It might be Black Bat, but it's not Cassandra Cain...

And then things break loose and we have something to discuss.  Batwing: Future's End #1 hit the stands this week.  I haven't read a New 52 story since DC cancelled Katana, but here's the log line for it: 

Luke Fox has rejected his father, which leads him to rebuilding a more deadly and dangerous Leviathan!

It's set five years in the future, I gather.  Bleeding Cool has a short piece by Rich Johnston with an intriguing snippet of art in which we see a very familiar costume.  It's essentially Cass Cain's Black Bat outfit with more purple.  According to Johnston, the story never identifies who this person is, but she doesn't look anything like the Cassandra Cain we're all familiar with, the one erased from DC's ongoing narrative.  Ordinarily, I'd say don't make a snap judgment based on a single image, but she's got brown hair rather than black, she's the only person speaking in the panel, plus she's got a big smile on her face.  None of those seem very Cass-like to me.

You can take this as the New 52 version of Cass or take it as a sign DC still plans not to include her and-- just to emphasize the point-- will put an entirely different person in the costume and give her Cass' last known codename.  Or this character could be someone called Cass Cain with a few of her characteristics, but with a largely different background and personality.

If it's the former, kiss even the idea of a New 52 Cass goodbye for a few more years.  If it's the latter, it's still not our favorite character, given the alterations.

As I've written before, given the age reduction in Lady Shiva there's a chance in reviving Cass DC would give her different parents entirely.  The brown hair suggests that, although it's certainly within the realm of possibility Cass could dye her hair.  Again, though, that seems like a very un-Cass-like flourish and only hints at even more changes that take her farther away from the character we want to see back in action-- the (largely) silent, super-ass kicking Cass who isn't concerned much with appearance.

Unimpressed.  Unexcited.  This is what I have to go on in making my decision about buying into this series and nothing I've seen says, "Here's what you've been waiting for, loyal Cass Fan!"  I'm not spending 2.99 on this because this is not Cassandra Cain no matter what they choose to call her.

Although the art by Eduardo Pansica, Julio Ferreira and JP Mayer is pretty nice.

Another Cass Cain costume design from me!

This one is less interesting than the one by someone else I linked to below.  I was thinking along Kirby lines as far as the costume goes, but the drawing itself is pretty shabby.  I tried to work out a few kinks in those "background" images, but I was really freezing up for some reason.  That's Cesar Romero as the Joker to the left, and to the right there's Hayley Kiyoko, a multi-talented entertainer (she sings, she dances, she acts, she does it all!) who I think looks a lot like Damion Scott's original Cass at times.  So I "cast" her as Cass and tend to model my Cass' facial features after hers.

One of my many Cass Cain costume redesigns...

This one features a helmet with a vampire bat teeth motif for the mouthpiece area.  And a katana because swords are cool.  I doubt she carries it around.  She probably picked it up after beating up someone who uses one.  No clumsy cape.  Cass doesn't need something that would just wrap around her in a fight and inhibit her movement.  No bright yellow belt with giant pouches full of junk she never uses anyway, although I imagine there's a grappling gun thing attached to the back of the more subdued belt she is wearing.  There's a self-portrait of the exhausted, disappointed artist, Cesar Romero Joker, confused Luke Skywalker and a tiny Superman hidden among the faces and figures in the background.  Actually, that's all random stuff done for inking practice.

Today's Black Bat exercise...

I don't have a lot of time for drawing during the week, but I still try to fit some in every single day.  This drawing is based on an image I created a while back.  Every so often I learn something new about art and then revisit previous sketches/roughs and see if I can apply the new knowledge to them.  This was fooling around with a certain line quality, and then I worked on some dramatic under-lit faces and cross-hatching experiments.

Cassandra Cain Black Bat digital inking...

It's about 75% complete.  Just need to adjust a few things here and there.  Proportions, the Kirby dots, some of the shadows, snaps on her pouches.  I haven't done a full-fledged finished piece in a LONG time, so I'm pretty jazzed about this one.

Black Bat

What a disastrous mess!  It's Cass as Black Bat!  And yet I am not ashamed to admit I drew this.

Once again, the Mary Sue is your source for exhilirating Cassandra Cain discussion!

