Fun with search keywords

I'm working on a few new posts, but the holiday season is really kicking my butt so it's slow going.  In the meantime, here are this month's search keywords that tumble my blog on Google, plus the number of views they generated:

1. planet of the apes ape with rifle (5 views)
2. alex toth "bravo for adventure" (3 views)
3. tomb of Dracula comic book (3)
4. alex toth (2)
5. andy grittith cartoon (2)
6. barber shop hair (2)
7. girls from hopey locas (2)
8. golden key star trek comic covers (2)
9. mary blair (2)
10. photos of man sobbing (1)

Interesting.  We've discussed Planet of the Apes a few times here, but never with a particular emphasis on the apes' rifles.  Alex Toth is another popular subject for me, as is Marvel's Tomb of Dracula comic.  The spelling of Andy Griffith is unfortunate, but apparently Google understood.  I love Jaime Hernandez's Locas stories, and Hopey is my favorite character in them.  Mary Blair was a genius and my belief in her genius gained reinforcement from a Disney museum show we went to a few years back that featured a heapin' helpin' of Blair's preliminary designs for different movies, heavy on the Alice in Wonderland.  I don't write about her very often because this is a book about comic books.  Gold Key Star Trek remains a fave.  And the photos of a man sobbing are probably of me every time DC reboots its universe or stumbles into some horrific, self-inflicted public relations disaster.

Since we're approaching year's end, here are my all-time search keywords.

1. cassandra cain (346)
2. batgirl porn (206)
3. alicia Silverstone batgirl (189)
4. roddy mcdowall (169)
5. batgirl boobs (113)
6. claude akins (106
7. dani moonstar (81)
8. harlem globetrotters cartoon (80)
9. cassandra cain tim drake (73)
10. thomas magnum (69)

Lots of Batgirl-related searches.  Two Planet of the Apes searches, unless one is for The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo.  Did I write anything about that show?  I should do a fake comic book cover for it sometime.  Of course we have Dani Moonstar on the list.  She's my all-time favorite comic book character and I probably reference her once a month.  Even that "thomas magnum" search relates to her.  I'm shocked Isis and Cindy Lee haven't made this list.

Richard Dragon Kung-Fu Fighter #5: Lady Shiva's first appearance

Her name is Lady Shiva, and she does hate Dragon's guts.  Actually, her name is Sandra Woosan and the reason she hates Richard Dragon is because she thinks he caused her sister Carolyn's death.  This is how she appeared in DC's Richard Dragon Kung-Fu Fighter #5 (December-January 1975-1976).

She's changed a lot since then-- even more so since the advent of the New 52-- but back in the mid-1970s, Lady Shiva wore a head scarf stolen from Rhoda Morgenstern.  One thing that's remained constant throughout her various DC comics incarnations is Lady Shiva's ability to deal out ass-whippings.

When we first see her, she's in a purple hood and green pants and art team Ric Estrada and Wally Wood have craftily drawn her to look like a man.  In her very next scene, they have her in some kind of Asian fetish dress and looking definitely female.  Later, when she finally gets to fight Richard Dragon, she's back in that purple-green hooded outfit but this time sporting a more feminine shape.  She quickly ditches the hood and spends the rest of the issue in the same green outfit we see her in on the cover.  She starts by throwing shuriken at Dragon, but doesn't hit him, for as she declares in her best Inigo Montoya impression, "I deliberately missed you, pig... To prove I could kill you easily!  Instead, I prefer to do it otherwise...  ...To pound the life from you!  For I am Sandra Woosan...  ...And you caused the death of my sister!"

As the fight begins, Dragon protest, "Sandra... Shiva... We have no quarrel--"

"Afraid to strike a woman, pig?"  Sandra sneers and punches him in the face.

Lady Shiva's first appearance.  Ric Estrada and Wally Wood, Richard Dragon Kung-Fu Fighter #5 (Dec.-Jan. 75-76)

Within a few moments, Dragon convinces her he's not the one responsible for Shiva's loss, that it's Cravat, grotesque-looking guy shooting death-rays at both of them just to make their fight more interesting.  He's drooling, too.  Without missing a beat, Shiva turns her rage on Cravat, but Dragon prevents her from landing a killing blow.  He asks her if the two them are now friends.

"Until further notice, Richard Dragon... we are!"  Lady Shiva tells him as they shake hands.

What a performance.  What a first impression!  Of course, Lady Shiva is another of those dragon lady stereotypes, but she's delightfully amoral and her free way with insults combine with that quality to allow her to steal every panel she's in.  She's way more charismatic and interesting than Richard Dragon, which may explain why she keeps re-appearing in the DC narrative while Dragon has long been relegated to a footnote and why when Cassandra Cain needed a powerful mom to complement her creepy dad, Scott Peterson and Kelley Puckett went with Lady Shiva, renamed Sandra Wu-San by that time.  Fighting is her thing and she's one of the best in the DC universe right from the get-go.  She'd go on to help Dragon in further adventures and we'll talk about them soon right here!

Identifying with Batman and Spider-Man makes you feel good about yourself...

What do you think of this report?  Apparently, some men who identify with Batman or Spider-Man feel better about their bodies when they look at pictures of their heroes, but if they're indifferent, the pictures make them feel worse.  A previous study found a similar effect in women who viewed celebrity photos.

I love this stuff.  I'm a psychology buff, and I know just enough about it to use its jargon to make bizarre, counter-factual claims and asinine pronouncements that can't withstand close scrutiny with facts.  To me, this report actually raises more questions than provides answers.  Here are a few.

1) What if you identify with Dani Moonstar or Cassandra Cain?  What effect does looking at drawings of Spider-Man and Batman have on your self-confidence?

2) What if you identify with Buddy Bradley?

3) Or the Crypt-Keeper?

4) Have they done this study specifically with female comic book fans?

5) Would doing the above study produce similar results?  Or, given the sexualized or fetishistic nature of how many female characters are presented, would they be opposite?  I'd be very interested in seeing how this plays out, because while their numbers aren't as great as with male fans, female comic fans are incredibly passionate about their favorite characters.

6) What is the nature of identification with characters involving female comic book fans?  Is it the same or different than with male fans?

7) What about fans with other gender identities?

8) Related to number one, how much cross-gender identification is there?  Is this common, or isolated?

9) In the study of women and celebrities, what kind of photos were used?  Were they candid shots, photos from public events or sexualized photo-spreads from men's magazines?  And would any of those affect the results?

10) Is identification with characters-- in effect, the reader "masking" himself or herself with certain characters-- important to creating a fan base or readership?

BONUS 11) What about fans who identify with villains?

