shocking!

[bj_l]

Yeah because faith in others is so unique to Cass.

It's not about being bleak, it's about being an interesting character. I've been trying to come at her from different angles and appreciate her for different things since I first came across her through that ridiculous Cass Cult when I was first getting into comics fandom.

I think she's a great idea, but the writers never really know what to do with her. And she is so often saddled with bad, "stylised" art.

[espanolbot]

I liked her because she was someone who'd come from a completely alien background compared to the rest of the Bat Family, and who constantly worked to do the right thing because she worried that she WASN'T a good person.

I liked that she had a completely different set of values to the rest of the Bat Family as a result of her upbringing, as such approached crime fighting in a different way to Bruce, Tim, Steph etc.

I liked that you'd expect her to be all grim and miserable due to her background and costume, but she was actually more of a straight-up heroic character than the likes of BRUCE in places.

I liked her friendship with Stephanie Brown, both the children of bad people but turning out completely differently despite that.

I liked her mentoring with Barbara, and the frustration the two of them felt while trying to tackle Cass' dyslexia.