It's really past time for DC to bring Cassandra Cain back.  There never was a good reason for any of the lousy decisions they've made regarding her, from the cancellation of her solo title, to her "heel turn," to putting out a badly-written miniseries recapitulating said "heel turn" after it had already been disposed of as offhandedly as such a stupid character development deserved, to her strange and illogical absence from the "Death of Bruce Wayne" storyline, to the way she was forced to give up being Batgirl for a truly lame in-story reason, to her continued absence in the New 52.  If anything, this is a lesson on how not to treat a character.  Any character.

The comments following this article made a lot of those points in detail.  I do want to take a little time to address a few points raised in it and those comments. 

First, I agree absolutely it's mean to pit one character against another.  The whole "why not both?" attitude really resonates with me.  While I think it's fair game to tease a character or make some fun of any of them-- and that includes Cass-- at the same time, as fans, we should be past the "either-or" mentality. 

You don't have to love one character by hating another.  Everyone is free to love or hate each and every character on his or her own merits, or their perceptions or misperceptions of those, but hating one character specifically because one loves another is silliness.  They're not rivals.  They're not sports teams.  There's no reason to pit them against each other, or fans against each other.  I like Cass more than I like certain other characters, and I dislike a few characters, but none of that has to do with only having a place in my fan-heart for one and only one character.

If that were so, there would be no way I'd spend time drawing cartoons of Supergirl and Wonder Girl teaming up with Cass-Batgirl, just to give one example.

You can like more than one character.  That's all I want to say.  And it's in no one's best interest to wage war on other fans just because they're not as into your character, or because you feel their favorite character is somehow unworthy.  There's room for every character.  Not everyone can be a Batgirl.  I'm completely fine with, say, Stephanie Brown becoming the Batgirl of record.  But explain to me why that means there can't be a Cassandra Cain as Black Bat in some other DC city.

Second, I would like to know why Cass ended up shunted off to Hong Kong as Black Bat.  Was it because she's bi-racial and part Asian?  As someone pointed out, she doesn't speak Cantonese and her mother is from Detroit.  Hong Kong is a spectacular setting for an adventure series, but wouldn't a Black Bat series set in the DC version of Detroit be just as gritty and exciting?

Third, a couple of commenters write of not liking Cass because she's "dark and broody."  I think she was written that way towards the end of her solo series run, but dark and broody were never the main thrust of her characterization.  I will forever champion the idea of a more violent, Kill Bill-esque Cassandra Cain series, but at the center would be that forceful, never-give-up, never-say-die-although-she-has-a-deathwish version of Cass we first met under writers Kelley Puckett and Scott Peterson. 

There weren't too many stories in the original run under Puckett and Peterson where Cass was moping around emo-style.  There were moments where she sat around a bit wistfully, and some where she got upset because she couldn't be Batgirl anymore.  But brooding was not really part of her make-up.  She was more likely to be out hitting things.  She'd be wearing out the training dummies in her private dojo, or having Batman repeatedly hit her in the face.

I would never have gotten into this character if Puckett and Peterson had made her a brooder because I absolutely loathe stories about people with incredible abilities who are made miserable by them.  Cass may have had a death wish due to guilt, but mostly she just tried to redeem herself by doing good, by saving everyone-- and I do mean everyone, including a guy about to be executed in a prison in one memorable story-- and who was so thoroughly into being Batgirl and exercising her abilities she was willing to forgo living any semblance of a "normal" life via secret identity.

The stories themselves were sometimes dark, but Cass was a shining light in them.  A true innocent in many ways, naively trying her best to understand the complex world into which she'd forced herself.

Anyway, let's have no more of this "Cass is a mopey/brooding/downbeat" kind of character.  I reject that characterization absolutely.  If she ever went down that route in a story, then you know you were reading something badly written and you need to go back and pick up the original series and see Cass as she should have been written all along.

So let me just say this once again: it is past time for DC to reintroduce Cass into their comics.

Time for more Cassandra Cain art...

The artist calls these "sloppy," but I call them loose and lively and gestural.  Warm ups are important before doing your "real" drawing.  It's kind of like being a relief pitcher.  You don't just step onto the mound and go to pitching.  You warm up in the bullpen first, then take a few throws from the mound.  Artists have to do something similar to loosen up and start making lines that flow properly.  These drawings are what those warm ups look like.  Most of the time we don't share them, but sometimes the warm ups themselves are kind of interesting and useful and worth looking at.  Like these. 