I'm seriously interested in someone doing a study on these, and some in-depth surveying of women who read superhero comics.  Isn't it a fairly common belief male characters are idealized and more inviting of identification while female characters are objectified and more involving the reader in the male gazed based on an assumption that the readership is almost exclusively male?  And yet women who are into superhero comics really latch onto these characters and they're extremely vocal with their opinions.  Well, maybe that's just part of being a superhero comic fan.  But you know... Stephanie Brown.  Oracle.  Huntress.  Lois Lane. You dismiss or degrade these characters at your peril.

I'm also keenly interested in the gender dynamics.  As someone who easily identifies with female characters-- I have my entire life and probably pretended to be Wonder Woman, the Bionic Woman or any one of Charlie's Angels and even Cindy Lee from The Secrets of Isis as often as I portrayed Superman, the Incredible Hulk, Sgt. Rock, Batman or Spider-Man as a child, and Dani Moonstar quickly became my masking character of choice in New Mutants-- and responds strongly to their positive and negative portrayals, I'm guessing I fall somewhere outside the control group or whatever the heck they used here.  So I also want to know how other fans who view gender and sexuality in ways that aren't traditionally accepted.

And, strangely enough, I also identify quite a bit with characters with ambiguous morality-- in fictional, comic book dichotomous terms, not real life.  I find we have to go outside the mainstream to find these kinds of richly drawn, troublesome characters.  When I read Nexus, I tend to mask myself with Horatio Hellpop, but I find myself drawn to Ursula X.X. Imada whenever she appears on the scene.  Outside of genre fiction, I find Hopey Glass and Terry Downe from Love and Rockets have always fascinated me more than Maggie, the star.  And I have much more in common with Buddy Bradley from Peter Bagge's Hate than I'm comfortable admitting.

When I see drawings of them, how do I feel about myself?  Pretty good, I guess.

It's Cass-Batmas in Japan already, and I haven't even started my shopping!

While Dan Didio recently replied, "Sure" when asked for the one millionth time if Cassandra Cain would re-appear in the ongoing DC universe narrative, it doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon.  But we Cass fans are a never-say-die bunch of Quixotic fools, so we're doing something pro-active to hurry along that fabled day.  Yes, it's the Support Cass Campaign, a day of celebration and comic book purchasing, one that I hope will become an annual tradition and, eventually, a national holiday.

The idea is, on August 31st (today in Japan) you go to Comixology and buy Batgirl #1.  I think this is a marvelous-- er-- a DCelous idea.  As the old saying goes, "Money talks, bullshit (and waffles) walk."  I'm going to participate as soon as I get off work today if I can find my credit card.  I've already done a little bit to support Cass by staggering as a sweaty human wreck into Blister in Tokyo-- despite having the flu, as it turns out-- and paying a ridiculous amount for a battered copy of Batgirl:  Fists of Fury, a book I've bought twice before.  I've bought three goddamned copies of this thing, DC!  Do what I tell you!

Just kidding.  But not about the three copies.  I still own two copies of Fists of Fury.  One I gave to an EFL student at a previous job.  Share the epic goodness that is Cass, I always say.  Well, I sometimes say that.  Occasionally.  Rarely.  I just now typed it and it's the first time that sentence has ever crossed my mind.  I have a Fists of Fury at my mom's house back in the US and the new one on my shelf alongside all the Marvel, Dark Horse, Fantagraphics and IDW books I buy.  I'm proud of my little Fist of Fury book.  It's in good company.  It's the little book that could starring the little character who could, until someone, somewhere, deemed it necessary she could no longer.

Maybe she could again.  With her mom barely old enough to vote and her dad also missing in action (as far as I know), it might be a long wait.  But in the meantime, you'll have a digital copy of Batgirl #1 to remind you of the good old days, when she was silent and running and fisty and furious.  And a new holiday I call Cass-Batmas.

Which we should celebrate by not speaking for 24 hours, dressing all in black and kicking copious amounts of ass.  And... I don't know... maybe by spending time with loved ones, drinking eggnog, exchanging gifts and decorating a tree of some kind.  I can't think of any other holidays where we do such things, so that seems like a good idea to me.

More leftist art...

Your guess is as good as mine as to why these people and a giant gorilla are all raising their left arms.  I think Batgirl is going to kick that erzatz Uncle Fester's ass (if she can ever untangle herself from that flowing mess of a cape), and Enid is confused as to how she got involved in this mess.  Frazetta's happy monkey wants to play.

Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain: The Love Canal Girls

Can comic book characters become toxic?  I'm not sure if they can, but I certainly know those lovable, laugh-a-minute kids at DC love to stir up all sorts of comical trouble!  First the irrepressible scamps went all over town posting charmingly misspelled homemade posters trumpeting the appearance of a version of long-neglected fave Stephanie Brown as Nightwing in their Smallville Season 11 comic, which they planned to print on a jury-rigged press down at their dilapidated clubhouse.

Then Butch and his henchman the Woim gummed up the works with a lot of mean-spirited pranks, causing the darling ragamuffins who run DC to canter away in their mule-drawn taxi cab with its goose-powered horn, shouting over their threadbare sweater-clad shoulders, "Oops, sorry.  That's not Stephanie Brown, isn't gonna be Stephanie Brown.  It's Barbara Gordon instead!"

Given their record with female characters in general and with Stephanie Brown and her fans in particular, the DC people had to know replacing even an alternate universe version of Steph with an alternate universe Barbara Gordon-- the regular version of the latter having already supplanted the regular universe version of the former-- wouldn't go over too well.*  And it hasn't!

But the gang at DC are a group of never-say-die youngsters who just can't keep out of mischief!  Whether it's crashing some hoity-toity catered charity affair and embroiling a lot of stuffed-shirt types in a massive food fight or rebooting their entire universe for the umpteenth time because they've run out of original ideas while denying it's a reboot, you can be sure of sidesplitting laughter and tear-jerking moments of pure sentiment when the latest Our DC Gang short comes to your local theater! 

Here's where it gets surreal.   Corinna Lawson, senior editor at Geekmom over at Wired, says sources tell her it's because Steph and her pal Cassandra Cain are considered "toxic" in the DC offices.  At practically the same time, a writer going by the name LOLtron over at The Outhouse quoted similar sources-- multiple this time-- one of whom is quoted directly as saying, "Toxic?  Yup, that about sums it up."

While I find anonymous sources suspect and toxic might be just a buzz word, it might be true.  Both characters have easily roused fans who feel slighted by DC's treatment of them, including me.  Maybe Dan Didio or Jim Lee or someone else at DC just said, "To hell with it.  Using these two is thankless."  This might be especially true of Stephanie Brown.  Her death and DC's bizarre refusal to acknowledge her importance in the family of books in which she appeared inspired a website protest movement, and her fans and others were disturbed just last year when DC shunted her aside in favor of putting Barbara Gordon back in the Batgirl costume, a move that also alienated a lot of fans of Barbara's previous identity as the Oracle.  Lots of baggage there, lots of hurt feelings that are still pretty raw.  People are convinced certain elements at DC have it in for Stephanie, and not without some justification.

