Cassandra Cain versus a marker drawing!

This is a marker sketch from my own little sketchbook. I did this many years ago, back when DC decided Cass was an evil Dragon Lady with an eye for Robin. To wash away the stink of that ill-chosen storyline, I designed my own Cass, one who wore a version of the original Barbara Gordon Batgirl costume with a short cape as merely an accent piece and no mask whatsoever because she just did not give a damn about hiding her face.  I can't remember the model I chose for this drawing.  The post just felt appropriate.

Cassandra Cain versus Iron Fist!

It's fun to pit characters from one company against characters from another.  After all, now that Cass doesn't exist, any fight between her and another character is strictly hypothetical, so why not be the hypo-ist of the thetical?  I seem to toss Cass up against heroes, though.  I enjoy that more than a hero-villain dust up and the results are easier to plan or predict.  A discussion I didn't bother to read on Comic Vine inspired this, the latest entry in my "Cassandra Cain versus" series.

What happens when martial artist Cass fights martial artist Iron Fist?

All things being equal, she absolutely would win with her move predictive ability and resulting defensive superiority, while matching Iron Fist's offensive skills.  Perhaps she's not as physically strong as he is, but she'd make up for that with speed and endurance.  She would also be learning his techniques as they fought, thus gaining all of his skills plus her own.

Unfortunately, all things aren't equal.  Danny "Iron Fist" Rand has a lot of supernatural/metaphysical martial arts powers that, frankly, put him out of Cass's class, so I seriously doubt she could defeat him.  Iron Fist could focus his chi and overmatch Cass in every category and she couldn't learn those things simply by observing and sparring anymore than she could learn Spider-Man's spider-sense or Mr. Fantastic's stretching ability.  Cass has a chance if she somehow provoked Iron Fist into using his "iron fist" ability, somehow dodged the strike, then counter-attacked while he was drained.

Failing that, her only course would be purely defensive-- staying out of Iron Fist's reach and then escaping.  Sorry, Cass.  If it's any consolation, I'm pretty sure you could beat Shang-Chi, master of Kung Fu, and he's no slouch himself.

And breathe out...

Well, I guess that's all for the James Gunn controversy. Gunn has issued an apology and it's up to the offended either to accept or reject it. I have been only a concerned bystander who happens to think his comments were stupid, so I can do neither of those things. I can only hope this dialogue-- one of many occurring each year, it seems-- will have a positive effect on fan discourse regarding female and LGBT comic book characters.  We'll have to come up with an amusing name for this mess when we wrap up all the year's comic book news, but for now it's time for Cass to slip back into her toxic, non-entity status where she'll only be discussed here on this lonely little blog or else occasionally mocked on The Outhouse.

More on James Gunn and a question about sex...

The James Gunn "sex with superheroes" list fall out continues with more interesting and thoughtful commentary from Alyssa Rosenberg at ThinkProgress.*  Yeah, I found this doing yet another melancholy Google search for some new Cassandra Cain news, read it and liked what she had to say, plus she also mentions Cass's entry, so I'm linking to it here.  I'm pretty sure ol' David Cain taught Cass to kill before she was eight years old, but that aside, I have a question. 

The three essays I've linked to here each talk about how it's not the list itself that's wrong, just the asinine commentary.  I think the same, but at the same time I can't say I've spent much time pondering which superheroes I'd sleep with.  They're not real people, are frequently poorly written and the drawings of them can be grotesque-- hence the term "Escher girl," which is gaining currency-- so I can't really parse the notion of wanting to have sex with a comic book character as anything more than a joke.

Yes, I appreciate good girl art or cheesecake drawings, especially when they're by someone like the late master Dave Stevens or Adam Hughes, and like cute, appealing stuff by Rumiko Takahashi and even Bryan Lee O'Malley, but none of that makes me want to sleep with the characters no matter how awesome or cool or kick-ass they might be in the stories.  Years ago, I worked with a guy who made a lot of noise about having a huge thing for Shampoo from Ranma 1/2, but I just shrugged.  Good luck with that, man.

The closest I probably came to having these fantasies about any comic book character would have to be when I was around 14 and obsessed with Dani Moonstar from New Mutants.  We were the same age, so it seemed a natural fit.  A lot of it was tangled up with wanting to be her, but pretty soon I realized that was only slightly less likely than meeting anyone like her in real life and I moved on to crushes on actual people.  And from there to real relationships.

