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redantsunderneath · 4 years ago

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DC COMICS: Incoherence as Not-a-Bug-but-a-Feature (Spoilers for Batman 89-100)

Due to the emergence of the new Batman villain character Punchline, I wound up buying the last 12 issues of Batman and reading them in a single sitting. I’ve had trouble following DC comics for a while, constantly feeling that they were in trouble since back in the mid 2000s (with a glimmer of hope here and there). The act of reading DC comics has been a frustrating experience, where individual good stories and runs were laying around in the context of a lot of things that didn’t make sense while the company’s thrust felt chaotic and ideas not well blended. Every status quo change seemed hard to figure out the rules of enough to parse the context. We’ll get into the background of this, but my reading today of this extended stretch of comics that keeps losing the plot in favor of a fever dream of what’s happening at the moment with specific characters that refuse to cohere, it became obvious that what I had been looking at as subtext or critique was actually the text. I could see the messed up trees but was missing the the forest the universe was trying to describe.

What happens in these issues (Batman current series 89-100, I missed the beginning of the first of 2 arcs) is rolling war between the major Batman villains and the heroes (plus Harley Quinn and Catwoman), which shifts into a Joker and Joker adjacent vs. all as the Joker double crosses everyone then manages to steal Bruce Wayne’s fortune. We meet 3 new baddies – Underbroker, whose schtick is putting ill-gotten gains beyond the reach of the legal system (with an explicit line to rich globalists drawn), the Designer, who back in the day offered the four A list Batman villains plans to achieve what they most wanted, and Punchline, who is your toxic ex’s new millennial GF who really has it in for you (there is also a new good guy Clownhunter, which is a whole different thing, and a new costumed detective that predates Batman). This doesn’t convey the chaotic nature of what is happening issue to issue, but there’s more than one Batman hallucinogenic spirit quest, dead characters ostensibly walking around, a plan revolving around the Bat’s origin story that tells some version of it several times, and a no-nonsense declaration that the Joker, as the Devil of the Batman spiritual system, cannot die. The whole thing has the effect of convincing you there is no definitive sequence of events, only versions.

Alan Moore’s Killing Joke is not a favorite of mine, for a number of reasons. But the ending holds up. The Joker has done terrible things there is no antecedent for, and Batman wonders aloud if this never-ending dance they do ends in anything but both of their deaths; can they uncouple from the unhealthy duality the cycle of which simply repeats. The Joker responds, well, with a joke about two lunatics trying to escape an asylum. One jumps the roof to the next building, while the other is too scared to try. The escapee offers to hold a light while the other crosses on a beam but he says no, no you’ll just cut the light while I’m half way across. This not very funny joke nonetheless has a bunch of resonances – BM and Joker as conspiring co inmates, BM wanting to break out, a commentary about their natures (almost a reversal of the frog and scorpion story where the scorpion won’t go because he knows how this ends), but mostly it implicates BM as the one who is enabling the cycle, the reason why it won’t end. They both laugh uproariously, and the ambiguous final panels can be read as the fundamental realization of his complicity causing BM to kill J. A lethal joke indeed… except, next month, we see the both of them again. In broader context, the ceaseless cycle of the diad is reaffirmed. This has been hellaciously sticky as an idea in the Batmen universe.

My realization of what DC has been doing is pretty banal in its pieces. Marvel has “ground level” heroes while DC has a mythos, a pantheon. Their archetypal makeup is strong, the seven JLA members lining up with the pantheon of Greek gods and the Chakras weirdly closely. DC has big characters that are somewhat flat which they can use tell big bold individual stories that are cool the way legends and fables are cool. But these stories require bold strokes that a bit incompatible with each other. People get attached to these iterations. Meanwhile, Marvel trucks in soap operas where the characters give you an empathetic stand in and are narratively flexible. Marvel events are usually about the writer vs. the company, asking you to sympathize or deconstruct the creative impulse amid efforts to impose control or order. DC’s events are about editorial vs. the audience, the shapers vs. the forces of the world. It may seem obvious, given this description, that DC’s focus is on an archetypal tableau though it may be less obvious that this tableau is under extreme pressure from expectations when trying to tell ongoing tales month in, month out (or semi-monthly in some cases). The stories are constantly compared against the big stories that have gone before, and the audience’s ideas of the characters exert pressure to push them in directions that capture “the” version they believe in. This circle is not possible to square.