Supporting the idea DC doesn't want either Steph or Cass in their books anymore, perhaps inadvertently, is a Tumblr post by Batgirl writer Gail Simone, a straight shooter, who chimed in with the insider info the switch came because Smallville Season 11 writer Bryan Q. Miller, a nice guy who earned Steph-fan gratitude by writing her own Batgirl series was asked to use someone other than Stephanie Brown.  Was asked.  That says someone made a conscious decision to kick this hornet's nest again.  Perhaps in emulation of a recent movie based on another movie adapted from a best-selling line of books.  Comic book companies love to imitate success!  Hence Smallville Season 11 in the first place, DC's version of Dark Horse's popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer continuation.

Simone, of course, didn't address toxicity or reference-- to use another phrase I read about Steph, Cass and the lack of certain others from the DC narrative-- their having been "benched."  As in Cass and Steph have been deliberately benched, along with those other unfortunates.  Unlike people who speak without using their names and titles, Simone is definitely too smart and probably too discreet to let something like that slip even if it is true, and I wouldn't blame her.

On the other hand, if these anonymous ones are telling the truth and toxicity is the DC policy towards Steph and Cass, that would make it more than a little strange DC would let Scott Snyder say, "We talk about where in the stories they're going to show up" at one of their roundtables as recently at their panel at C2E2 as recently as last April.  And the extended, remixed version:  "They are characters that we love too, we talk a lot about using them.  We want to bring them back in a way that really matters.  They're on the table, we promise we want to use them as well."   Oh, and I was sure at one time I  heard no less a DC personage than Grant Morrison promised Cass would be back in the New 52 Card Pick Up or whatever it's called, but all I can find to confirm that are old comments from people saying they also heard the same thing.  In 2011, apparently.   Something more recent with a direct quote might have been more reassuring.

You'd think everyone there would be instructed to stay on message and not make promises, vague or otherwise.  You know, if DC really has no plans to use them, Snyder or someone could just say, "Sorry, we don't have any plans to use them at this time."  People get upset at that kind of bad news, but a lot less so than they do when they feel a company has deliberately screwed them over.  And in this easily avoidable case, there's no way for Steph fans to feel otherwise.

Whether the put-upon duo has been declared toxic or are still viable, this whole thing just seems odd to me.  Maybe I lack a true insider's frame of reference or mindset, but I'm just thinking how easy it would be just to throw Steph and Cass back into the mix.  It's not as if other changes to these characters required any creative heavy lifting in the past.  Just re-set Cass to her silent super-dangerous former glory while still calling her Black Bat and tell us in the New 52 she never was a Batgirl-- and finally ditch all those nasty lingering elements from her bad old days.  They turned her villainous, brought her back, had her quit being Batgirl in ludicrously off-hand ways, so why stick at this one like it's some kind of quest for the Unified Field Theory?**

On the other hand, I'm not sure how Steph fans would react to bringing her back as Spoiler minus her Batgirl stint.  Since they were so excited about even a fake-Steph outside the regular continuity and with only loose ties to the version they truly love, maybe they would accept this as well as long as the writers wrote her in a dignified way.  I'd hope so, anyway.  Considering the alternative, it certainly seems preferable.

Whether all this will translate into lower sales for DC's other comics, the current Batgirl title or Smallville Season 11 remains to be seen.  I doubt it.  Smallville's got this digital first print thing and should have a lot of appeal to fans of the TV show, which I never got into.  I just remember a number of them demanding Bryan Singer-- hey, another Bryan-- cast the show's star in his eventual dud Superman Returns.***  DC's probably counting on them to jump all over this book from their home computers and iPads or whatever the heck it is people read comic books on these days.

And as far as the dedicated comic book readers go, from what I gather, while there are some people giving up on DC, other people irked by the switcheroo are still going to buy DC titles featuring other characters they like or written and drawn by creators they want to support, so any negative impact on DC's bottom line, the true arbiter of toxicity, will be negligible.  DC's actually going to make money off the whole thing.  So the end result is, the small vocal core of fans truly upset by these events, or non-events, the ones eating waffles, will just have to get used to this new reality.  One where a character they care about simply does not exist for an indefinite period.  Perhaps permanently.

 The Outhousers have dubbed the easily avoidable Smallville fiasco "Stephgate."  Do you think it's likely we'll get an announcement from DC directly addressing Toxicgate?  I'm not exactly waiting around for the press release.  We'll probably see a book called BFFs:  The Adventures of Steph and Cass before that happens.

*God, how I love funny books!
**Unless, of course, you really don't have plans to use her again.  For whatever reason.
***That was on the IMDB message boards, and I'd sooner say "Bloody Mary" three times in a mirror at midnight than link to that here and risk calling down that hell.

My Teen Titans, your Teen Titans, everyone's Teen Titans!

There is no inappropriate story context for this image!

Special note to anyone who finds this from Comic Vine, before you rip me a new one-- the "Wonder Girl goes to Supergirl's high school" never happened in an actual comic.  It would have happened had I ever written one.  But hey, if enough of you pester Dan DiDidio care of DC Comics, maybe we can make it happen for real!

A while back I came up with the stupidest idea for a Teen Titans series.  I mean stupid in that it's an idea of complete genius, a rare beauty that flowered only once in my mind and then perished from the cold winds of the endless winter season we call modern comics.  Also, who really cares what ideas some dumb comic blogger comes up with way over here in a secret corner of Japan?

But I love the original Titans so much, I wanted to try to capture a bit of the magic and fun of these old comics, updated for today's audience that doesn't exist for such things.  It all started several million years ago when comic fans-- including me-- were complaining about the "Girls Gone Wild" version of Supergirl running around the DC universe and the wanton destruction of Cassandra Cain as a character for seemingly no good reason.  My negative feelings got so out of hand I had to turn my thoughts to creative ventures with a positive vibe.  And that's when my brain broke like the fragile egg it is and out spilled a concept for a Cass Cain/Supergirl team-up book I brilliantly called The Brave and the Bold, after the old DC team-up title.  But my Cass and Supergirl were somewhat altered from the existing versions.  I wanted to turn the angry teen party girl and the "I just want to be normal" cliches on their heads.

My Supergirl is incredibly smart, cheerful, helpful and endlessly idealistic-- her main flaw.  Too much heart.  Instead of being surly and "trying to find her way in the world" or whatever excuse writers gave for the crappy behavior of the official Supergirl, this Supergirl is one of those overworked activist type teens, interested in saving the world from itself to an unrealistic degree.  In her civilian identity, she's class president, on the debate team, the yearbook staff, the art club, the math club, easily winning top honors.  In her heroic guise, she flies around the world doing anything and everything to improve conditions for the downtrodden and oppressed.  Not so much fighting crime as fighting a Quixotic battle for the impossible dream of our world as a love-filled utopia where no one fears for his or her life or goes to bed hungry.  Superman is proud of her, but somewhat worried, too.  What if she ever becomes disillusioned?  What if she burns herself out?  Given her emotional investment in everything she does, these are very real dangers.

