Well, that about wraps things up with Cass Cain...

Unless she's a zygote in the New 52.  In the meantime, a small group of dedicated Cass-fans are attempting to organize a mass buy of the digital Batgirl #1.

DC's Katana to star in her own book?

He's either in there or he's not!

I've read some articles, or items, speculating that DC has a Katana #0 coming at us in September with a cover by David Finch.   Okay, it's the same rumor twice and then referred back to.  That doesn't change the fact I read all three of them and it's yakuza, not yakusa (unless yakusa is simply an acceptable alternate spelling in which case good for you).  Oh, and the old Katana really did have her husband's soul in her sword.  I'm not so sure about the new one.  This rumor seems all the more likely when you consider Katana will be co-starring in Beware the Batman, the new "cutting-edge" CGI animated series coming next year from Cartoon Network.  You know how these media companies love to create synergy.  Which is just a fancy way of saying they like to advertise their other products within their products.

DC occasionally does things that seem aimed directly at getting me—specifically me—to buy their product.  Of course this is solipsistic thinking.  DC’s plenty happy with the 100,000 or so regular readers they have.  They’re not about to aim a title at any one person, especially not a person who spends half his blogging time telling their editors, writers and artists how to do their jobs—although I do know best-- and the other half ignoring them.  And they do just as many things to alienate me however inadvertently.

But sometimes… sometimes… 

I’d love to see a Katana book.  My reasons?  Even though no one at DC cares in the least, I’m going to share them here.  Because it is my blog and because it is bitter.

As an American living in Japan, I’m endlessly fascinated with how the folks back home view my adopted home.  I’ve liked Katana since her Batman and the Outsiders days and she’s by far the most visually appealing character DC’s got at the moment.  I’m also a huge fan of katana-slicin’ action a la Lone Wolf and Cub and Lady Snowblood—to name a couple of books infinitely superior to just about anything either Marvel or DC has done with their Asian characters.  Or in most cases, their North American characters. 

Not every comic can attain those heights.  Kazuo Koike is a genius and there aren’t many around who can operate on his level.  But more funny book writers need to aspire to that instead of aiming for Michael Crichton.  Or Brad Meltzer.  And don’t bother reading Memoirs of a Geisha.  A smart Katana book that balances ultra-violence with moments of great beauty and perhaps some mono no aware as well would hook me.  Don’t make it resemble a cheap Rush Hour knock-off.  Ignore the Hollywood influence.  Stop trying to cram Michael Bay nonsense onto the printed page.  Instead, go for the nastiness of Takeshi Kitano with the humanism of Akira Kurosawa.

I have the feeling—cynic that I am—they’ll do it and it’ll be full of shallow characterization and a setting influenced more by secondhand info and The Last Samurai clichés.  And it’ll be as disappointing as that god-awful Kato series I foolishly gave a shot for some of the same reasons I’m willing to take a chance on a Katana book.  I mean, it’s DC.

Still, I can’t help hoping this rumor turns out to be true…

I'm not surprised by DC's Nielsen survey results because I live backwards in time, kind of like T.H. White's Merlyn...

DC's big reboot brought readers a-flockin' to the banner-- but mostly people who already read comics.  Those elusive brand new readers continued to shun superheroes the way financial success does me.  That's pretty much what I predicted would happen way back  in June, 2011.  Remember?  No?  Luckily for you, I do!  I remember everything because I'm a wizard.  Allow me to educate you by turning you variously into different types of furry animals, birds, insects and fish.



People describing themselves as "avid fans" seemed to love the new DC, accounting for 70% of the sales.  "Lapsed readers" like it, too, making up "a quarter of in store consumers."  But new readers make up a whopping 5% of the buyers.  And most of these are guys.  Women seem to have stayed away in droves.  But then when you step back, most people of whatever gender tend to do that when it comes to comics.

Here's what really interests me in the discussion about this survey:  while reporting a 1% drop in female readership, the DC Women Kicking Ass blog got another one of those "leave DC alone!" type comments from someone claiming women are nothing more than a niche market hardly worth DC's while to approach.  The comments in response to that genius are worth a read, especially when yet another person chimes in to reiterate it.  It's like certain comic book guys go to some kind of school to learn how to miss the point.