I just prefer my fantasy characters hooking up with each other in the stories (if they must) and keeping my reality apart from that.  Gunn makes a snide comment on his list about a drawing of Starfire ruining real women for him, and even though I know that's just a joke and not true at all, I'd have to say I feel just the opposite.  Real women have ruined funny book characters for me, so I can't really feel sexual attraction to some two dimensional image with a one dimensional personality.  Even if the character is richly written and complex, I'm still kind of, "Well, I like reading about her, but she doesn't exist and there are so many fascinating people in the real world for me to meet, so why get hung up on some ink on paper?"

Actually, I don't even have to tell myself that.

For example, I'm a big Cass Cain fan ("Really?!" you say in astonishment), but I've never given even a moment's consideration to sleeping with her.  It's just never crossed my mind.  I think she's cool, yeah.  I've had a few idle wishes that I were here so I could have wild and crazy adventures, but that's it.  That she's one of the few female characters not particularly sexualized-- her few desultory experiments with being "sexy" according to the Barbara Gordon model didn't exactly work out for her-- is hardly the point for me.  I don't feel any physical attraction to the overtly sexy characters, either.  Starfire, She-Hulk, Power Girl, Dark Phoenix, evil Mary Marvel, evil Invisible Woman, Star Sapphire, the Gen13 girls.  Nothing.

Don't think I'm saying you can't fantasize about superhero sex while being in a relationship with a real person.  You absolutely can.  I feel certain doing so is part of a healthy sexual imagination, as opposed to exclusively fantasizing about comic book characters to the exclusion of all other relationships.  I don't do it, but lists like this make me curious, as does all the sexy fan fic out there.  How many people seriously give thought to what superheroes-- or any fictional characters, for that matter-- they want to have sex with?

I'm guessing I must be the odd person out here, especially within genre fandom, but I'd really like to know.

*It's even on Huffington Post now!

James Gunn splatters mud on Cass's cape as well!

You already know what this is about.  Some stupid poll about what superhero you want to have sex with, and film director James Gunn's notes about each entry.  It's over a year old, but journalist/essayist Susana Polo of the website The Mary Sue recently found it and tore it apart for the "slut-shaming, homophobic" junk it is.  And now it's a huge thing with a lot of people sharing their opinions.  That Gunn is the director for the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy film with none other than Joss Whedon's endorsement has certainly raised the stakes for comic book fans.  Whedon!

I'm pretty sure I read this very list a long time ago and thought it was a stupid attempt at rude dude humor, the kind of frat boyish junk that didn't amuse me even when I was young enough to be a frat boy, then flushed it down the memory-toilet to who knows where.  My subconscious or whatever.  Flash forward to this morning.  I fired up my work computer, did my usual quick Google search for anything new having to do with Cassandra Cain and waded into this huge stinking mess, a backed-up septic tank of a mess.  I knew I shouldn't have flushed it, but it was easier than dropping it in the garbage can and having the sanitation workers judge me.  Lesson learned.

Living 12 hours in the future here in Japan-- at least compared to my North American friends-- I'm hours late to this party.  Everyone has already said all that needed to be said.  But because I'm practically the only Cassandra Cain blogger left standing, and like Cass I never, ever quit, I'm going to weigh in just a little bit here.

Look, I love satire and absurdist humor.  I've already been in trouble with Stephanie Brown and Tim Drake fans due to my use of the latter.  Even if Gunn's intent was merely to spoof the stereotypical men's magazine take on superheroes, sexuality and gender, he's failed.  I agree with Rachel Edidin the root of his failure is his over-the-top voice is actually the in-the-middle voice of a lot of people involved in the comics industry, both professionally and as fans (as well as with her description of Gunn's commentary as "fucked up").  The kind of thing where people don't read it and think, "Gosh, I've been wrong-minded just like the guy Gunn's pretending to be and now I'm gonna change," but one where they shout, "FUCK YEAH!  PREACH ON, BROTHER GUNN!" while their next-door neighbors pound the wall they share and yell, "SHUT UP! WHAT ARE YOU SCREAMING AT?  WE KNOW YOU'RE IN YOUR APARTMENT ALONE, YOU NOISY ASS!"