It's too much for one person, even one who can fly supersonically around the world and hear a rabbit's heartbeat from a mile away.  When Supergirl discovers a new Batgirl prowling around Gotham City and learns a bit about her past and her solitary ways, of course she's instantly smitten with the idea of befriending her.  After all, Superman and Batman have a history of partnership.  And this silent Batgirl sure could use a friend.  She becomes Supergirl's latest project, but at first things don't go so well.

Batgirl in this story can speak, but English (or any kind of verbalization, for that matter) isn't her first language so she prefers not to use it unless absolutely necessary.  She's kinesthetically fluent and her native tongue the Massive  Beatdown dialect of the language we call Ass-Whuppin'.  She's not very interested in being friends with Supergirl.  She feels she doesn't need friends, especially when there are so many criminal asses out there for the kicking.  In normal conversations, Batgirl's taciturn and totally lacking a sense of humor.

In all other aspects of her heroic life, she's also scarily violent.  Batman likes her that way.  He's taken her amazing abilities and given her a mission to which she's totally dedicated, suicidally so thanks to deep-seated feelings of guilt at having murdered a man for her biological father, David Cain.  But she can't shake Supergirl and deep down, she really does crave human contact and validation of her innate goodness-- a quality she fears she lacks.  So Batgirl eventually accepts the partnership.

At this point I had a huge adventure planned for the two of them that I'm not going into because I'm going to rework it for my own purposes.  But believe me, it's awesome.  Then I decided not to not stop there.  I'd been reading the Showcase Presents The Teen Titans books-- highly recommended because they're full of Nick Cardy artwork-- and doing angry little doodles of Batgirl kicking Robin's ass in retaliation for DC's grotesque depiction of her in Robin #150 and 151.  Inspiration!  Yes!  A team book!  Wowee! That's dumb!  So dumb I had to develop it even further!

I decided my dopey version of Robin needed to join the fun.  He wouldn't let his adopted sister run around with Supergirl without involving himself somehow-- because he harbors unrequited love for Batgirl, who views him with contempt because he's less than half the weapon against crime she is.  He's also conflicted and jealous of her.  It's not that he's a terrible crime-fighter, it's just that both he and Batgirl know she's so much better.  Robin has more deductive skills, but Batgirl is a whirlwind of combat capability.  She may not be able to finish even the simplest crossword puzzle, but one-on-one with Robin she'd cream him in seconds flat.  And that's all that matters to her.

But Robin is persistent if nothing else and they're stuck with him.  Now they're a trio and no longer just The Brave and the Bold.  And other young heroes are starting to notice.

Enter Wonder Girl, fresh from Paradise Island, on her first visit to the modern world.  Bold, strong, fun-loving and almost completely ignorant of "appropriate" behavior, Wonder Girl enrolls at Supergirl's high school and immediately overturns the social order.  She wants to participate in everything, including varsity football.  One subplot has her enthusiastically joining in football practice, breaking the coach's mighty heart with her reckless playing style and open field tackling.  Who is this girl?  How did she learn to do that and why is she so fast and strong?

In one of my more developed sub-plots-- I even scripted several pages of it-- losses at the state level dog the coach's career.  He's known locally as the man who can't win the Big One, and feels the team is perpetually one or two pieces short of that elusive perfect season.  They've come so tantalizingly close so many times, he doesn't know if he can take disappointment anymore.  He lobbies hard to get her onto the team, but Wonder Girl is too busy pursuing her own fun-- while she enjoys the physicality of the sport, to her mind she's already proven her superiority to the sweaty, fragile boys in their armored suits and moved onto to other flights of fancy.  Music, parties and all kinds of all-ages-reader-safe hedonistic pursuits, in a joyful, infectious sort of way that wins the admiration of all who meet her.  Even loner Batgirl can't help but like this crazy chica.

Eventually, I would have had Cyborg from the later Titans join along with Aqualad, Speedy, Kid Flash and the perpetually randy Changeling, who would become everyone's favorite punching bag in place of Robin, who earns some respect along the way.  Other DC teen heroes as well.  While they form a social network of friends and acquaintances-- some liking each other, some disliking-- they wouldn't all share every adventure, just the ones appropriate to their powers.  You might have Cyborg, Speedy and Kid Flash teaming with Robin as their leader in one issue, or Batgirl and Wonder Girl in another.  Sometimes Supergirl would take a number of them with her into space or to Tokyo (being a world traveler, Supergirl is something of a fashionista as well) for some kind of crazy cross-cultural adventure or wherever trouble appears.

My plan was largely to emphasize characterization over plot and fun over angst, but also to deal with serious problems on occasion, too.  Work in different shades and emotional palettes as the plots demand.  While the tone and the positive portrayal of the main characters-- even while poking fun at them-- would have been something of a throwback to a simpler time, the series would have also acknowledged current issues.  For one thing, if I wrote a solo Cassandra Cain series, the tone would be a lot more Lady Snowblood/Battle Royale/Kill Bill than Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I see her storyline as involving her death wish, her guilt, the parental issues-- the dad who raised her to kill, the mother who wants either to kill her or corrupt her-- and all sorts of horrific things.  For another, Supergirl could never ignore things like drugs, depression, bullying and other issues I won't get into here.  The character as I conceive her demands involvement and doesn't shy away from handling things that might be beyond even her capabilities.

Well, we'll have a robot for a king long before I get the chance to develop all these ideas.  That's probably a good thing!

Cassandra Cain lives on DC's new website... for now

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a Cassandra Cain fan.  -- Dr. Samuel Johncomicbookfanson

DC's new website is... well, I have no opinion about website designs and the like.  What care primitive I for such things?  But late last night, around 1 AM when I should have been sleeping, I did a quick search for Cassandra Cain news-- yes, in exactly the same way I sometimes do name searches for exes and old crushes and then cry myself to sleep-- and found an amusing tidbit (we Cass fans take what we can get) on the blog Every Day Is Like Wednesday.  Someone involved with the DC website design has used an image of Cassandra Cain to illustrate their page about Barbara Gordon.

Cass fans!  Get your fix!  Fast!  Before DC fixes this!

Specifically, it's the gorgeous cover to Batgirl #45.  Remember that one?  Cass becomes curious about Barbara's career, dresses up in her predecessor's old Batgirl suit and discovers to no one's surprise high heeled boots are impractical for crime-fighting.  She's also now subject to the male gaze and queasily uncomfortable comments from Robin about how hot he suddenly finds her.  Barbara is pretty happy about it; essentially, the philosophy she espouses once again to Cass is it's important to dress and act in ways boys find cute and if you achieve that, effectively battling crime is a plus.  In the end, Cass rejects being that kind of hero and goes back to basic black and even Barbara laments not having worn more sensible footwear.