The idea is to appeal to as many people as possible.  Because, face it, tiger, comic book readers themselves are the niche market the way things stand.  Everyone else seems to have something better to do with their time.  Or so they think, and nothing DC's tried so far-- or Marvel, for that matter-- has done anything to change this.  You know-- the endless reboots, taking heroic characters and thrusting them into nihilistic stories, the casual misogyny, the massive multi-part stories that undermine any forward momentum the individual monthlies might have, the deaths and rebirths and creative team shuffling.

Nothing really seems to appeal to the general public, of which somewhere around half are women.  Which boggles the mind when movies starring superhero characters are all the rage at the box office.  People in general seem to like Superman and Batman in the talkies, but don't want anything to do with them on the printed page or even in digital form-- which, according to this survey, hasn't turned into either the industry's savior or the death knell of paper and ink-- just the most recent iteration of the infamous chromium-covered variant edition of the regular printed edition for people obsessive enough to need multiple versions of the exact same thing.

What's to be done?  Well, trying something new, some heretofore unseen strategy-- whatever that might be-- could possibly help.  But you know what never will, kid?

Yelling at the girls to keep their icky cooties out of your super-secret he-man boys-only tree fort.

My guess is DC would love to have a vast new readership even if that means losing people like you and the other people who endlessly shift their loyalty from book to book depending on whatever's trending that month.  But you know what?  After reading about this survey, I think you'd probably still buy comics even if they were suddenly colored a gross-out pink and dolled up in ribbons and lace and Batman and Superman started doing a bunch of sissy stuff like talking about their feelings and spending all their time-- ewwwwww-- kissing their girlfriends!  Who probably also have icky cooties, no doubt!

You're a comic book fan!  Buying comics is what you, almost exclusively among your fellow citizens, do!  And to be honest, I don't see those vast new audiences ever showing up to buy comics, so your furtive little hobby is safe in all its sexist glory, buddy.  You did it!  You defeated the fangirls.  Enjoy.  Enjoy the onanistic pleasure of double-bagging your superhero comics in monastic solitude.

Weirdly, over here in Japan, where comic sales are slumping, the reverse is true.  It's hard to throw a rock without hitting a comic book reader.  Let's leave aside the Nielsen survey and some sticky questions about its validity and methodology-- which actually I think are beside the point if DC commissioned it and plans on relying on its data-- let's look at some other numbers.  The top selling Japanese title vastly outperformed the top American book.

I'm talking One Piece, an international sales juggernaut of epic proportions, versus Justice League.  One Piece sold 37,996,373 copies in 2011.  That's just in Japan.  DC's Justice League of America sold in the 40,000-50,000 range before it spiked to 180, 709 in September for its second issue after DC chopped off the geographical signifier and entitled it simply Justice League as part of their New 52.  In total, it sold 1,026,441 copies during all of 2011.  To get this figure, I added all the Justice League of Americas and Justice Leagues, including the second month sales of Justice League #1, but I don't know anything about math.  It was never my good subject.



Still, even if I left out a few or a lot we're not anywhere near One Piece's numbers and we live in a world where more people care about what happens to Monkey D. Luffy than to Clark Kent.  If you want to be a stickler, feel free to add things up yourself and toss in Justice League International, Justice League Dark, various Justice League-related trade collections and possibly Marvel's top selling book as well. See how many American titles it takes to equal One Piece.

Look at it this way:  Japan's population is 127, 450,460.  Just over a third of them bought One Piece.  If I ride the train here tomorrow and look at the person sitting on my left and the person sitting on my right, there's a pretty good chance one of them has read One Piece.  How niche-y do you feel now?  Think DC wouldn't love to figure out a way to push their books on a third of the North American population?  Think Time-Warner, Inc. and its stockholders wouldn't love that?

Any strategy that involves concentrating on a very few declining readers while ignoring new markets isn't one that's very viable for the long term.  My palliative-- which is all it can ever be because I really don't think those readers are out there-- is always tell better stories, with better art.  Care more about the characters than the events.  Give books time to grow their readership without involving them in crossover events.  Experiment with genres.  Scout for and cultivate new talent from unexpected places.  These things would bring me back as a regular reader to DC (as opposed to sporadic whenever I go on a jag related to one character or another), but I'm not sure any of that would work for a wider audience because the days of kids riding their bikes to the convenience store to find a spinner rack of brightly colored fun are long gone.  These days they ride their virtual robots to the virtual battlefield to shoot virtual bullets at each other online.  Or something that seems like some kind of horrifying magic to my Neanderthal mind.  Everybody else is too busy voting for American Idol or whatever it is people do.