That's a free art tip!

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.

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!

Coming up with an attractive and functional helmet/mask for Cass is a fun process...

I wish I had time to scan the sketches I'm doing, or at least snap some photos with my iPhone.  I think I've got a new-look Batgirl/Black Bat costume for Cass I'm fairly happy with, but her headgear is another matter.  I've experimented with full-head helmets, anime Batgirl-inspired regular helmets with goggles, flared cowls with an open area up top and around her nose and mouth and even a strange mask that's reminiscent of the cat/butterfly mask worn by the character Noodle from the animated band Gorillaz during their most recent phase.

The suit is a sleek, one-piece affair with a larger and more stylized bat-symbol on the chest.  The color scheme is a very dark gray that you can either read as something close to charcoal or else a matte black, with the bat outlined in yellow and completely blacked in.  The belt is yellow but thinner and features rounded pouches in the back, out of the way.  Cass was never one to use a lot of tools-- all she really needs is that grappling gun and some batarangs and she's good to go.  None of that requires giant flopping pouches, but she can add any that become necessary depending on her mission.  The boots have a kind of flapped or hinged ankle arrangement.  No cape.

The first helmet I came up with for her really clashed with the suit's sleekness.  It made her look clumsy and top-heavy.  So I decided that wasn't the way to go, unless I wanted to bulk up her boots or add some visible padding at her elbows or knees, but then we're cutting down on her mobility, which was the basis for the entire design.  Another issue was I wanted her to have a little mouth opening and a simple rectangular one is too Iron Man and expressionless, but when I went for an inverted delta or crescent, the design looked too Star Wars stormtrooper for my taste.  Eventually I took a design cue from the fangs real bats have, with some triangular openings suggesting a vampire bat in the abstract.

After that I played around with the flared mask, which looked menacing but a little too alien.  I 've always admired Jamie Hewlett's Gorillaz designs, but just as I wanted to avoid duplicating Annie Wu's work on Batman Beyond, I also wanted to do something more me.  So I modified that into an open-topped cowl but I haven't worked out the way it wraps around Cass's neck and the back of her head, or a functional hairstyle to go with it.

This probably sounds like a lot of work for a fan drawing project, especially one for a character who doesn't officially exist.  But I do this during big group meetings here-- they're all in Japanese and I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm hearing anyway-- and it keeps me entertained.  Rethinking character costumes is fun stuff.  I've got a couple of ideas for both Superman and Wonder Woman, too!

This weekend I'll post some of my efforts here and we can all have a good laugh.

I'm redesigning Cass... again!

Back when Cass first found herself undergoing a heel-turn (as they say in professional wrestling and podiatry, I believe), I took it upon myself to invent my own version of Cass who was quiet and deadly and all those things we liked about her in the first place.  Only I put her in a retro-style outfit with a very short cape which would be more visually symbolic, I suppose.  Both the graphic novel Watchmen and the Pixar film The Incredibles show the drawbacks of having a cape, and with Batgirl's hyper-active fighting style, I just figured a cape would be more of a hindrance to her than its supposed intimidation/distraction/confusing factor (or whatever reason the Bat-family relies on capes) could offset.

I also gave her a mouth-less mask with no stitching because 1) it offers more anonymity, 2) she doesn't particularly feel the need to blab about with either friends or foes and 3) even if she should decide to make a speech, a mouth-less mask never stopped Spider-Man so why should it stop her?  And then I promptly discarded the mask in almost every drawing because I like drawing her facial expressions and Cass wasn't concerned with protecting her civilian identity anyway.

Her Batgirl uniform is pretty dramatic, in all black with those big stitches around the mouth (you'd think Batman would have bought her a new mask at some point with a detachable mouth-covering using Velcro or something less obvious, though) and a simple contour line bat-symbol.  Whether it's some kind of stretchable "ballistics cloth," leather or PVC is up to artistic interpretation, but however we have it, it looks might cool.  The cape, though, I felt was a bit much.  Looks cool, but-- once again-- impractical.

Working out the curve and perspective on those comically exaggerated belt pouches drives me up the wall, though!  And other than a batarang or that grappling gun, has Cass ever really pulled a lot of equipment from out of them for use?  I mean, maybe she has fingerprint or DNA swabbing kits in one of them, but I can't think of any stories where Cass scoured a location for those kinds of clues.  She usually just goes for the obvious stuff like a note for Spoiler to read to her, then grabs a punk and beats the necessary info out of him.  But I digress.  It's still a great costume.