James Jean's covers during that era are spectacular.  Vivid colors, bold imagery and symbolism.  This one is no exception.  While I have no complaints about Rick Leonardi and Jesse Delperdang's interior work (clean storytelling, well-rendered figures and polished linework always appeal), I really wish DC had tapped Jeans for at least one fill-in issue-- especially the any of the ones immediately preceding Leonardi's run, which are atrocious.

Anyway, enjoy the second life of Cassandra Cain on DC's website.  Before they correct it and she goes back to superperson purgatory!  Or not!  Hee hee!  Being a Cass fan is so much fun when you're sleep deprived and stressed out about changing jobs and moving to a new city while living abroad!

How do people find this blog?

Overwrought and poorly written, I suppose.  But no, I mean what search terms do people type into Google, only to have this disaster of a blog pop up in their results?  Allow me to share them with you.

1.  alicia silverstone batgirl
2.  roddy mcdowall
3.  cassandra cain
4.  dani moonstar
5.  harlem globetrotters cartoon
6.  batgirl alicia silverstone
7.  batgirl boobs
8.  dave toschi
9.  heavyset girl body stocky big short nude sex pic movie
10.  claude akins

What can we learn from this?  Apparently, I write a lot about Batgirl, Dani Moonstar and Planet of the Apes.  That's true.  I think I mentioned Alicia Silverstone (256 hits) one time and one time only in one of my many Batgirl blog posts, and now her name is going to haunt me every time I check my traffic sources.  She's a popular woman.  I probably knock off some ill-informed rant about Cassandra Cain once or twice a month, and I know I've frequently criticized the way various artists have drawn her breasts.  Somehow I don't think that's what the "batgirl boobs" searchers (65 total, including 11 this month alone) have in mind when they go a-lookin' for that kind of stuff.

Actually, I get a lot of hits from people searching for things like "batgirl porn" (21 this month, but I'm surprised this isn't my search leader), "batgirl big boobs" (5 this month) or "bat girl boobies" (a semi-literate 2).

I honestly don't remember writing anything about the Harlem Globetrotters, but I probably did.  Maybe a shout out to one of their cartoons from the 1970s, of which I was a huge fan.  Roddy McDowall and Claude Akins starred together in Battle for the Planet of the Apes.  Dave Toschi is a retired San Francisco police inspector whose unusual upside-down shoulder holster rig Steve McQueen copied in the movie Bullitt.  He later investigated the Zodiac murders and was portrayed by Mark Ruffalo in David Fincher's movie about the case-- which I highly recommend.  A modern classic and instantly one of my top 5 favorites of all time.



But number 9 on that list?  I'm guessing that's the result of a post I wrote about Xi'an Coy Manh when she briefly became morbidly obese.  Amazingly, 51 people typed in those exact same search terms.  Or else the same person typed them 51 times.

Some amusing oddball searches:

1.  comic female quarterback
2.  sexy phyllis diller
3.  hayley kiyoko
4.  styx kilroy was here
5.  billy zabka red jacket

I have no idea where that first one comes from.  Number two is a "whatever floats your boat" kind of thing.  I love Phyllis Diller, but I'm not sure I've ever found her sexy.  Hayley Kiyoko is a multi-talented up-and-comer who played Velma in a couple of Cartoon Network live-action Scooby Doo movies and recently starred in a Disney musical called Lemonade Mouth, which I understand was something of a smash hit.  Ten of her fans found my lousy blog clogging up their Hayley Kiyoko Google stalking this month because I made an off-handed reference to someone's drawing of Cassandra Cain resembling her facially.  My apologies, Kiyoko-ites.  Or, if you prefer, Kiyokians.  Billy Zabka-- better known as William Zabka, better known as Johnny Lawrence of Cobra Kai-- I salute you!

Yes, I'm a fan.

More Cass Cain Batgirl fun times!

I drew this with my trusty Kuretake Fudegokochi brush pen. When I moved back to the United States from Japan, I brought a few of these with me because they're very fun to use. If all went well and we landed safely last Friday, I'm back in Japan but lack an Internet connection. So this was actually posted Wednesday before I left. Confusing, isn't it?

The clumsily constructed Kamandi figure is based on a panel from one of Jack Kirby's comics, but I added the wonky body and really went off-model on the futuristic pistol.  Peter Parker is fun to mock.  I love the character, especially during his glasses-wearing phase.  I based the Cassandra Cain Batgirl figure on a photo of a Japanese pop singer/actor.  And once again, I make fun of Batman.

I'm not sure when I'll have regular net access.  So talk amongst yourselves while I sort things out.

Another Batgirl-based sketchbook page...

I drew this with that same Kuretake Fudegokochi brush pen I used for the previous Cassandra Cain/Batgirl sketchbook pages, but I colored it with Copic Ciao art markers.  The paper didn't fit on the scanbed, so Batgirl's legs got cut off.  But the Hulk still has his Charles Bronson pec/shoulder tattoo.  That's something, isn't it?

More of the same Batgirl!

Another version of the same ol' Batgirl. My theory is she had so little regard for protecting her secret identity, she would often leave her mask at home. I enjoy drawing Batman acting like a freak almost as much as I enjoy drawing Batgirl and Supergirl. Poor Robin. If you look closely, there's a Todd McFarlane-era Spider-Man picking lice out of a Neal Adams Superman's hair. Todd McFarlane-era Spider-Man loves to groom his friends!

Back when she was Batgirl...

Here's another sketchbook page.  I seem to draw Cassandra Cain, Supergirl and the Hulk pretty often. I did this freehand with a Kuretake Fudegokochi brush pen on a sheet of marker paper.  Batgirl on the left is apparently pitching some kind of fit; she's really angry about something.  The center Batgirl shows a zen-like calm, but I'm not sure about the weird feathery line I gave her shadowed areas.  What inspired that?  The Hulk looms overhead like something she's dreaming.  The way I attached his hand to his beefy wrist isn't really working.  And then there's a cheerful, freckle-faced Supergirl with goofed-up shoulders.  All that modeling I did on her right side (left to us!) was my attempt at emulating the awesome Nick Cardy; it came out vaguely Dr. Seussian, though.

Cass is in her DC Batgirl suit rather than the one I made up for her.  Slap a pointed mask on her and she's practically Black Bat.  I'm happy DC has their sales up, and I'm pretty pleased Cass will "appear in Batman, Incorporated in a very big way" along with Stephanie "Spoiler/Robin/Batgirl" Brown.  Whether or not I'll bother to read it is another story.  The overall aesthetic of what they're doing these days just doesn't interest me and I find I can't really get excited about it, and we're always a year or two away from a new universe-changing Crisis.  I'll be in Japan where American monthlies are hard to come by, but maybe I'll download a digital copy of Batman, Incorporated from DC when Cass reappears.  Then again, maybe I'll forget.

