This week I want to talk about the adoptive daughter of wealthy magnate Bruce Wayne, Cassandra Cain. She is a martial arts master, a sexy ninja from the League of Assassins, and she is Batgirl/Black Bat. What? There was more than one Batgirl you ask? Shoot yourself in the foot. Right now. I won’t dignify your stupidity with an aswer to that question. Oh, you laughing over there! You knew there was more than one? Well whoop-dee-doo. On with Cassandra Cain!
Cassandra Cain is the daughter of David Cain, League of Assassins member, and Sandra Wu-San, a master martial artist. Tho, you may know Sandra as Lady Shiva, the most deadliest assassin in ALL the DC Universe. Shiva even trained Cassandra and Tim Drake. Anywho, Cassandra was brought up by her father and by her father alone to become the ultimate martial artist and assassin. Her father was so hardcore about it that he didn’t allow Cassandra to learn how to speak. Her childhood was martial arts, martial arts, martial arts. Until, at age 7, Cassandra‘s father decided she was ready for her first kill. Now, since the part of her brain that’s used for speech didn’t learn speech, it learned to read peoples movements instead. In fact, she can read people so accurately that she can predict their next move. With that in mind, when she killed her first target, well read this:
“After striking a deathblow, she “read” the target as he died, and saw death as he saw it. “Terror and then… nothing”.” – batman wikia.
So… yeah… That’s pretty damn traumatizing if you ask me. Which you didn’t, but I’m saying it anyway. So after that little gem of an experience, Cassandra runs away. She spends the next ten years being homeless and emo until one day Oracle picks her up and makes her Batgirl. I swear it’s only because she saved Oracle’s dad’s life (if you didn’t know because you don’t read comic books or have never seen any of the new Batman movies because that rock you live under is too heavy for you to lift, Oracle‘s father is Commissioner James Gordon.) Oracle has a little bit of bias in her. In fact, I think everyone does when it comes to Cassandra because even Batman welcomed her with open arms even after he found out about who her father was. Everyone was cool with her except Nightwing. Dick Gracin apparently doesn’t like sexy ninjas.
Being part of the Bat-Clan was pretty beneficial because she eventually lost her ability to predict her opponent’s next move due to her brain being “rewired” by a telepath, so she was able to have first hand training with Batman. She was even trained by Lady Shiva in exchange for a battle to the death. Shiva won but only because Cassandra wanted to die… oh and because Shiva is the deadliest woman alive. Later on, they have another battle to the death except Shiva ends up getting paralyzed and then hung on a hook over the Lazarus Pit to eventually die by Cassandra. Also, Cassandra shoots her father in the face after Tim Drake refuses to kill him. What a loving family.
Too much has happened to Cassandra since her first appearance in Batman #567 in July 1999. So much that I can’t go over it all because this opinion piece isn’t suppose to be that friggin’ long. Here’s a few tidbits I did enjoy tho.
- She eventually joins the League of Assassins and plays the villain, choosing Tim Drake as her better half (rival) at times.
- She goes on a father finding mission with Ravager, daughter of Deathstroke, and her half-sister, also David Cain’s daughter.
- At one point she finds a lover named Zero, who eventually dies due to the Blüdhaven incident.
- After being adopted by Bruce Wayne, she is yet again orphaned when Batman “dies” during Batman R.I.P. leading her to venture off into Hong Kong, China.
- During her stint in China she takes up the alias Black Bat using her old Batgirl costume as a base for her new one and fights against China‘s organized crime.
Those are just a few things I found interesting. I’m still reading all the Batgirl comics so I most definitely don’t know everything just yet but I look forward to reading and discovering new awesome details about Cassandra Cain.
Here are this week’s links:
An interesting fan film – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeE0ARSSclI
Cassandra Cain’s Wikia page -http://batman.wikia.com/wiki/Cassandra_Cain
14 funny Batman gifs – http://www.smosh.com/PC/smosh-pit/photos/14-hilarious-batman-gifs
A look at Gotham City’s mental state – http://www.cracked.com/funny-4419-batman-characters/
I;m always skeptical of new bat-fam members. For a loner bruce have come a long way from broading in the dark of the bat cave. Cassandra Cain is basically overpowered from what I understanding. She isn’t just the best batgirl ever, she is basically superhuman to blatant porportions, but hey girl power ~~~~ What do you think of Damion Wayne?
Honestly, it’s far too early to have a solid opinion on Damian, tho he can’t technically be new to the Bat-Clan as he is the only one actually related to its patriarch. Being that he is a test tube baby made “genetically perfect” with DNA from both Wayne and Al-Ghul, I would automatically assume he is broken. So far tho, he seems like a brat who needs to be taught a lesson. Dick teaches him quite a bit but he doesn’t seem to learn. Even tho he is pretty much a master martial artist due to his training with the League, he still seems to be in the way most of the time. Tho I do like the fact that because of his training he isn’t afraid to take a life. For example, he decapitated Spook. Useless villain but still. He’s still pretty careless. There was a comic where he becomes the Batman but he has a lot of training to undergo before he can be an invaluable member of the Bat-Clan and don the cowl. He has a really dark personality, sort of like Bruce but instead of brooding all the time, he kills people. Usually, in a really violent way. He has a lot of potential but the way Grant Morrison set him up and the way they keep writing him, I see Damian becoming a more prominent Villain. Especially if he inherited his relatives’ crazy.
(Sorry this was such a long response.)