DC and Marvel both have a multiverse of sorts. DC used to tell “Elseworlds” stories which were later tucked into pocket universes. DC invented crossing over between “realities.” DC’s continuity is heavy baggage and they began to have “Crises” to resolve the narrative incompatibilities. These only made things worse as you can’t get rid of the past people have a relationship with – it will come back. Now you have to explain that away too. Marvel just lets it lay – forget about the iffy stories, they count, sure, just no one is ever going to talk about them unless they have an angle. Marvel continuity is all angles and amnesia. This is just easier to do with dating and rent and your ancient aunt’s medical bills than with Gods. Marvel’s multiverse is about sandboxes that you can always dump into the mainframe if they work (and never really mention the sandbox again).

There is a shift that occurred in the industry in the 2004 to 2005 era that is less remarked upon than many upheavals in comic’s history. Marvel had gone through a period of incredible new idea generation in the early 2000s after a late 90s creative cratering but had just fired the pro wrestling inflected soul of that moment (Bill Jemas). DC was coming off of a period of trying to do moderately updated versions of what they basically been doing all along. The attitude was “yeah we’re under stress from the combined history of these characters, but we got to keep telling the stories.” Geoff Johns was one voice of DC over the 99-04 period that showed potential - he seemed to get how to find the core of characters and push them into a new in sync directions if they over the years have lost a clear identity. But mostly he had internalized a basic schism between something mean that the audience wanted, and something good and wholesome about the characters themselves, and figured out how to mess around with this in a equilibrating fashion.

Interestingly, the ignition point of the main forces that were going to blow DC over the next decade and a half was a comic that had virtually nothing to do with any of those main forces. Brad Meltzer, a novelist, was hired to do a comic called Infinity Crisis, which sold extremely well and was, justifiably or not, recognized as an event. At the same time, everyone also kind of hated it because the dark desires of some DC fans were pushed forward just a bit too much for comfort and for a comic with Crisis in the name it didn’t do a whole lot other than “darken” things. Nonetheless, this lit an “event” fire at both companies. Marvel chose a shake up the status quo for a year, then do it again, pattern and was off to the races (I have written about this, and more, here) while continuing its Randian framing of beleaguered do-gooders opposed by rule making freedom haters.

As this was playing out, Dan Didio quietly took power in DC Editorial. His outlook was more Bloomian – he seemed to spark off of writers who exhibited anxiety of influence. He recognized Johns was the one person they had could be promoted into something of a universe architect, starting work on two key projects from which the rest would evolve. The first, was bringing back Hal Jordan as Green Lantern and diffracting the GL universe into its own symbolic system, with parts frisson-ing other parts, and almost a Magic the Gathering color scheme of ideas. The other was to build up to Infinite Crisis, which would become the model for most of their universe changing events until the present day.

The basic frame is this: DC heroes want to be good (in a sense of their inherent nature) but forces outside form a context that makes them fall. It’s a very gnostic universe, DC. They examine reflections of the concepts, invent scapegoats for certain tendencies (see Superboy Prime as entitled fanboy, Dr. Manhattan as editors that try and fail to mend things, etc), make characters violate principles, rehabilitate them, then show that the world if anything is more broken than before. This is kind of Johns’ thing and it fits Didio’s narrative as historicval tension fetish. But then came Scott Snyder (not to be confused with Zack) who began to work on Batman in 2011. Since then, as much as Justice League is pushed as the central title and Lex Luthor has been pimped, Batman has been the core of the universe and the Joker the core villain.