When Batgirl Discovered Art

Batgirl and the homeless guy.  This is from Batgirl #51 where Dylan Horrocks introduced the concept of Cassandra Cain shocking people by saying inappropriate things.  The story containing these moments is a two-parter in which Poison Ivy has tricked this goofball artist wannabe into helping her create a mind-controlling garden the heart of Gotham City.  It opens with your standard comic book action sequence-- Gotham police chasing some generic criminal scumbags in cars, Batgirl swoops in from some impossible angle and saves a homeless man from being run over.  It's not really integrated into the plot, so it's more just a framing device that sets up an interesting concept only to give it up in favor of a standard and somewhat stale super-villain plot.

The book's artist uses a chalk-line device to outline each panel featuring the homeless man because his thing is making lines on the sidewalk with a piece of chalk.  These frames-- reminiscent of some of the stuff the art team on Alan Moore's Swamp Thing series used to play with-- set him apart spatially and conceptually from the chase, in much the same way he's extraneous to the main story, with quick cuts from oblivious artist to the car chase, right up until Batgirl appears.  Then Batman shows up and explains to her the man is creating a map of a fantasy Gotham City, one from out of his head.  Batman sympathizes with him, describing him as "an old man who should be in the hospital," and telling Batgirl he also wishes the real city could be like the man's pretend one.

It's pretty neat thinking of Batman as being so aware of Gotham City he knows all about the psychosis of one of its street people.  There's almost an element of caring on his part.  And truly, Gotham is Batman's city.

Digression-- Batgirl sports enormous breasts during this sequence.  Later, she's shown wearing only a towel, and after that a little black dress; by this time, her breasts are a more natural proportion compared to the rest of her body.  Perhaps her costume has some sort of breast-enhancement padding.  I suppose it could be some kind of armor, but it apparently cups, lifts and separates.  It's as if Batgirl gets her armor from the Combat Goddess collection at Victoria's Secret.  It's not a superhero comic with a female protagonist if it doesn't feature at least some objectification, I suppose.  The towel scene is more than a little gratuitous-- okay, Batgirl showers after she fights crime, hooray for hygiene, but the conversation could have taken place at any point before or after she cleaned herself up.  As ridiculous as this is, I'm much more horrified by the bizarre facial construction throughout.  The rendering is so hit-or-miss, Cass's forehead also changes sizes frequently.  If this were a movie, they'd have hired six different actors to play each role.  Digression ends.

The chalk guy disappears until the end of #52, after Batgirl, Oracle and Batman defeat Poison Ivy and return Gotham City to its normal, overrun-with-crime-hellhole state.  On her way home or to fight more criminals, Batgirl swoops over the guy, and he's still at it, making his chalk map.  Batgirl, a little wiser in the ways of art, gazes down at him in passing, an ever-so-slight and enigmatic smile showing through her mask.  The Rick Leonardi art is a major improvement, more consistent with character appearance and with stronger storytelling.

What was the purpose of the chalk artist?  Was he there to contrast with Poison Ivy's "art?"  Just symbolic of a more pleasant Gotham that can never be?  Perhaps if the story had been more about Batgirl's reaction to this concept and a deeper exploration of the nature of art itself, with the Poison Ivy plot tied more into that, he might have had more of an organic fit.  More of a story-driven purpose.  As it is, he serves as a marker for another idea that really demands a more thorough investigation, rather than more super punch-outs and rope-swinging.

Can you imagine what it would be like to explain art to Cassandra Cain?  I wonder if Barbara took her to an art museum following this adventure.  I really wish that had formed the crux of the next issue.  It would have done more for her mental health and development as a well-rounded person than that time Barbara took her on a cruise, made her wear a bikini and exposed her to the male gaze like one of those parents who teach their kids to swim by tossing them into the deep end without warning.

It's not certain art would register on Cass, the purpose of it all.  Try to explain to her the concept of "art for art's sake," for example.  Much less the whole of art history.  Would she prefer abstraction to the representational, or vice versa?  As someone who can "read" people's movements, would she read the artist's intent?  Could she look at visible brushstrokes on a canvas and "see" the artist's technique, or the moment pigment hit pigment?

What would Cass's own art look like?  Would she draw something childish, yet disturbing?  Two crude stick figures, one with pointed ears and a cape and the other toting a gun, a small figure cowering between them, in response to Barbara's request to "Draw your family?"  Maybe a looming Barbara, threatening to crowd a smaller figure completely off the page.  Or would she be able to recreate the physical movements making up the art methods she saw in the museum?  Or how about action painting? 

I can see Cass getting really into Jackson Pollock.  Flicking paint on a huge canvas on the floor, pouring it, splashing it.

Something violent, something savage, paint splashed and slashed across the canvas.

Too bad we'll never get to see that.

When Batgirl Said "Sweet Patootie"

Dylan Horrocks wrote some of my favorite Batgirl issues and some of my least favorite.  He often had some wonderful ideas, like Batman and Batgirl working out their father-daughter issues in the way that works best for them-- brutally beating up on each other.  These are people who believe in tough love in its most literal sense.  He also had some crappy ideas, like Barbara Gordon constantly enforcing gender stereotypes on Cassandra.  It helped a lot when he had a seasoned pro like Rick Leonardi to make solid storytelling choices; landing him on pencils was a big plus for the title.  If only some of the fill-in artists had been up to the task...

Having Cass shock her friends as she experiments with language learned from television in #51, "The City is a Garden," (2004) is a pretty clever notion.  Horrocks didn't do a whole lot to develop it in subsequent issues, and what little it appears in the comic could have been handled a whole lot better in the artwork.

The clumsy storyelling here really murders the gag.  The artist has to think in terms of acting-- read John K's blog entries about this in animated cartoons; it's almost the same thing-- and Cass's shocked, silly, scared expression, doesn't match up with Barbara's fairly mild remonstration.  It adds a forced quality to the joke.  It's oversold, and previous artists characterized her as fairly unemotional even when baldly lying face-to-face with Batman.

So this response rings false.  After all, it's not as if she's being screamed at, which would be a huge mistake on Barbara's part anyway.  Conversation with someone like Cass would be like running with scissors-- you might get away with taking chances 9 times out of 10, but that last time will spill some blood.  Why not have Cass respond with a serious, determined look on her face:  "That's what they said on TV, how could it be wrong?"  Or a mere inattentive shrug, as if to say she doesn't really care that much, talking is such a useless burden anyway.  Which would leave Barbara exasperated and at a loss, thinking over more strategies to get through to this girl.  After all, how do you deal with someone like Cass, explaining things that would be self-evident to someone more conventional in comprehension and response?

Also, I find Barbara's insistence that no one on TV talks like normal people pretty ironic coming from a character in a superhero comic.  Horrocks deserves extra points for that, at least.