But I also like Cass' Black Bat outfit.  Mostly, I like the pointy domino mask which reveals most of her face.  It helps reader identification and even though artists like Damion Scott would give the faceless mask some wild expressions that more or less accomplished the same thing, I like seeing an actual see a face there, or most of one, so we can see how artists draw Cass' "acting."  That's an important part of storytelling.  The elements I'm not so keen on are the long, loose hair, the scarf-like wrap-around cape (ask Isadora Duncan why that's a worse choice than even a traditional superhero cape) and the occasional addition of pointy claws.  I've never really understood the white, bandage-looking arm wraps, either, but that's just me.  Pull back her hair so it's out of her face and eyes, ditch the scarf and the arm wraps and you'd have something super-slick.

And it was with that thought-- and the impending return of Stephanie Brown to the New 52 DC universe, which means a costume change for her-- I set to work coming up with a plausible Batgirl costume for a New 52 Cass.  Minus the cowl stitching, the cape and the big pouches, the original Cass Batgirl costume would look an awful lot like a female version of the Batman Beyond suit.  That's fine but too easy.  Doesn't require much thought or creativity.  Annie Wu's recent futuristic Batgirl design is perfect for that character, and I love the bat-symbol shoulder pad effect, but I don't want to copy her.

My idea is Cass as a razor-sharp fighter who is willing to trade a certain level of protection for mobility.  After all, she "reads" her opponents' moves and goes into pre-emptive defensive postures and moves before they can even attack.  So I thought she's going to need a sleek yet amply-protected look that ditches the cape but replaces the cowl with a stylized but very light helmet that covers her entire head.  Yeah, kind of a fanciful notion, but no more so than the idea Superman needs a high collar and gladiator boots.  The ears are larger and more accurate to a real bat, there are menacing lensed eyes and there's a small mouth opening so she can breath.  Plus, she can take it off and kick it to the side when she's in the mood not to hide her face.  I really don't think she cares about that kind of thing.

I've modified the fins on the gloves for use as offensive weapons and defensively as shown in the recent Christian Bale Batman flicks.  The suit will have visible seams so you can see it's made of some kind of imaginary flexible protective material-- not PVC, not leather, not movie-style armor.  Her boots are martial arts inspired-- I think heavy treads look cool but take away her climbing ability and some of her "feel" for whatever terrain she's fighting on, but old school superhero type thin boots are kind of silly for this "realistic" style Cass.

This consists so far of exactly two sketches, both executed on the fly at work.  The rest has been largely a thought exercise.  And I haven't figured out the damned belt yet!  When I do, I'll start drawing some colored sketches and put a few of them here even if they look like crap.  That's what I do!

But how will Cassandra Cain return?

We're going to have a New 52 version of Stephanie Brown, and this is certainly cause for celebration not just for fans of that character, but also for Cass fans.  Because we now know it's only a matter of time before Stephanie Brown's pal also returns to DC's ongoing storyline.  But what we don't know is how.  It's safe to say the new Steph won't be exactly the same as the old Steph, but I hope she feels "right" enough there's a continuity and her fans will be happy.  While I'd argue there's not a single New 52 character that is exactly the same person he or she was before the reboot, Cass, unlike Steph, is a character completely mooted by the changes wrought by the New 52 in her mom Lady Shiva.  In the previous continuity, Cass is the teenage daughter of a Lady Shiva with years of experience.  The New 52 reduced Lady Shiva in age to a contemporary of Dick Grayson's, which means she's way too young to have a teenaged daughter.  As a result, it will be difficult for any writer to establish Cass as a contemporary of Steph's and, like her, having been out there all this time, living her own little life before the DC spotlight falls upon her.

So while I'm on this topic, let's float some ideas about Cass.  And to do so, I'm going to assume from the start any New 52 Cass will be re-set to a purer, primary state configuration, the way she was when we first met her all those years ago and before all those controversial changes.

One way to bring Cass back is...