Snyder had the same continuity conflict wavelength but was significantly more meta and able to contain multitudes than Johns. He was the first to make an explicit mystery of how there could be several Jokers around at one time (who are the same but not, he posited 3 – man, Christians!) that seems prescient given the near future coexistence of filmic Jokers that are not able to be resolved. I believe he was the first to begin to tease out an idea – that different versions of things in comics are not a diffraction or filter effect, a using the set of things that work best for that story and leaving the rest, but are a matter of the archetypal system of the audience coming apart. From an in story perspective what appears to happen is that multiple versions of incompatible things exist in the collective unconscious of the continuing narrative, and this is something that the characters may become conscious of.

The run I just read is written by James Tynion IV building on the above trends. The trick seems to be going all in on the Jungian aspect (at Jung’s most religiously epiphanic). The Designer was a progenitor and adversary to Batman’s predecessor and his intellectual approach eventually defeated the detective… broke him. At some point in early Batman history, the Designer brought the top four Bat-baddies together and offered each, in turn, a plan to achieve what they most desired: the Riddler, a way to achieve an empire of the mind; the Penguin, power; and Catwoman, money. They are all elated as they await the Joker to come out. The Joker emerges with a furious Designer on his heals and promptly shoots him dead. He explains that he didn’t like his joke in the form of a fable – the devil offered four people the path to their greatest desire: the three chose earthly things, but the Joker’s wish was to be him, to become the devil. The story proceeds to suggest that the Joker just exists, he is present as a necessary component in the system. You can kill him, yet he is alive.

DC has been using physics metaphors for the nature of their reality since Flash of Two Worlds in 1963. The multiverse as a continuity concept was their idea and the holographic universe of the hypertime was a thing. It seems like since Dan Didio took over, they’ve been heading towards a concept of broad superimposition, of measurement effect being weak, of the universe being like a quantum computer with all possibilities coexisting and the story instantiating not one reality but a path through all the possible ones. By making Batman trip balls through quite a few issues and relive his origin from different angles, the story is one of its own instability and the heroic task that confronts our hero is attempting to actualize the world. The Joker is the Devil in the sense of lack of fixed meaning, of relativistic chaos, of the world not making sense because it’s unmoored nature with ultimately no knowability. Batman, in this story, functions as a postmodern knight crusading against the impossibility of epistemological grounding.

There’s more going on, sure. One plot is, literally, defund Batman. There is rioting, people brainwashed by being exposed to toxic ether, people paid to go to theaters even though they will die as a result, and questions about neoliberalism similar to that one Joker movie. Punchline has no personality yet (Tynion’s not the best at that) but she serves well as a generational foil for Harley – a rudderless ideological vacuum susceptible to Joker-as-idea-virus rather than an unfulfilled MD who felt alienated due to the structures of her life and was seeking escape into structureless possibility. The Designer stuff is both continuity play (See why they changed from goofy villains to more “realistic” ones! Look how pulp heroes informed superheroes!), a comment on the nature of a longstanding narrative (strong intentions die out as Brownian motion overwhelms momentum), and a lawful evil/chaotic evil setup of the dualism of apocalypses (overdetermined authoritarian vs. center does not hold barbarism). But the thing that ties this to the past decade and a half of DC is the sense that the reality is fluid and susceptible to change or outright s’cool incompatibility.

This is different than other flavors of meta in superhero comics. Grant Morrison believes the archetypes are stronger than the forces that seek to bend them. Alan Moore wants you to deconstruct your sacred cows and probably hates you personally. Marvel might play with self-awareness, but effortlessly resolves inconsistencies after it’s finished playing. DC, at this point, allows you to watch the waves solidfy into symbols and dissolve, and the constant confusion and lack of grounding is more of a choice then I thought this time yesterday. The conflict theory of DC reality has been in full swing but this looks to be turning towards a kind of Zen historicism, holding contradictory things in your mind at once. Warren Ellis’ JLA/Authority book is the nearest comparable text I can think of. I need to call this, but I didn’t even talk about Death Metal, DC character multiplicity as meta-psychosis event extraordinaire. Comics just keep getting weirder.