The second instance is more successful.  Instead of showing Cass's reaction, we only get Bruce Wayne's.  And he's flabbergasted.  Why does it work this time?  Because it's easy to imagine Cass, experimenting with language, not realizing the impact of word choice.  If this comic really had the strength of its convictions, she might even have said, "I think he wants to fuck me."  To that end, we really don't need to see her full face because the dialogue is enough to convey her naivete.  Batman's reaction is a little over the top-- I think it's much more likely he'd just grunt or narrow his eyes and make a mental note to have Barbara instruct Cass later-- but at least it's appropriate.

I only hope that's apple juice in that glass.  Isn't Cass only about 18 or 19 at the most in this issue?

Well, Cass-the-language-shocker is right on.  As a once-and-future ESL teacher, I often noted the difficulty English learners have with nuance.  A friend of mine-- whose English is actually pretty good-- once responded to a compliment I paid her by blurting, "It's a LIE!"  She meant it as a humble deflection of my flattery (which I meant sincerely), but it came out much stronger than she intended, without modulation.  We both ended up laughing about it.  Another time I was dating a girl with a somewhat lower fluency.  One night, we had to walk in a driving rain to a convenience store to bring back snacks for her friend.  The entire length of that walk, my semi-girlfriend griped, "Fuck the selfish bitch!  Fuck the selfish bitch!"

And that's the kind of thing I can see Cass doing without her even realizing it.  I wish writers had done a bit more thinking about this.  They really missed a chance at enriching her character, adding some comedic flourishes to her personality.  But hey, DC, it's not too late.  Fabian Nicieza handled her dialogue pretty well in two issues of Red Robin in which he got to use Cass, before the reboot.  It still works even with the more language-experienced Black Bat.  Or inexperienced, if she's going to be 5 years younger or whatever the heck's going on over there right now.

Besides picking up on the usages of friends, where else would an illiterate increase her vocabulary besides movies and TV?  Imagine if Cass gets into Batman's Complete Laugh-In DVD set.  We might get some hilarious scenes where she tells villains to "Sock it to me," or stuns Batgirl-Barbara by demanding she "Bet [your] sweet bippy."  Or catching a little TV Land and telling Damian Wayne to "Kiss mah grits!" or "Sit on it!"  What if she caught an HBO comedy special and started working a little blue?

One second thought...

Dangerous Ladies Cass Cain Black Bat cosplay is awesome even in an unfinished state!

Thanks to Nathaniel, my source for all the best Cass Cain news, is this link to a video for some fantastic Black Bat cosplay. Yeah, that's how good cosplay is born. They did a Cass Batgirl at some point, too. All their costumes are eye-poppingly good. Comic accurate and well-portrayed. Cos-artists. That's what they are. Cos-ARTISTES.

DC may toss the character in the garbage, but the cosplay lives on...

Stealing someone's bike is not cool... but this is!

Today I did a little more Cassandra Cain research and found this on MTV's Splash Page!:

@sonnova Someone stole my bike. All Cassandra Cain fans will be questioned.
-Adam Beechen, Writer ("Robin," "Hench")

Yes! We deserved that. It made me laugh. The wisecrack, not the theft. I sincerely hope Adam Beechen gets his bike back. I'm assuming it's a bicycle and not a motorcycle, but god knows I have no basis for that assumption. When I lived in Japan, bicycle theft was endemic. While I was lucky enough only to have the seat stolen off one of the many bikes I owned there-- all of which I gave away because I'm a generous soul-- many of my friends fell victim to this particular crime. Some more than once. One woman lost two bikes on two consecutive days, the second of which was a gift from one of her students replacing the first.

Gail Simone responds to the Batgirl controversy and mentions Cassandra Cain

I have to admire Gail Simone for doing this-- addressing the end of Oracle in an interview with the woman who wrote the most impassioned, affecting essay about DC's plans for Barbara Gordon. This interview is some big time damage control from DC, and I have to express my complete and open admiration for Simone for doing this. When DC wrecked Cassandra Cain's narrative, all her fans got were smirking dismissals and vague promises. In this case, a creator is tackling reader concerns head-on in as open and candid a way as possible without giving away secrets best left for the stories themselves. That said, I still see more divisions and impassioned essays in our immediate future.

But here's what I really want to talk about.

Cassandra Cain. And the silence from DC regarding her. While trying her best to soothe understandably upset Oracle fans, Simone hints at two things. One, that many of these characters are being re-set to earlier points in their careers:

This is a huge wave going through the DCU, and part of that wave is that most of the Bat-verse, and the DCU at large, are going to be shown a bit earlier in their careers, a bit less experienced. We don't want the characters to already know everything. As time goes on, at both DC and Marvel, characters notch up so many victories that we often start to think of them as infallible, which is kind of death for adventure fiction.

And two, that for now, there are zero plans for Cass in the new order:

I know people are worried about Cass and Steph. All I can say is, I cannot imagine that those characters won't have a role in the new DC. It just seems very unlikely. If no one else is using them, don't be surprised if they show up in Batgirl in the near future. They are awesome.

It could very well be that point one answers point two-- Cass will be re-set to before she became Batgirl. It could also be Simone just isn't privy to DC's plans for Cass because she's not the one writing the character. For now. Grant Morrison has already revealed Batman Incorporated-- with its international league of Bat-associates, it's the book that's most likely the best fit for Cass-- will continue with a new #1 in 2012, so perhaps she'll soldier on in the Blackbat costume as if nothing's changed. In this case, no news would be good news (as they say in the news industry right before they get fired for being wrong about no news being good news).

This is interesting:

When Steph was announced, I don't know if you remember, Jill, but there was a massive outcry from the readership. Massive. They felt that it was a betrayal that an Asian character, Cass Cain, who was much beloved and tremendously popular as Batgirl, was being replaced by a blonde-haired white girl. There were angry letters and threats of boycotts, the whole thing.

That's true. But a sizeable chunk of that outcry wasn't just the replacing of Cass with Steph. It was also that before doing so by having Cass quit being Batgirl-- in the most asinine, perfunctory way imaginable short of her slipping on a banana peel into the path of an oncoming steamroller or being beaten up and murdered by a baby-- they wrote her completely out of the DC universe as if she'd never existed, turned her into a grotesque Dragon Lady stereotype, mooting the entire character arc of her monthly series, returned her as an evil Batgirl, stuck her in Batmand and the Outsiders and just as quickly jerked her out again, involved her in a shamefully slapdash miniseries, set her up for new adventures, then wrote her out of the DC universe again at the beginning of a storyline in which by the nature of her relationship with its central figure she should have been a major player. And then more vague promises before having her show up again seemingly repaired for the foreseeable future. And now a huge, potentially game-changing announcement involving almost DC character that's ever existed in the company's long history... except Cass. To understate the matter, fans tend to find such things unpleasant.

Especially when, with such a track record, DC could just as easily do worse to Cass and her long-suffering fans.

