Cass Cain versus Wolverine in progress...

Playing around with inking styles.

Cass Cain holding at #3!

Here's Kelly Thompson's latest "25 Favorite Fictional Females" list, with our own fave-- none other than Cassandra "Best Batgirl/Black Bat" Cain holding down the #3 spot.  Thompson has a nice take on Cass and I have to agree with it 100%.  What's great about making lists like this is-- well, they're one person's opinion, aren't they?  That means you're free to agree, disagree, discuss, argue or make your own list.  Or all of the above.

I don't even know what this "Attack on Titan" thing is but...

...apparently, Cass would be very good at it.  Thanks for the morning fun, message board people!

Cass redesign plus some other people and the Thing for no real reason

That's capeless Cass on the right.  This is another inking experiment.

Batgirl kicks someone's grandfather...

Here's a rough pencil sketch I just knocked out where Cass Cain kicks someone's grandfather in the head for reasons known but to herself.  He looks a little like Lew Ayres.  Anatomy needs some work (to say the very least)!

Cass Cain redesign marker sketch...

More Black Bat than Batgirl.  The mask isn't working, but you can't tell these things until you try them.  Back to the drawing board!

Unfinished Cass Cain Batgirl

This was a style experiment I started a while back, grew tired of, then forgot.  I found it just now and here it is.

A nice Cass appreciation piece by a Stephanie Brown fan...

It's short and to the point.  But there have been at least two "bring back Cass" campaigns I'm aware of the writer doesn't seem to be.  That's cool.  After all, I couldn't tell you how many "bring back Steph" campaigns there have been.  Probably more than two. 

My gut feeling is Steph fandom is much more active and vocal lately than Cass fandom for various reasons.  For one, I think the character is simply more popular.  To list a few others, Steph's stint as Batgirl is more recent; the character headlined a book wiped out in 2011 by the New 52 while Cass' last book was that abysmal Redemption Road miniseries way back in 2008 (which with all the reboots and retcons is the comic book fan equivalent of about fifty years of regular human time); the character has a longer history than Cass does (Steph debuted in 1992-- about 1000 years ago in fan-time-- while Cass didn't make the scene until 1999); Steph was a Robin until they tortured and killed her (as a controversial story point, this tends to trump a simple drug-induced heel turn), and so on and so forth.  I'm tired of typing comparisons now. 

It might also be Steph is more accessible a character than Cass for a lot of readers.  She can verbalize her feelings, she's usually written as witty or smart, the kind of character you instantly identify with and root for.  Or, at the very least, find fun to spend time with or read about.  Even as a staunch Cass fan I can see how a silent, former killer who seems untouchable at times could be off-putting or even alienating to some readers (although I can't see anything about her that's particularly clichéd).

Anyway, we see which character DC has picked to debut first in the New 52.  That's also fitting for a lot of the reasons I've already written about here.  But like the Steph fan we started this little rumination with, I can't see a single reason why Cass should remain on the shelf gathering dust for much longer.

Pensive Cass Cain Batgirl ink experiment...

I don't know what she's thinking about.  Probably her foot going up against someone's head.  I inked this in a loose, fat brush style in about a minute and a half and I don't think it's that bad.

A quick Cass Cain inking experiment

Messing around with inking.  Here are some fast sketches of Cassandra Cain as Batgirl kicking Batman in the head.