#DC comics #batman #joker #punchline

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renaroo · 5 years ago

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A Cass with Many Faces

About a month ago, specifically on Cassandra Cain’s fictional birthday, I made a few posts dedicated to one of the fictional characters that have had a visible, measurable impact on my life, and has continued to do so since I first picked up an issue featuring her in 2004. I was twelve years old at the time and the issue in question was the fifth of a six-issue arc starting off Superman/Batman. I picked up the issue because Superboy -- my then-favorite comic book character -- was on the cover including some other characters I was mildly familiar with. And the character that I came away with the most intrigue in was, of course, Cassandra Cain.

Next time I was at my LCS, I picked up an issue of her solo series that was still ongoing at the time [Batgirl (2000-2006) #47] and instantly fell in love.

I’ve made posts before about how a scattershot strategy can be a good thing when talking about characters in multimedia franchises. Characters are more likely to endure in these environments if they are given more presence, and more significance, when more voices are advocating for them.

In the past, I was speaking about my experience in seeing the opposite happen with Cassandra.

I can honestly say I would have never checked out Cassandra Cain had it not been for her minor appearance in a silly comic four years after her debut. I was twelve, and still fairly new to DC Comics having grown up with a Marvel loving family, and as the years went on and Cass was diminished by poor corporate decisions, I learned a lesson about strategy with characters in these franchises. If they are not seen outside of their lane, if people aren’t exposed to them outside of their one series no matter how fantastic and great it is, when that series is canceled and they are mishandled, there is not going to be any protection for them.

Bad comics happen all the time, bad adaptations happen all of the time, it’s the nature of the business. But for the thousands of terrible Batman stories that have been published and the hundreds of head-scratching Ninja Turtles adaptations, there have been, they continue to prevail and good things happen to those characters’ IP because there is enough material out there to keep people coming back.

[Superman/Batman (2003-2011) #5]

This is all a long introduction to get into saying that we are starting 2020 in one of the most unique and unprecedented ways we could start it as Cassandra Cain fans. There is, I’m pretty sure for the first time in the two decades of this character’s existence, an almost scattershot approach to getting as much Cass content out in a blitz as possible while aligning with the first time she has appeared in multimedia outside of video game DLC only a few hardcore fans will ever get a hold of.

But, as to be expected, not all interpretations of Cass are going to be the most helpful or similar to the character as we know her. And while I try to think strategically, it’s important to acknowledge these differences outright. Because if this is someone’s intro to her character, it can paint what they see and expect from her for the rest of their experience.

I can’t say how good or bad that’ll be, I am the fangirl who jumped on board when Jeff Loeb was writing and Ed McGuinness was drawing. My quality receptors will forever be in question to more purist fans! But I do want to start out by saying that most things are valid when it comes to starting out with a medium as ridiculous and unintelligible as comics, and we can destroy each other over the remaining 10% any day.

Let’s talk about some Casses.

Shadow of the Batgirl (2020)

If you or someone you know is at all interested in reading more Cassandra Cain and the 73 issues of her original series are intimidating, there is a simple solution that has been given to us by Sarah Kuhn and Nicole Goux, Shadow of the Batgirl.

In a very short first-reaction review I did the week this graphic novel came out, I mentioned that I was teary the entire time I read this graphic novel because it was just so darn impactful and endearing. And that continues to be the case.

This is a YA graphic novel aimed at introducing young new readers to Cassandra and a world that desperately needs her gifts to escape the shadows of her past and regrets in order to fully realize her potential for the future. And it is both heartwarming and gorgeous.

One of the things I have hit on for years when it comes to Cassandra Cain’s treatment in comics is that it has felt that for a good half of a decade if not more, what she lacked more than anything was a consistent advocate on the publishing side of things. Fans and decent sales -- which, to be clear, her meager appearances and even the majority of her solo did definitively have -- were never going to be powerful enough on their own to give her a publishing opportunity if there were not writers and artists there to provide good stories.

In 2020, more than any other year, I feel like we finally see the fruition of these things coming true. Sarah Kuhn’s blurbs and interviews have been filled with personal love and detail for the character and her importance, which only fueled how great it was when the Shadow of the Batgirl did come out and surpass almost all expectations.

This is a retelling and reinventing of Cassandra’s origin story told completely from her perspective from the beginning.