And that's really sad.  Not my angry neighbors scenario, but the very real situation where what Gunn might think is out there is really quite in there.  It's really hard to top some of the crazy junk I read back in the day when I was a more active participant in the comic fan wars over misogyny and homophobia, the kind of stuff people still post on message boards all over, or the way actual comic books from certain top companies tend to deal with characters and even fans, which at times is shockingly suspect.

So while many people have already hammered Gunn and his attempt at humor or whatever it was with a lot of points I don't feel like repeating here despite agreeing with them, I also feel a strange little pleasure in having Cass talked about at all, even in a minor way.  There's rarely anything new about her online these days unless it's something stupid by me, and if Polo's tossing her name in there brings a few more people to the discussion and makes them seriously think over these issues, then as a character, she's accomplished something positive.

Also... I did not know Stephanie Brown gave birth and put her baby up for adoption.  Huh.  That's interesting.  I didn't know this because my only information about Ms. Brown comes from her appearances in Cass's old Batgirl book in which I don't believe they ever ever discussed the issue, at least not on panel.  I could be wrong.  There are a few issues towards the end of the run where I'm a little hazy on the details due to having read them only once or twice.  I tend to re-read the earlier, more kick-ass issues when Cass was on her game, and the ones drawn by Rick Leonardi because they're beautiful and I enjoy looking at beautiful comic book artwork.  So those I know more about.

Cassandra Cain versus the Incredible Hulk!

This one is easy to call.  Of course Batgirl Cass loses to the Hulk, but after a year or two of experience and further training, Black Bat Cass easily takes down the Jade Giant.  It happens like this...

Okay, okay.  That was silly.  Almost as silly as imagining a fight between Cassandra Cain and the Incredible Hulk in the first place.  It wouldn't really matter which version of Cass fight the Hulk, the Hulk would win.  The Hulk defeats most heroes and villains because he's fast, gets stronger the angrier you make him (you know, by doing things like... oh... fighting him), he's indefatigable and close to invulnerable.  The Hulk is a Superman-level opponent.  He's thumped the Thing on several occasions, after all.  Cass has no business fighting the Hulk.

I do remember a comic where Batman tangled with the Hulk and slapped his ears, causing the Hulk to release him from a crushing bear hug.  A writer taking liberties.  First of all, the Hulk could literally squish Batman between his hands and second of all, I seriously doubt Batman has the physical strength to pop the Hulk's ears.  So I don't see Cass faring any better if the Hulk should somehow turn up in Gotham City.  What she would do is try to distract him and delay him long enough for the Justice League and the Avengers to come to the rescue.  The Hulk and the super-teams would destroy large portions of central Gotham in the ensuing battle, which Cass, Spoiler and the Robins would largely serve as observers of, while rescuing what citizens they could.

After the Hulk reverts back to Bruce Banner and S.H.I.E.L.D. takes him away (Project Cadmus wants him for DNA testing, but Banner falls under the Marvel jurisdiction), Batman grudgingly tells Cass she did a good job, but only after Barbara Gordon shames him into doing so.

A Cassandra Cain as Black Bat custom action figure...

Because Cassandra Cain has never really gotten the toy love she deserves-- most Batgirl figures have been of the Barbara Gordon variety, which makes sense because she's the character the rest of the world tends to associate with the identity-- she's been turned into some sweet customs here and there.  Here's a link to a very slick-looking Black Bat custom job.  The smirk is decidedly un-Cass-like, but the costume is perfect.  Actually, the Black Bat identity is more interesting to me as a custom possibility because of the exposed face and hair, the challenge of doing that pointy domino mask and the interesting texture and contrast of the forearm wraps.

I'm going to keep an eye out for more of these.

I love custom action figures.  When I was a kid, I was forever painting up different figures to supply cast members of whatever imaginative adventure I'd dreamed up.  Of course, mine were rinky-dink efforts compared to some of the skilled craftspeople you encounter online.  My idea of a sweet custom was taking a banged-up Kenner C3P0 and painting him blue to represent Han Solo's old droid buddy Blue Max (although he looked more like this custom) from the Brian Daley novels, or painting some greenish-gold Acroyear parts red to make the exiled king from the Marvel Micronauts comics.  A couple of years ago I accumulated the raw materials for a Battle Royale Chiaki Kuriyama 1/6th figure but realized I just didn't have the skills to finish the job (someone made a nice one from a Gogo Yubari figure, though).  These people today with their 3D printers and their Super Sculpey and whatnot occasionally produce amazing models that look better than a lot of the stuff you can buy from legitimate toy companies.