However, in lieu of hard info and in the interest of generating some good will for my favorite DC character, I'm going to try my best to stay positive and use my mighty brain to convince my uncertain heart my good friends at the company that owns her wouldn't do something quite so stupid as put us through all that again, not when they so recently gave Cass a compelling new identity and sense of purpose. Which is why I'm going to keep grinning as if my face had been badly Botoxed by a doctor of uncertain credentials operating in a seedy strip mall also featuring a massage parlor, a title pawn establishment and more empty storefronts than tenants.

Yes. See how happy I am? See my smile? It's a big, big smile of love and joy and it means I'm anxious to see what Morrison's going to do with Cassandra Cain in Batman Incorporated volume 2! Or what Gail Simone's going to do with her in Batgirl volume infinity! But would it kill someone at DC to include something to that effect in one of their many relaunch press releases?

Batgirl Unbound: To make some happy, one must make others unhappy...

What a shock to learn Barbara Gordon will be dropping her Oracle identity and returning as Batgirl. You'd think she would have outgrown that costumed identity by now, but apparently she hasn't. I don't have to tell you why some comic fans are greeting this news with a somewhat less than positive response. One of my favorite bloggers, Innerbrat, will tell you point-by-smartly reasoned point. This is not a fan I'd care to alienate; too intelligent, too passionate! She's not the only one. Another blogger responds to the news at Lubbock Online. This fan deconstructs an ostensibly happy image produced by another fan of Barbara Gordon strutting away in her old school Batgirl costume, her Oracle wheelchair abandoned behind her. Andy Khouri also explains a lot of these feelings it at Comics Alliance. Other fans are concerned that current Batgirl Stephanie Brown is in big trouble.

My understanding is DC's trying to provide new readers a "jumping on point," and that strategy involves more classic versions of their characters. No more multiple Batmen-- Bruce Wayne will be wearing the pointy eared mask and scalloped cape. The iconic characters, hence the traditional Batgirl. I'm not convinced. It's kind of difficult to discuss these "iconic" characters and put them into perspective because we're comic fans. We know their narratives intimately; it's almost as if they're real to us, friends or even family. Or-- if Google image searches for "Batgirl" are to be believed, even lovers.

Sorry. That made even me shudder. Do NOT do a Google image search for Batgirl. I've written quite a bit about Cassandra Cain and you really do not want to know what Google keywords bring more traffic to those posts than any others.

To the public at large, however, Batgirl is probably less Barbara Gordon than that chick in the rubber costume from the 60s or 70s or whenever or that other chick who was in that one Aerosmith video where she and Liv Tyler got kinda semi-lesbianish and whatever happened to her anyway?

Go to a shopping center and ask a random selection of passersby if they know Batgirl's real name. Before you're arrested, you're bound to get some interesting replies, most of which will include the words "what," "the hell" and "are you talking about?" Commissioner Gordon's daughter? Paralyzed? You lying jerk! Gary Oldman didn't even have a daughter in that movie I saw!

What will those people care? While putting Barbara Gordon back in the Batgirl suit is probably exciting for one segment of already-committed comic fans-- and obviously is for Gail Simone, who will be writing this series-- I'm not convinced any of the new readers DC hopes to appeal to with this reboo-- sorry-- "relaunching" have any particular allegiance to the traditional comic book version: "I would've bought that new Batgirl series thingy, but I didn't recognize her without the mask, so I gave it a miss."

And meanwhile, a lot of loyal readers who have already been reading all about Barbara Gordon and loving her are now royally upset. Plus another character is getting the Heisman treatment. Hey, maybe this time they won't kill her off. You've got that going for you... at least... Pissing off Barbara-as-Oracle fans-- for whom she has an intensely symbolic importance-- and Stephanie-Brown-as-Batgirl crowd-- those who made their outrage known during the Robin Memorial Case Conflict-- doesn't seem like a smart move. Unless, of course, the angry go ahead and buy this book anyway because they're just that hardcore about reading comics. Especially comics written by Gail Simone.

That's this story's ultimate twist. Simone is one of the most popular writers for the fans most disgruntled by this abrupt change, plus she's as solid as they come at DC. I'm not a big fan of hers-- I've read more message board posts by her than comics-- but I did enjoy Simone's version of Gen13. While somewhat rambling, it was still entertaining, witty and full of well-written characterization. I especially appreciated Simone's take on Sarah Rainmaker, the most misused, ill-served character from the original series. Simone dumped some of the more strident elements (products of the MTV's Real World/frat boy aesthetic of the first series) and gave Rainmaker a bruised toughness that was touching and effective. But the character Simone is most associated with is Barbara Gordon, of whom she appears to be an unabashed fan. As a writer she comes across giddy about being on this book.

Wow! Shades of the whole "Cassandra Cain turns evil" controversy all over again, minus the shabby scripting. We all have pleasant memories of those fabled days, similar to the family reunion where that estranged ne'er-do-well cousin Cornelius Vandershot-- he who dropped out of Harvard, Yale and Princeton and ended up attending a state university and eventually living on a collective farm in British Columbia before becoming a lawyer specializing in personal injury suits-- attended with his harlot of a wife-- she of the untamed eyebrows and unshaven pits; she claims to be an author of some repute but I've read the titles of some of her "works," nothing but trash-- a-and so drunk on spirits he collapsed at the dinner table, giving Aunt Lydia such intense vapors she took to her bedchambers and hasn't been seen since, communicating her needs through a perpetually-locked double door by means of a silver bell.

Well, you can't make everyone happy all the time. Good lord, the DC writers, artists and editors have learned that lesson time and time again over the past 10 years or so. As far as I know, we still don't know what's going to happen to Cassandra Cain! It's going to be a long, hot summer!

Give Cassandra Cain a mulligan: I second that emotion!

A mulligan. Not a mullet. I did a little "who's reading my crappy comics blog" search today and found that way back in November of last year, DC Women Kicking Ass linked to an entry I wrote about DC's big plans for Cassandra Cain in 2010. Wow, DCWKA, we see how well that turned out, eh?

Thanks to that link, I found this essay, where the same author runs down all the various re-bootings and re-startings of different charactes DC has tried over the years and applies that argument in favor of giving Cassandra Cain the same treatment. A mulligan. A do-over. I don't have anything to add other than to agree wholeheartedly. Get on it, DC!

This is a CBS News Special Report: Perhaps they have. This reporter just learned (several weeks behind the news curve) writer Scott Snyder will feature Cassandra Cain in the first issue of his Gates of Gotham miniseries. Which Cass will show up? The talkative, mopey one from the past few years courtesy of Adam Beechen... or the taciturn, ass-kicking one from the recent Red Robin #17? Will Snyder dump all the nonsensical "I wanna be a normal girl" emotional baggage writers (Beechen again) have had Cass lugging around in favor of the stripped-down fighting machine we're all hoping for?

Looks like we'll find out in May!