One of the lasting critiques of Cassandra’s beginnings in comics has always been her silence and lack of voice at the very start of her career. While sometimes these complaints grew to hyperbolism and would deny provably existent agency -- and to be clear, there’s still a lot of that to a concerning degree to this day -- there is truth to the criticism. Cassandra’s internal narration was not provided for almost a year after her first appearance which is an alienating tactic to use for a character meant to be latched onto by readership. Even when handled well, the thoughts behind this choice still deserve examination.

This was further complicated by later reveals that Cassandra’s difficulty with expression was in part due to her aneurotypical processing. These are not independently bad choices to make narratively, I have gone on for thousands of words before on how important I believe Cassandra’s dyslexia is, but the shakey start to giving the perspective of an aneurotypical character a definitive voice to tell her own story is right to be critiqued.

Shadow of the Batgirl completely circumvents this by giving Cass a clear voice from the start and focusing her central relationships on the power of expression and individuality while giving her plenty of characters of varying backgrounds and abilities to bounce her own understanding off of.

In some parts, this greatly enforced Kuhn’s take on making Cass’ story a teenage coming of age story that she has proven skillful at in YA novels. It also allowed her to directly correct many of the wrongs that have been long criticized about Cassandra’s original series, such as having Barbara Gordon (a physically disabled character who should and has shown more sensitivity and nuance outside of her terrible capital-M-Moment in Cass’ series) embrace and love Cassandra for her aneurotypical perspective.

[Batgirl (2000-2006) #54]

[Shadow of the Batgirl (2020)]

But, for those of us who adore and have attached to Cassandra for her disabilities and portrayals of mental illness in the past, there is also some nuance and representation that has been left on the cutting room floor for this new origin.

Namely, while Cassandra is shown to be perplexed by and struggling with books in the graphic novel, there is not the desperation and frustration that we actively see her undergoing throughout the original Batgirl (2000-2006) series. By issue #58 of a 73-issue comic book solo, Cassandra is actively struggling to read “It was,” and her insecurities toward it are used and manipulated by the villain by the end of the series.

However, Cassandra of the Shadow of the Batgirl shows some capacity to read from early on, and her struggles with reading are not the subject of conversation in the novel, so how much her limitations are a function of dyslexia and how much are a function of her childhood is left up to debate.

A debate with many questions that do require an answer since the form of her isolation and abuse by her far-less rounded character of a father in this graphic novel has been changed dramatically.

While I am giving these critiques and do think that we should be mindful and conscious of their removal for those fans who are seeking out those types of stories to read, I do not want to at all give the impression that this is a bad comic.

In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I would argue with just about anyone that this is the gold standard for Cassandra Cain stories printed in the last fifteen years, and for what I miss about the original iteration of Cass stories it can easily be exchanged for the new voice and new direction for her character this graphic novel provides for us.

Many of these critiques can be chalked up to the graphic novel being just that, a self-contained graphic novel and not a 73-issue monthly publication. And I believe its art and story are a great deal more consistent and appealing than many eras of the original series as a result.

I love its tributes, its characterizations, its purpose, and its focus above all else. There is also something just utterly charming about having Cassandra’s first well handled romance in comics come from a YA novelist who obviously understands the character and also understands what readers want in a non-toxic and adorable story.

I love the focus on Cassandra’s journey being on self-compassion, forgiveness, and the earnest belief that people can change. Including yourself, if you make the choice.

It is a good book, the best for Cassandra Cain in ages, and one I bought no less than three times already to show my support. And in just one week on my classroom bookshelf, I’ve already seen it be avidly read by five students. And those are just the ones I catch!

I would also be remiss not to mention that after complaining about this pet peeve of mine for years, that it’s happened. It took us twenty-one years but we finally did it, guys. We got a costume that Cassandra Cain got to make and design herself! And not only did she get one but she got two! An adorable (and hilarious) DIY Batgirl costume, and then ending on the high note of her official Batgirl costume to swing through the city in!

This book is precious and I hope it is the start of something new and exciting in the future. Even if that new and exciting is simply a sequel graphic novel, I will be HERE for it, and supporting it and Sarah Kuhn all the way.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)

Oh, boy. If there was one reason I was scared to make this post, it was because of this film.