Gail Simone, however, dissents.  She's pretty sure there's something fishy about these Nielsen numbers.  Hey, she may be right.  I hope she is.  But whatever, I'll keep finding ways to entertain myself over here in my own little niche.

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.

Here's an interesting essay-- or "open letter"-- to DC

Why am I telling you? You've probably already read it. I'm always a week or two behind on these things. Which makes me the Jackie Harvey of comics bloggers. Hey! At last I've found a niche!

Anyway, enough of my insecurities. Corinna Lawson has written an open letter to DC informing them that they don't particularly know what they're doing when it comes to fan interaction and social media. The Source, DC's website blog doesn't allow comments, for example. That's one way to control the message, I suppose, but it's not very fan-friendly. One might get the idea that certain people aren't interested in reader feedback to their seemingly arbitrary changes. It's kind of a modification of Fox News's old slogan: "We report it, you buy it or get the hell out." One of my favorite points comes when Lawson relates the story of how DC spammed one of her own Twitter followers who told them they're "doing Twitter wrong."

But this jumped out at me:

Don’t, say, announce that all the Robins will be getting showcase titles when what you mean is that all the male Robins will be getting showcase titles and that the current Batgirl (former Robin) Stephanie Brown is going into limbo, along with former Batgirl current Black Bat Cassandra Cain. Because, apparently, there can only be one Batgirl as multiple ones would be too confusing but four Robins is just fine.

I have to agree. Especially since I'm one of those bike-stealing Cassandra Cain fans. This is something I can easily see as a source of fan irritation. Is this what's happening? I don't know; I haven't been following the DC news all that closely lately because I've got my own thing going and it's taking up a lot of my free time. But it certainly seems like the kind of thing that does go on all too frequently.

Down in the comments section, please note the dissident response of one "Tiedye Guy," whose very name suggests the kind of retrograde attitude he espouses with his "screw newbies" philosophy. I can kind of sympathize, because like a lot of fans, I've seen my favorite books as a closed club where I am the Chosen One and all the rest of you are bandwagoning poseurs. Then I grew up.

Kind of. On the sober side of things, Tiedye's response makes me realize the difficulties mainstream comic publishers face. An aging fanbase easily alienated by almost any change, a certain sense of entitlement from the entrenched readers, resistance to growth and a desperate need to target a narrow demographic that's largely marginalized comics as an entertainment provider in a market crowded with more attractive choices.

It's so strange to me to have aged passed my own expiration date as a DC fan. Of course, they do target us old people with their omnibus books and Showcase reprints. So I've at least got that going for me as DC shuffles me off to an assisted living center and digs my grave. Excuse me if I don't move in just yet, Time-Warner. Maybe I'll wait to make my obituary official until Black Bat gets her own ongoing series. Until then, I'll see you on the Outside!

Superman Family circa 1971

Here's how DC handled reboots/relaunches back when I was a toddler. Everything a reader needed to know about Superman and his allies could be found in this old DC house ad that ran in their comics in 1970 or 1971. For that matter, this is almost everything an imaginative writer really needs to know to craft exciting stories about Superman. A reference drawing of Lois Lane, one of the Daily Planet, that old bit about his being "rocketed to earth from the doomed planet Krypton" and adopted by a farm couple and you're off and running. Give Superman a new personality, invent crazy situations and relationships we haven't seen before. Give flight to your wildest imaginings about what this near-god with a human soul might experience and do.

You don't need a 12-issue crossover series with some prologue and epilogue miniseries bookeending it or a lot of press conferences. You just run a house ad: "Superman was like this; now he's like this. Have fun!"

Congratulations to Steve Rude!

The Dude was named a finalist for Outstanding Watercolor in the May 2011 BoldBrush Painting Competition. His piece, titled "Milk-- Straight Up" colorfully depicts two children leaning over a table while sipping milk through straws. It has a definite Norman Rockwell narrative feel, but the creamy, vivid brushwork and vivid colors are pure Steve Rude. The contest page is worth your time because every single one of the paintings on it is a gorgeous piece of work.

I wonder if DC's reboo-- er-- relaunch and its resetting of any number of characters means the Wednesday Comics project has become redundant. If so, that's too bad. The first one was the perfect series for the nostalgic reader and the second one promised some Rude artwork. Now it seems as though DC is trying to have it both ways and fun oddities like Wednesday Comics may not have a place. We'll see!

