Favourite Female Character: Cassandra Cain (I know, shocking, right?)

[espanolbot]

In comics Cass Cain is probably my all time favourite character, as her introduction in No Man's Land also happened to be the first actual non-DCAU comic series that I ever bought (I was on a post-apocalyptic bender at the time).

Since that I've come to like a lot of other female characters a bunch too (Stephanie Brown my second favourite overall DC character, Darwyn Cooke/Ed Brubaker's Catwoman is my favourite antiheroine, Matt Wagner's Dian Belmont and Madame Xanadu my favourite Vertigo characters, Revy and Major Kusanagi my favourite anime/manga characters) but I've always been attached to Cass for her overall character arc (yes, even including her fall from grace and climb back to the top), her ethics, personality and history.

Admittedly her skillset isn't exactly THAT unique (looking at you Midnighter, Finesse, Taskmaster and that one Jim Balent Catwoman series that Anne Hathaway said she liked) but I thought that it worked for the character.

As an example of her early series, here is a bit from an issue that isn't posted that often.

The context: Something stranger is happening in Gotham, stranger than usual, I mean. Within the same couple of city blocks over the course of several days, seemingly ordinary people without prior histories of mental illness have started to go on killing sprees. Cass sets out to investigate, and after incapacitating a former veteran who seemed to be a hallucinating he was in a war zone while emptying a machinegun on an open street, she notices a man in scientist gear holding an odd machine up on a nearby rooftop watching the show.

She swings up to catch him, only to be blasted by the machine herself, causing her to blackout. Some time later she comes too, finding Batman standing over her, saying that the Joker has escaped from Arkham and he needs her to track him down... only for the Joker to abruptly shoot him from a safe distance.

Comments

[mrstatham]

I came in on Gabrych's run and I'm honestly curious as to why the Hell the guy isn't writing comics nowadays, because I think he did such wonderful work in setting Cass up with Bludhaven and the like in a way that made sense and made it feel significant to her. I even appreciate the ambiguity of where Cass' series ended, too - it's just a shame DC screwed that one up so badly by having an increasingly morally ambiguous lead and just saying 'villain'.

I think I largely appreciate Steph more because of what she represents and just Miller's run with the character in general, but that doesn't mean Cass isn't pretty fantastic, in my eyes.

[jaybee3]

I wondered where Gabrych went too. He seemed to disappear from the comics world. Too bad, he was a heckuva writer and he seemed to get not only Cass but the rest of the Bat-Crew right on in characterization.

[mrstatham]

Wasn't he one of the writers who protested what they were doing with War Games, from what I remember reading? With that in mind, I can maybe understand why he opted to leave DC after wrapping on Batgirl.

[q99]

According to wikipedia, he put out a book with vertigo in '10, Fogtown, and is currently doing standup comedy.

[espanolbot]

Fogtown was interesting. It was a 50s-based noir story about a heavily closeted detective in San Francisco.

[lego_joker]

Let's not give him TOO much credit, though. If I recall correctly, he was also the guy who revived Nora Fries and then turned her into an insane, murderous supervillain.