#batgirl

[violetsyrenart]

The gap.

[laotwormz]

her again

[vespertilionis]

Bruce: “Has anybody here had any contact with Jason in the last five months?”

Steph, who has been exchanging rants about their favorite shows with him daily and is currenly typing a new one: “…No.”

[casscainmainly]

Though there are valid reasons to want characters to have their own identities, I think some people insist too much on the Batfamily having all individual, unique names. This is why the Orphan name persists so much in fandom, or even Wayne Family Adventures - it's a byproduct of seeing 'Batgirl' as transitory and lesser than. This is not only a misunderstanding of Batgirl, but a misunderstanding of legacy mantles. Legacy mantles aren't stepping stones towards individuality, but identities with symbolic and storied histories. Characters can, and sometimes should, end in a legacy role.

It's also interesting that this anti-legacy philosophy is exactly what DC adopted during the New 52. They destroyed virtually every legacy they could, including wiping Tim's Robin history, erasing the JSA, and deleting Cass and Steph's histories. We all agree New 52 was bad, but most people focus on the content/ramifications on a specific character, when it's the philosophy that was wrong. New 52 was an effort to diminish the power of legacy titles, and to dismiss many characters that fall under the legacy umbrella.

Some characters should grow out of their mantles, of course. But that doesn't make the mantle they grow out of less meaningful or important than the mantle they step into. If we want to leave the New 52 behind, we need to leave its anti-legacy philosophy behind, too.

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Yvonne Craig as Batgirl - Batman (1967)

[thatcutenerdygirl]

I half feel bad for Bruce. Like, look at the man's face.

[heylosers06]

Wing au!!!!

So Damian is a mix of both his heritages being a bat and a bird which causes trouble in his flying.

Jason would have had a powerful set of wings but unfortunately one was taken.

Dick has colorful wings a bit smaller but fast and agile, the colors help represent the flying Graysons.

Cass is as stated a Chinese paradise flycatcher a tiny but fast bird.

Duke is an angel kidding kidding but he has the biggest wings in the family, he has two big sets that glow because he’s a meta.

I’ll probably do more of the family in another post if this does well because drawing wings is a challenge for me 🥰

[batfamhastwitter]

Part 33! I, too, would riot if Gotham's dirtbags made me miss Jason's homemade food

Prev ~ Beginning ~ Next

[shyjusticewarrior]

[the-antiapocalyptic-man]

Ever her father's shadow

[arttuff]

my fav canon fact

[donnatroyyyy]

Cass, because being the only girl in an all boy family is hard: this is worse than the wolves

Her brothers, cuz wtf: the what now???

[221wizardry]

aah!

[laotwormz]

a full page!

[knollej]

Redraw of the art for the upcoming Batgirl series, because I am so excited for these comics to finally be here!

(Original drawing by David Talaski)

[avayarising]

Deaths of Cassandra Cain

Part of the Batfam Death Project.

Cass has two very definite deaths and one implied death. She also spent several days in the Spirit World. Total time dead: up to a couple of days, plus Spirit World time.

Verifiable deaths

1. Beaten in the chest by Lady Shiva (Batgirl 1:25, 2002)

Cass asked Lady Shiva (her mother, though at this point she didn’t know that) to train her because she was losing her ability to read body language. Shiva agreed, but in return asked for Cass to come back in a year and duel her to the death. Cass agreed to this. When the time came, they fought on a rooftop, and Shiva quickly killed Cass with what looks like a pre-cordial thump.

Cass was raised to life again by Lady Shiva some unspecified time later through some unspecified technique (though she did say she had prepared for years to be able to do it) involving punching her in the chest again.

Time dead: Unclear, but probably of the order of hours. Since the location where Cass was resurrected was not where she died, Shiva must have had to move her corpse, so probably at least a few hours, plus however long it took for Shiva to do whatever she did to resurrect Cass.

2. Took a sword for someone else (Batgirl 1:72–73, April 2006)

So before Cass was born. David Cain made other attempts at creating the Perfect Warrior, and he started out by taking existing children (from Ra’s Al Ghul) to train, rather than attempting to breed one. One of these became known as Mad Dog: very skilled but almost mindless and uncontrolled. In a forest in the middle of nowhere, he attempted to stab someone, Cass leapt in front, and:

Even though it looks from this picture like that big fat knife goes right through her ribcage, heart, and spine, she still managed to kick Mad Dog in the face before collapsing and dying.