Radically de-age the character.  That is, if DC decides to keep Lady Shiva as her mother (more on that later).  Unfortunately for Cass, we've already had Damian Wayne as the deadlier-than-you kid of the Bat-family and positioning Cass similarly would make her seem overly familiar and cover too much ground we've already been over.  The uniqueness of a character and its impact on the overall story should be respected, so anything along those lines should remain Damian's area of operations even posthumously.  Anything else would hardly be fair to fans of either character.  Plus, this could turn Cass into a Hit Girl knock-off and I doubt anyone would let that pass... shall we say... unremarked.

Another possibility is...

Reveal Cass as some kind of artificially-accelerated test tube baby.  This introduces some sci-fi elements to her backstory that could be explored, but tend to take the character in a direction apart from the parent-child issues that were so crucial to her conceptualization and development.  I think Damian Wayne and all the Star Wars clone troopers have been there before, and comics are already replete with super soldiers of similar origin.

One more is...

Give her a different mom.  This either means making her mother rather ordinary or creating yet another super bad-ass martial artist comparable to Lady Shiva.  The latter seems like unnecessary character duplication, the same way a child Cass might come off as Damian Wayne redux.  So they could always go with the former and make mom just some ordinary person who otherwise has the right qualities for producing someone like Cass.  Whatever those may be. 

I'd argue eliminating Lady Shiva from Cass' backstory is a possibility because father Cain and his relationship with Cass was essential to her character development in the early going, with Lady Shiva largely adding depth as the series progressed.  While the writers hinted at it, we readers weren't exactly sure Lady Shiva was her mother, after all, until fairly late in the monthly's run.  It was a cool reveal, nicely foreshadowed and set up, but all of those little clues could easily have been red herrings depending on how things played out.

Even so, the Cass versus Lady Shiva storyline was a major plot point in her series and their relationship tended to dominate the later issues.  I think one of the few serious missteps the initial creative team on Batgirl made was giving Cass language skills too early in the run, but even so, this move did lead to the most spectacular confrontation in the entire series and the partial resolution of her death wish.  The Cass-Lady Shiva pact and then fight-to-the-death wove a lot of the series' themes into what could have served as the overall story's climax.  If the writers had killed her off at that point with Lady Shiva responsible, it would have been a perfect conclusion to a short but spectacular career. 

Losing her Lady Shiva parentage would necessitate eliminating a lot of this good stuff and moving Cass along a different path.  Which could also be a positive thing depending on the story quality, and largely what would happen anyway since it's New 52 Cass and not Classic Cass.  While I'm obviously ambivalent about this aspect, one point in its favor is giving Cass a different mom means whoever writes her could spin out the mystery of her identity a long, long time and still maintain the essentialist approach I think is necessary to bringing back some version of Cass in a major way.

One thing they'll more than likely have to lose...

Cass' relationship with Barbara Gordon.  While they'd interact, I don't see Barbara Batgirl as having a whole lot of free time these days to spend mentoring Cass.  This was a major part of the Batgirl comic, but Barbara seems to have her hands full as it is and throwing Cass into the mix-- unless Gail Simone specifically requests it because it fits with her long-term storytelling plans-- just seems problematic at best.  It might be better to slip Cass into a supporting role in one of the other Bat-books (especially since having her debut as the star of her own title seems about as likely as Marvel publishing it).

And about Cass' costumed identity...

As far as her identity as Batgirl goes, I'm fine with Cass coming back with no costume.  She didn't jump into the black suit right away the first time around, either.  With Barbara Gordon comfortably ensconced in that role and continuity kind of warped anyway, Cass could come back and have to prove herself all over again before earning her own code name, which could just as easily be Black Bat as anything.  Or there could be a storyline where Barbara has to step back for whatever reason and Cass and Steph trade off the identity for short stints and we can all just pretend this reconciles past continuity with present.  Black Bat gives her a reason to exist beside Barbara-Batgirl, and so I would be fine with that.

All I really expect from New 52 Cass is she be a silent and potentially deadly martial artist out to redeem her past.  Give her a boldness that scares the bejeezus out of everyone around her so much so they worry she has a death wish.  Keep her mysterious and shadowy for as long as possible and unpredictable, like a knife Batman tries to use that turns in his hand unexpectedly, cutting deep.