How will the Blackbat survive?

I'm still digging for any news of Cassandra Cain's fate-to-be in the DC reboo-- sorry-- relaunch. All I've managed to find is this blog entry where someone lists some possibilities before concluding she will probably squeak by and continue as Blackbat. I tend to agree, but what I'm linking it for is the really sweet Batgirl fan art the writer used to illustrate the post. That's one of the nicest Cass Cain drawings I've seen in a while.

It's by someone calling himself "monkeymarc," who also has the good taste to list Cass as his "favourite Batgirl." Let's look at it a little larger. She looks a little like up-and-comer Hayley Kiyoko, doesn't she? Nice loose, energetic style. Even though I prefer action poses to these static portraits, this one has a lot of personality in that tilted head. Usually the half-lidded eyes and parted lips would say "sexy" or at least "attempt at sexy," but I'm getting more of a narrowed-eyes mugshot vibe. Oh heck, no wonder he's so good-- I was just looking through his gallery and he's Marc Laming, a pro with DC/Vertigo and storyboard work to his credit, plus his favorite artists list starts with Alex Toth and includes Frank Robbins and Noel Sickles.

I'd like to see more of Marc Laming's work. Especially if he gets to work on a certain little character we call Blackbat.

Let's look at the relaunched Superman and discuss him why don't we already?

Sorry about that headline. I've been watching a lot of Futurama lately so I'm in a Dr. Zoidberg frame of mind. The DC relaunch may wind up being a sales failure, but from one perspective it's already a success-- people are talking about DC comics. Everywhere I go people ask me, "You're an idiot. What do you think about DC's crazy new relaunch plans?" And I'm all too happy to tell them the random assemblage of observations that pass for my opinion about things.

Like Superman. Do you remember how in Pulp Fiction how Mia Wallace tells Vincent Vega about "Elvis people" and "Beatles people" then doesn't ask him which he prefers because he's "definitely an Elvis man?" No, you don't. It was a deleted scene. Are you a Pulp Fiction fan? Oh, then I'm sorry, you've seen it. Of course you remember it.

I'm a Beatles person. But there are also "Superman people" and "Batman people." I'm a Cassandra Cain person, but I'm also mostly a Superman person. Superman represents humanity at its finest, even if he's not-- strictly speaking-- a human being. Superman is symbolic of our optimism. Batman represents humanity having its worst day. He's the personification of our pessimism. I choose optimism over pessimism every time. Almost every time. To be honest, DC makes it very difficult sometimes. But just as Vincent Vega is trying to listen, I'm trying to see the upside to DC's relaunch.

They've already impressed me with the new Katana costume, enough so I'm going to sample Birds of Prey to see if her characterization matches it. Let's see if DC's biggest, brightest, most important character will have a similar effect. Here's my take on these initial images of the costume redesigns for Superman and his Super-Family. First up-- Rags Morales.

Morales will be illustrating Grant Morrison's scripts for the new Action Comics #1. DC's The Source blog says, "Superman defends a world that doesn’t trust their first Super Hero."

And I can see why. This Superman looks like a brute, reminiscent of the more primal Superman from his earliest appearances in Action Comics when he seemed a little wild and dangerous. I'm not sure what to make of a hairy-armed Superman wearing an officially licensed crewneck Superman t-shirt and a towel for a cape a la Marvin of Superfriends fame. Something has happened to him and his distressed jeans from American Eagle and it's pissed him off enough he's going to totally destroy that giant rock.

Dramatic artwork. Don't you want to know why he's killing that rock and why it's angered him so much his eyes have turned a glowing heat-vision red? As much as I hate, hate, HATE Identity Crisis and think it's a poorly conceived and plotted piece of crap, it's still a gorgeously rendered piece of crap. But then I've always liked Rags Morales's art, going all the way back to his work on Black Condor and Turok. The cape is a silly touch here given Superman's hipster street clothes, but Morales has nailed the character's strength and powerful presence.

Let's see what legendary artist George Perez is up to. I admire Morales, but I love me some George Perez!

Oh. How unfortunate.