Before I get too deep into this I want to first state my position on a few of the controversies that have cropped up online with concerns to this movie and its portrayal of Cassandra Cain.

First and foremost, I have no interest in telling people how they should or shouldn’t be offended on the grounds of representation and erasure. Not being able to or simply being unwilling to forego criticisms of tropes or insensitivities perpetrated by this or any other film are completely valid experiences. I have been that person in regards to other things, and I have also been someone whose first exposure to serious issues were the stances people took with regards to protesting certain media.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) has faults and plays into certain erasures (one of which I’ll discuss more below) that people may be unwilling to let go of. If that is the case for people you know or see online, you should accept and support them. Listen to them.

But I do think we should also support people who love this movie for good reason. I enjoy this movie, but it’s not life-changing for me. I support it in the hopes of seeing more and better.

There are students I have who now are wearing merch and drawing fanart of the Birds of Prey, picking up the comics for the first time, because of their exposure to the hype and “girl power” of this movie. Some adults needed this movie to be some hopeful change for them and I support them too.

We’re lucky to be alive at a time where a superhero movie is so completely told from a feminine perspective, with a huge diversity of filmmakers behind it providing female voices at every level from acting to casting to scripting to directing. We’re lucky that there’s such a diversity of the cast. I want this to continue.

I hope that it continues to do better in theaters, and I know there are some murmurs of poor box office returns for it. I hope that doesn’t affect future projects. We’ll see.

All of that out of the way, we need to talk about its use of Cassandra Cain.

The joke I’ve made with my friends is that the best thing to do with this movie is to start getting in the habit of calling the young girl at the heart of this plot “Kassandra Kane” instead because the connection between this character and that of Cassandra Cain is fairly negligible. They are both young women of East Asian descent who pop up in Gotham.

I happen to like both characters, but there’s an obvious difference between one focused on as a main character and hero of her own story and one focused on as a supporting character who has plots happen to her. Neither is a bad thing, but my preferences obviously rest with the former.

It’s the fact that they were supposed to be the same character that seems to baffle most people. Myself included.

This may have been a move more suited for a character with less history and expectation on her before her big debut, like Sin who is Dinah’s adopted daughter in the comics and already connected to the Birds of Prey, or the character who clearly inspired Kassandra Kane, Ditto from the Black Canary (2015-2016) series.

[Black Canary (2015-2016) #6]

I also think that adaptation that dramatically changes Cass wouldn’t necessarily be a terrible thing either. With some rewrites and some more agency, a younger and more hardened Cass from the streets could have also worked with the movie they were trying to make -- perhaps have David Cain be Black Mask’s main enforcer rather than Victor Zsasz. Give Cassandra’s connection to the plot more character-oriented and have her liberation work in tandem with the liberation of the adult women.

The options were there, and there are critiques to be made, but the movie also knew what it wanted to be and spent its script and filming time focused on maintaining the continuity and integrity of the adult female characters who it probably could justify putting in the rated-R situations their fights got them in more than they could young Kassie Kane.

One of the no doubt unintended consequences of this has been that online discourse revolving around Cass vs. Kass has been in justifying the decisions one team has over the other in claims of racism and ableism.

Now, to be clear, my ability to speak with authority on either of those points is minimal. I’m an ally but not a voice of those communities and I want that to be as upfront as possible. I can only speak from personal experience in the realms of being a woman and being someone who lives with and has survived mental illness. And I can speak as a critic of media at large.

There are racist and ableist connotations in many things, and I am not going to deny that those conversations are relevant and need to happen in regards to Cass’ original portrayals or in this film. They do. I know even in my first viewing I wondered how it was deemed so unimportant and so uncritical to give even a moment where Kass could display dyslexia or any other form of disability when we had entire sequences dedicated to backgrounds of characters who appeared for half a second of screentime.

But I’m seeing a lot of discourse that is especially leveling claims of racism toward Cass’ original portrayals and not always looking at the voices of fans of color who debate that argument. But I also see people outright denying any critique of Cass’ original portrayals having overtones to them that are unsavory. The answer is to maybe settle for something less radical than both positions.