Oh, and don't try to "cute her up."  Avoid the cutesy stuff altogether.  I've harped on this a million times, it seems, but go after some of that Koike Kazuo feel, like with his amazing Lady Snowblood series.  I think anyone writing a new version of Cass needs to read that until they have it practically memorized.  Something a little tragic in there, the seasoning for a Cass version that attacks the palate like a deliciously strong spice, using just the right ingredients from her previous incarnation without resorting to re-heating leftovers.

Marcio Takara draws one fantastic Cass!

I just saw this Cassandra Cain as Black Bat drawing from Marcio Takara, and he knocks it out of the park.  This is one of those drawings that makes me want to draw.  His others are top notch as well, but looking at his Black Bat I can't imagine for the life of me why DC isn't using her in their stories even as Scott Snyder says he wants to but the decision to do so is "above [his] pay grade."  She's so visually striking drawn like this whatever that reason the upper echelon may have for keeping Cass out of the game* just got smacked down as far as I'm concerned.  If I were in charge, I'd be hiring Takara and on the phone to a writer for a Black Bat monthly right this second.

But of course I'd write that on a Cass fan blog.

*I can't imagine anyone in a position to say yea or nay at DC turning down a Cass proposal from Snyder or Gail Simone if either of them actually made one.  Then again, I don't know what the agenda there is.  I'm still only reading Katana and back issues of classic titles.

There's not a whole lot of Cass going on right now...

Sorry.  I've been combing the web for Cass news and there just isn't any.  So here's all I have for ya today.

I bought a brand new computer over the weekend so I can work on some digital art.  My eight-year-old laptop just wasn't cutting it anymore so I splurged on this new Acer desktop with more than enough processing power to handle Manga Studio 5, Autodesk SketchBook Pro (with all the Copic markers!) and ArtRage Studio Pro (guess I should think about upgrading to 4).

Usually when I'm testing out a new sketchbook and pencil or pen or a digital drawing/painting program, I draw Cass.  Yesterday was no different-- I cranked up Manga Studio, opened an old pencil drawing I did of Cass as Black Bat and inked it in several different styles.

By the time I started making marks I liked-- weirdly reminiscent of Charles Burns, only if he decided to use his foot one day instead of his hand-- the picture was so gummed up with false starts and ugly, hesitant moves I didn't save it.  Which is why you're facing a small wall of text instead of looking at another bad Cass drawing.

On the other hand, this new computer really blazes.  I want to get a tablet monitor so I can draw directly on the screen and see what I'm doing rather than suffering that strange eye-hand disconnect you get from using a  regular (cheaper) tablet, with your pen in hand in one place and your lines appearing in another.  That's just unnatural.  I can get away with blaming that for how poorly I draw these days but we know the real reason is I just don't do it enough.  There were years where I drew every single day, for hours, for the sheer joy of it.  These days I'm lucky if I get thirty minutes of free time a day to do anything.  If I read a Batgirl, I can't draw a Batgirl.  If I read anything else, I don't get to add something to this Cass blog and it goes neglected.

Da Cass: Cass in the NFL!

Mixed martial arts would be her thing, no doubt, but what about Cassandra Cain in the NFL?  Or Cass in the NBA?  Or Cass playing major league baseball?  Soccer?  Lacrosse?

This isn't what I planned on writing about this morning.  The other day I found something on Good Reads where a fan asked Gail Simone-- it's on Simone's Tumblr as well-- who she'd rather have back in the DC universe, Cass or Stephanie Brown.  Simone wants both, but Cass edges Steph out in the either-or choice.  We'll discuss this at a later time.  While looking for it again this morning I found a Comic Book Resources discussion from way back in 2008 where a football fan asks how Cass would fare with the Cleveland Browns.  Or the Detroit Lions.

I can never resist these Bill Swerski's Superfans-type discussions or any other kind of Cass-related nonsense challenge.  After all, I've already pit Cass against M*A*S*H 4077 and Delta House.  Even though it's currently baseball season, let's keep to the NFL theme and explore the possibilities for a moment.

The first person to replies nails it.  With her move-predictive ability, speed and agility, Cass would score a touchdown every single time she touched the ball.  You'd definitely want her running back kicks; that's a guaranteed six every touch.  As far as other positions go, we have to think a little.  She'd make an unstoppable running back and a flawless receiver whether she's zipping down the sideline or going over the middle.  But putting her at either position would needlessly complicate your offensive scheme.