After Cass died, she awoke being carried by Steph.

Steph told Cass something she couldn’t have known (that Blüdhaven had just been destroyed), indicating she was really present and not just a near-death hallucination.

Of course, it later turns out that Steph was never actually dead at all, but at this point in time she is dead, and her presence is meant to be an indicator that Cass is truly dead.

Lady Shiva raised her (again), this time via a Lazarus Pit. (At this point, Cass has only very recently found out that Shiva is her mother.)

Cass came out angry with Pit Madness, but Shiva trapped her in a net and coached her through it. Cass calmed down in a matter of minutes.

Time dead: between several hours and a couple of days (Shiva had to carry her out of a forest on foot and get to the Lazarus Pit before she could resurrect her).

Bonus extra deaths

(Implied, inferrable, ambiguous and arguable deaths)

1. Probably died in Death Metal along with everyone else (Death Metal 7, 2021)

Cass probably died in battle when the Dark Multiverse invaded and destroyed all the worlds of the multiverse. All the remaining heroes came together in a hopeless fight against an army of their worst nightmares, including an apparently never-ending swarm of groblins (mindless evil Jokerised Robins led by the Robin King, an evil child Bruce Robin).

Cass’s death isn’t shown on panel and neither is her dead body, but she is definitely in the group of Bats standing ready to fight (far right, in an oddly ill-fitting Orphan outfit):

And later Evil Child Bruce Robin tells Batman that everyone else is dead, so that seems like Cass is dead too.

On the other hand, Evil Child Bruce Robin probably doesn’t know what’s going on away from his immediate vicinity, so it’s possible that Cass was drawn away during the battle earlier on and is still out there fighting in a different part of the field.

After this, Wonder Woman persuades the Creators to remake the world and everyone is fine again.

Time dead: unclear; might be up to an hour, or longer if it takes longer to remake the world.

2. Perhaps was shot by Lady Shiva at some point (Spirit World 3, 2023)

Thank you to @fantastic-nonsense for pointing this one out! During Cass’s trip to the Spirit World (see below) she was bitten by a kitsune spirit and regained the memory of a previous encounter in the Spirit World when she was dead. The flashback montage panel shows Shiva shooting Cass in the chest, followed by Cass’s revival in the Lazarus Pit in Batgirl 1:73 with its very distinctive hook and chain.

Although it’s most likely that this is just a conflation and reinterpretation of Cass’s previous two deaths and resurrections, the new method of death suggests that this could be an additional, off-panel, death and resurrection.

More details in @fantastic-nonsense’s original commentary here.

Afterlife visits

1. Pulled into the Spirit World (Lazarus Planet: Dark Fate, 2023; Spirit World, 2023)

When the Lazarus Volcano erupts and rains down Lazarus Water on the whole earth, it stirs up a lot of undead. In a graveyard in Gotham, Cass joins John Constantine and Xanthe Zhou (a ’spirit envoy’ who died as a child and was partially resurrected and is now both living and dead) in a fight against hopping vampires (jiang-shi) and a ‘ghost collective’ (a big ball of angry ghosts).

With Constantine’s and Cass’s help, Xanthe exorcises the collective, but on its way out the collective grabs Cass’s ankle and pulls her into the Spirit World with it.

In the Spirit World, she more or less gets adopted by Xanthe’s granny, who has also adopted another ghost, Bowen. (It’s not clear in this panel, but Po Po is tiny and only comes up to Cass’s waist.)

A kitsune spirit she meets there tells her they have met before, when she was dead, though she clearly doesn’t remember her time dead. (The spirit doesn’t clarify which of Cass’s deaths it is referring to, but since she was with Steph all through her second death, it is likely to be her first – but it might be a completely different one; see above.)

Of course, John and Xanthe go in after her and they eventually reunite. After a great quest, the freeing of the ghosts from their collective, and major reorganisation of the politics of the Spirit World, they all leave together through a portal.

Time in afterlife: several days.

Batfam Death Project Masterpost