Like there is no ethical consumption under capitalism and we should murder the patriarchy. Just like Birds of Prey taught me.

I enjoyed the movie a lot, Kassandra Kane was a lot of fun, but it’s a 1/5 for adaptation which is bizarre for a movie that was firing on all cylinders for almost literally every other character that came on screen.

Batman and the Outsiders (2019-) #10

When it comes to consistent monthly comic publishing, the pickings for Cassandra Cain have been incredibly thin for years, arguably since the end of her own solo in 2006. But since the DC initiative “Rebirth” in 2016, an era has been entered where, with a few months here or there as the exception, Cass has been appearing in some comic each month.

That seems like a small thing to celebrate, especially when the quality of monthly content can vary so much depending on the creative team, but it has been a hugely important development that Cass has been put on a team book for over a year now.

Bryan Hill is a comic veteran at this point, publishing comics independently and from both Marvel and DC, making him quite busy, but one thing I’ve really appreciated as a Cassandra Cain fan is that he has consistently shown love and appreciation for her character.

The Cassandra that features in Batman and the Outsiders is arguably the closest the character is to her original solo series on paper, and Hill has weaved her origin story and relationship with Lady Shiva into the overarching plot of the entire series.

For me, Batman and the Outsiders has been a little slow in its story structure, and I worry about how that will affect the future of the book and whether or not it will continue as an ongoing after Hill’s planned departure, but his character focus is also my style of comics to read. And make no mistake that there is a plethora of character development and examination in every issue.

Cassandra is sharing her page time with her Outsider teammates, but this can be a good thing. Development is easier for characters who have consistent character interactions, and I have always been a firm believer that the Outsiders as a team concept works the best for Cassandra’s specific needs. This plays out and the team consisting of Bruce Wayne, Jefferson Pierce, Tatsu Yamashiro, and Duke Thomas all compliment each other and compliment Cass very well.

I do want to mention that I love this book and think it’s great reading for Batman fans, too, even with Bruce’s reduced presence. And I think the snub the Duke and Cass are receiving in other Bat titles like Peter Tomasi’s Batman: Alfred Pennyworth R.I.P. just last week is cruelly shortsighted.

But, hey, Tomasi being dismissive and backhanded toward members of the Batfamily outside of his preferred five. Guess it’s just another Wednesday.

Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey (2020-) #1 (of 4)

After the complete circus that has been made of the Black Label Birds of Prey title meant to tie-in with the movie -- one DC thought to give to Brian Azzarello who vocally despises Harley Quinn and is divisive (to say the very least) in his treatment of high profile female characters that he does say he likes -- I wasn’t expecting DC to come through in aligning movie buzz with their comic publications. To be clear, DC has always sucked at doing this and I really didn’t think it was special to the BoP movie.

When Conner and Palmiotti got to announce their own tie-in for the movie that was supposed to be more fun and use more of the same characters, I was intrigued but also a little concerned about how this team would handle it. I can like or dislike their work depending on the project.

But my god, were they absolutely on when it came to this first issue of their four-issue miniseries.

I didn’t think I’d be recommending fans go pick up the first issue of the Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey miniseries, but I am absolutely doing that for any fans of the movie who, like me, enjoyed it but wished a better Cassandra Cain adaptation had been woven into the plot.

Amanda Conner’s history with the character of Cass and with the Birds of Prey, in general, is actually interesting. While she is regarded for her art and her storytelling now, when she first started at DC it was art only in the credits, but those credits included a BoP arc and several fun covers for the latter half of Cassandra’s Batgirl (2000-2006). When she later had the opportunity to write comics along with doing their art, she even had Cass (albeit very chattily) feature in a rare team-up with Power Girl and Wonder Woman in the Wonder Woman (2006-2011) #600 special.

And, of course, the husband and wife team have become industry heavy hitters thanks to their smash hits with multiple Harley Quinn solo series.