The obvious choice would be to insert Cass at quarterback so she can take snaps directly and run the ball with a minimum of baroque flourishes.  Good ol' fashioned smashmouth football.  Cass-mouth football.  The team would need but a single play, Cass-Up-the-Middle.  The offensive line wouldn't even have to open any holes.  She'd just go over the top.  Audibles and snap counts aren't much of an obstacle, either.  Cass could learn to audible even if there's never going to be a change of play.  All she has to do is practice a couple of numbers or colors to bark.  Even if all she can do is say "no" or "yes," the coaches could come up with a simple code.  Then the team would rely on a silent snap count.  I'd suggest just setting it to "snap on one."

The quality of the offensive squad around her would hardly matter.  She'd need a decent defense, but if she plays both ways she's going to be stuffing plays in the backfield all day long.  Cass would predict every play and adjust accordingly.  She definitely lacks the traditional middle linebacker physique, but she more than makes up for that with aggressiveness and speed.  Her technique would be perfection after just a little instruction.  Show her some tapes of some of the all-time greats.

Well, that's just Cass playing football at the NFL level.  No other sport offers her much of a challenge, unless it's battling boredom with all the pitcher changes she'd cause in baseball.

Cass is gone but not (so) forgotten...

Corrina Lawson, senior editor of the GeekMom blog at Wired.com, recently write a tribute to Cass at CriminalElement.com.  It's a short and sweet overview of Cass's comic book career and hits all the high points-- first Batgirl to have her own series, her unlikely friendship with Stephanie Brown, the unfortunate heel turn, her stint as Black Bat and, of course, her disappearance from the DC universe narrative.  Lawson refers to Cass as the "forgotten Batgirl."  I mean, it's right there in the essay's title!

Yeah.  Preach on, Ms. Lawson!  We could make a case for Steph Brown also being a forgotten Batgirl.  Arguably, Steph received a rawer deal from DC.  As much as various writers twisted poor Cass all around at least she had a 73-issue run on her own title, plus various appearances in other books.  Even a co-starring role with Dark Horse's Ghost in a mini-series.  Steph's Batgirl book had barely gotten off the ground when DC destroyed... er... altered its continuity into what we call the "New 52," a continuity in which neither Steph nor Cass seem to exist.

Well, that still leaves Cass as a forgotten Batgirl.  There's not a DC character who remembers her.  Not even that one guy who was left at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths screaming from his padded cell about worlds dying!  Worlds living!

Or whatever it was he was on about.  You'd think in all the crises since then whoever that guy was-- Calendar Man?  Grant Morrison?-- would still remember the way things were.  And Cass.

To Ms. Lawson I say, "Thanks for writing about Cass!"  And, "Don't worry!  I won't forget her!"  After all, I have this blog devoted to keeping Cass alive.  And there are a few others, too.  We'll keep banging away on our keyboards until someone puts Cass in a story again.  And then we'll bang away about that, too.

Cass Cain's Early Years: Batgirl communicated pretty well with gestures

When we first met her, Cassandra Cain could not express herself through spoken language.  She had no vocabulary in the traditional sense of knowing words and their meanings.  She did have an extensive non-verbal vocabulary, however.  She could understand gestures and even developed a form of empathy because of her intense understanding of body language (her famous ability to "read" a person's intentions, making her almost invulnerable on defense in a fight) and facial expressions.  This proved the undoing of her father David Cain's plan to raise her as the ultimate assassin.

Far from being incommunicado, Cass could be extremely communicative.  One early example of Cass expressing a fairly complicated idea non-verbally is in Batgirl #1 (April 2000).  Using a single word ("Me.") and blowing a handful of dandelion fluff into the wind, Cass is able to tell Barbara Gordon how she "simply 'drifted'" before turning up in Gotham City.

Scott Peterson, Kelley Pucket, writers; Damion Scott, Robert Campanella, artists (Batgirl #1, April 2000)

This indicates understanding symbolic meaning at a very high degree.  She can associate the action of the plant seeds, relate this to her former situation, link the two with one of the few English words (we have no idea if she picked up any others from the languages she no doubt heard during her "drifting" years) she knows, and use this with a mind towards Barbara's understanding.

Cass, however, spent the better part of her young life virtually culture-free as she wandered the earth alone.  She existed within the margins of society, learning by observation but with the context language and language-based social interaction provide.  At some point, she must have made the connection between the noises coming from people's mouths and the understanding of those noises by the listeners.  She must have become aware of language.  She must also have become aware of various gestures as she travelled the world.