Perez will write Superman: The Man of Tomorrow, Today #1, with art by Jesus Merino. Perez gives us a Superman in full-on "I hate my job at the Daily Planet" mode and sticks him in a super-lame costume. Maybe Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen mocked his new super-suit so hard, the Man of Steel finally snapped. The cybernetic lines in Superman's top make it look like clothing rather than the traditional man-with his-torso-and-legs-painted-blue look. That part is fine.

But the belt with square studs and those armored boots/greaves? Totally unnecessary and quite ugly. Perez's art is every bit as dynamic and cleanly detailed as ever-- he's one of those rare artists who's managed to maintain a peak well past all expectations, and he was pretty solid even early in his career-- but this revamped costume needs to be revamped already. Keep the shirt, rework the belt, loose those horrible, horrible boots that would've embarrassed even the beefcakey cast of an old Italian gladiator movie! Mr. Perez, with all due respect, if you're attempting to give Superman's footwear a high-tech look to match the rest of his leotards, go check out some athletic shoes or ski boots or something, anything; don't dig out one of your old jobs for Marvel back in the 70s. It looks like Superman stole them off some second-string Iron Man villain.

On second thought, there's such a mismatch between Superman's top and bottoms, maybe someone-- was it you, Dan Didio?-- used the old Mighty Men & Monster Maker toy to design this and forced it on Perez.

Let's look away from this accident scene to Mahmud Asrar's pleasant surprise.

Way to go, DC! For too long the bare middrift has been the visual cliche signifying "this is a teenaged girl" character. Aybar's Supergirl drawing gives her an otherworldly, dignified appearance. What? No navel ring or lower back tattoo? The new Supergirl costume with its long sleeves, shawl/cape arrangement and stylish over-the-knee boots actually covers more girl than I'm used to in my DC comics. I can't get over a Supergirl wearing more clothing than an Olympic gymnast and not looking like Lindsay Lohan in the middle of a 2-week coke and booze binge.

I applaud the attempt at updating the Superman logo, but this design isn't working. It needs to be tweaked ever so slightly because it looks like someone stuck the shield-shape around some tiger-stripes. Resolve the "S" inside and you'll have it. And speaking of the shield, echoing it that closely in front in that yellow accent piece is overkill. That would work better as an oval reminiscent of her cousin's old belt buckle or even a rectangle. One of Supergirl's lesser known powers is making impossible boots work without the help of spray-on adhesive. The open knee look is an interesting but ultimately unwieldy and distracting attempt to build visual interest.

It may sound as though I just ripped it apart, but this is far more successful than the new Superman costume and it's a massive improvement over Supergirl's previous look. I might have some nits to pick with its detailing, but I love the overall concept.

I'm just not sure how Supergirl will be portrayed by writers Michael Green and Mike Johnson in their Supergirl #1, but DC promises, "Supergirl’s got the unpredictable behavior of a teenager, the same powers as Superman and none of his affection for the people of Earth." Well, many teenagers are cheerful and hard-working, DC, with a passion for learning and volunteering. But I suppose that kind of Supergirl won't appeal to today's edgy comic fan obsessed with all things Twilight, Gossip Girl, Hellcats and MTV's Skins. Come on, I'm just teasing.

Everyone knows all teenagers hate to be helpful and cheerful. It's angst or GTFO! All I ask is that the new writers refrain from using any variation of the phrase "trying to find her place in the world" when giving interviews. Thanking you in advance, sirs.

What's next? Oh yeah, this guy.

This is the first image from one of DC's more surprising experiments-- Superboy in the Shell: Fly Alone Complex by Japanese comics master Masamune Shirow. In this wild departure, Superboy is actually a bit of sentient code inside a computer matrix in some far-flung cyber-future where the traditional DC superheroes may or may not have existed. And there's nudity, lots and lots of it. Plus violence as Superboy passes between his virtual world and what may or may not be the real one to battle international terrorists and code-hackers. Shirow explores themes of technology gone amok and transhumanism, as well as more personal issues such as sexuality, identity, friendship, trust and what's for lunch.

This is the one Superman character I really couldn't care less about. Superboy? Is this the clone of Superman again? Bleeccccchhh. I have no idea who drew this, but Superboy #1 will be written by Scott Lobdell with art by R.B. Silva and Rob Lean with apparently some Shirow-ian influences. It's a cool image, and definitely a departure but this is one book I could only get interested in if it were actually by Shirow. Sorry, fellas. Hope plenty of fans feel differently!

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?