This is a fun and cartoonishly violent miniseries that plays to their styles properly, but the characterizations in the first issue struck me as very true and very calculated. Cassandra Cain does not speak in this entry, but that allows Conner to stretch her artistic muscles in making Cass’ actions and expressions give a lot of character to her role. Which already shows more restraint and understanding for the character than many others have with Cass -- including Conner’s freshman efforts at writing Cass herself.

Cass isn’t alone in the little joys of this comic. There are overt references to Conner and Palmiotti’s Harley Quinn miniseries and solos that place this non-mainstream comic in a more nebulous space than the Black Label imprint would initially make you think, and the strong characters feel as though they walked off of the pages of their current mainstream efforts. All of which I greatly appreciate.

Not to mention on the front of queer representation, while Harley is a mess, I’m glad that I can unabashedly relate to her as a gay mess without obfuscation this time.

If there’s any comic that new fans brought on by the Birds of Prey movie are likely to pick up themselves, it’ll probably be this one. Which is a great thing because it seems like an honest effort with strong roots in the original comic source material for everyone -- including Cass this time.

Shame I can’t recommend it to my middle school students who are loving the movie. Though, I suppose, if they are watching a rated-R movie they’re probably sneaking to Black Label comics too. Little scamps.

DCeased: Unkillables (2020) #1 (of 3)

I cannot believe the wholesome Batfamily content I’ve craved for a decade needs the zombie apocalypse to happen.

While I read DCeased last year and didn’t hate it in the vein that I thought I was going to due to it being a zombie apocalypse AU in a superhero universe that seemed to keenly pull from the surprising successes of Marvel’s efforts, I never imagined that it would join the ranks as continued Cassandra Cain content vehicles.

It must be the sign of a good decade, right? Bats are lucky, indeed.

While DCeased proper dealt with the aftermath of the Anti-Life Equation that was Totally Not a Zombie Virus as they kept telling us over and over again, it was pretty closely tied to the most main of main DC heroes and heroines and their families as they attempted to survive and escape the hordes. We didn’t see many other fan-favorite but not quite A-tier heroes’ efforts until the tie-in comics began coming out.

I, as a Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, and Mister Miracle/Big Barda fan adored A Good Day to Die, but I never saw DCeased: Unkillables coming. And even when it was announced I said to my dear friends “This will either be very good or very bad.”

I need to put more faith into Tom Taylor, he really hasn’t let me down just yet.

In Unkillables, we follow the days after the Anti-Life Equation is released on Earth now through the eyes of two teams -- one helmed by Deathstroke, whose unique physiology allows him to recover from infection and is now joining other supervillains in a doomsday cult led by Vandal Savage; one helmed by Jason Todd, whose unique position as the family rebel has apparently left him out of the loop enough to not die with Bruce, Dick, and Tim in the series proper, but not so out of the loop that he can’t access the cave and the heart monitors Bruce creepily keeps on track of all their other family and friends, letting him reunite with his estranged sister Cassandra and Jim Gordon. Who is just as confused as you are that Batman kept a heart monitor tracker on him without asking. Also, Ace the Bathound and I love it.

This is the first of three issues, but it fits a lot of character work and relationships into those pages, which if you’re paying attention, is the sort of writing that seems to be most helpful with Cassandra Cain's appearances.

I am hoping that everything continues to work well for this team, even knowing that we are going to have bloodshed and death along the way, but I think that the setting of making the last stand in an orphanage protecting children is the exact kind of thing these three characters would be united to do together in the zombie apocalypse.

This is a fun, albeit bloody and morbid, comic that is worth picking up for anyone who misses Cassandra being Batgirl as much as I do.

Also wow that family photo with Cass alongside her brothers and father. It took us this long to finally get one, huh.

Worth it. Suck it, Tomasi.

I have a lot of love for Cassandra, and a lot of opinions as well. Obviously! But what I love more than anything is to enjoy good stories with other people, and I’m hopeful and joyful that there seems to be more and more of those things intersecting on the horizon.

If you’ve enjoyed my take on any of this, I hope I can continue to point you toward content in the future. And even if not, if you want to share your takes with me, I hope I can provide some good conversation there, too!

Most of all I hope we all have something wonderful we can look forward to.

[Shadow of the Batgirl]

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