In Batgirl #2 (May 2000), Batgirl has a particularly good night as a crime-fighter, then uses a shrug to dodge Barbara's line of questioning about why she seems so chipper.

Scott Peterson, Kelley Pucket, writers; Damion Scott, Robert Campanella, artists (Batgirl #2, May 2000)

Barbara has no trouble understanding Cass's meaning.  She's not "talking" about why she feels so cheerful.  A page later, Cass uses a flapping hand to indicate her belief that talking isn't all that important and that some people do it way too much.

Ibid.

Cass knows the concept of "blah blah blah," without knowing the verbal expression for it.  Where did she learn this gesture?  At this point in the story, Cass has spent the better part of her young life living virtually culture-free on the margins of society, and not exclusively in Western nations where there's more of an overlap of media.  This may be something she's developed on her own, much like the demonstration with the dandelion.  To those of us who are verbal and well-versed in pop culture-- a la puppets and Muppets-- such a gesture comes quite naturally.  The flapping hand is a rough visual approximation of flapping lips, and the single hand nature of this gesture renders it even more dismissive.  Cass might have also made the visual connection, especially given her native intellience level which appears to be pretty high.

She may also have seen someone use it in her travels, or on television following her settling in with Barbara Gordon.  At any rate, I can't vouch for this gesture's universality.  I was raised in the United States where most people understand it, but I live now in Japan and haven't really encountered anyone flapping their hand like this.  Or, if I have, I've forgotten about it because it wasn't particularly memorable.  You know, I should probably do a survey at some point to see if this gesture has the same meaning here in Japan.

In the US, for example, if I want you to come, I draw you closer by curling my hand back toward myself over the top of my elbow.  In Japan, I'd simply hold my hand out front, palm-down, and kind of wave it.  If I want to pass between someone, I make a hand-chopping motion and kind of lower my head a little.  If I say something that's incorrect, I wave it away with a hand in front of my face.  In the US, if I refer to myself, I gesture towards my chest.  Here in Japan, I do the same thing by pointing to my nose.

For Cass to be multi-lingual in this way, without speaking, she'd have to master the gestures of several different groups.  It would be possible under these circumstances for Cass and Barbara Gordon to have a gestural conversation in several different non-verbal languages.

On the other hand, ass-whuppin's are a universal language.  We all understand the meaning of the beat-down.  Cass has also been known to send a message by stopping a person's heart for a moment before restarting it.  Communication through combat.  Cass is one of the most fluent in this language found in comic books.  Unlike most of the others, however, this is her native language.  The others are all AWFL or AWSL learners.

Well, the last thing I want to do is make this blog a simple link aggregator

I really want to give you more content for your money here at Cass-O-Rama!, Japan's leading Cass Cain fan blog, but it's Monday and I'm at work and suffering from severe seasonal allergies.  But there are a few cool Cassandra Cain-related thing happening right now on different places around the web.  Too bad I can't say they're happening in comic books or at DC's official site.  So I'm going to link to them here and hope you go check them out.

Comic Vine has some terrific art on their "Awesome Art Picks" feature.  If you scroll down a ways, you'll find Dustin "Li'l Gotham" Nguyen's sweet drawing of Cass as Black Bat.  Nguyen attempted to slip Stephanie Brown and Cass into the Li'l Gotham comic itself, but we see how that worked out.  This drawing makes me long for Nguyen's art on a straight-up Cass/Steph book, whether it's in-continuity or out-of-continuity.  And not in the stubby-cute Li'l Gotham style.  This.  The man has chops.

Over at Scans Daily, "espanolbot" breaks out a Cass tribute with some artwork from the Batgirl series.  Yeah, it's not really the Joker, but it's still a col sequence of Cass at her ass-whuppin' best.  At some point we'll talk about this issue in depth here.

And finally, someone at the One Sixth Warrior forum for fans/collectors of 1/6th scale figures is asking for help in making a Cass Cain Black Bat figure.  Which is certainly a worthy project and one I've considered doing myself.  I love custom action figures and the 1/6th scale is my favorite because of the wicked detail you can put into the figure and its costume.

It's a rare day indeed when there's this much Cass-based chatter online.  It makes me feel like celebrating!