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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
3.5/5 - I love Cass, she’s such an interesting character! It makes it more interesting seeing how she doesn’t always win in the sense that she loses some of the people she tries hard to protect but keeps trying her best no matter the cost. Cass is wonderful <3
I love 90's art. Fuck you if you don't.
Kidding. I know most dislike 90's stuff in general in the comic world. Especially the art, which is just big muscled guys and ass shots on the women. Still, something about the more cartoony feel makes me just love it soooo much more.
So this volume is 300+ pages of Batgirl. Not Barb but Cassandra Cain. Right off the bat (no pun intended) I really dug this character. She barely speaks, she's a trained assassin, and fights like a motherfucking badass. Think Damien Wayne, but not as much back talk. Also her costume is on f'ing point, I love it so much.
So through the issues we see her begin her days as Batgirl. Batman follows her around, trying to harness her skills, and throughout you see the mentor situation which is always a highlight for me with Batman and his underlings.
Another great part about this volume is she doesn't always win the situations. She loses fights, she loses people, and it makes this character grow in unexpected ways througout the first volume. I was surprised how much I grew to really love her as Batgirl.
Should you check this out? Well it's 10 bucks for 300+ pages of awesome 90's funness. I'd say YES very much so. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Kidding. I know most dislike 90's stuff in general in the comic world. Especially the art, which is just big muscled guys and ass shots on the women. Still, something about the more cartoony feel makes me just love it soooo much more.
So this volume is 300+ pages of Batgirl. Not Barb but Cassandra Cain. Right off the bat (no pun intended) I really dug this character. She barely speaks, she's a trained assassin, and fights like a motherfucking badass. Think Damien Wayne, but not as much back talk. Also her costume is on f'ing point, I love it so much.
So through the issues we see her begin her days as Batgirl. Batman follows her around, trying to harness her skills, and throughout you see the mentor situation which is always a highlight for me with Batman and his underlings.
Another great part about this volume is she doesn't always win the situations. She loses fights, she loses people, and it makes this character grow in unexpected ways througout the first volume. I was surprised how much I grew to really love her as Batgirl.
Should you check this out? Well it's 10 bucks for 300+ pages of awesome 90's funness. I'd say YES very much so. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
This was interesting, and oddly addictive. I read it because I'd heard so many people mention how much they love Cassandra Cain and I wanted to see what it was all about. After reading this, I *kinda* get it, I think. There's an intriguing quality to observing a Bat-character who's extremely capable, youthful but still given a convincing reason for being so capable, but who's learning how to be human (as we all are).
At the same time, it gets me thinking about what makes an interesting Bat-character these days, if this is one.
• Put her in all black, with a subtle version of the necessary Bat-emblem and the yellow utility belt to break up what is otherwise just a bat silhouette (clever really), nearly featureless but able to be more expressive because of the lack of distinct facial features that must be drawn with realistic proportions.
• Make her (nearly) mute. That way the stories move along quickly and dynamically because it's not even possible to drag things down with the main character's detailed narration, and we just get used to going along for this streamlined ride with someone who sees the world in movement and flow and action. It's not as minimal as, say, some sections of the elegant Ellis run on Moon Knight, but it does keep this story more anchored in show-don't-tell mode than the average comic. It also forces Batman, when he shows up, to be a source of exposition rather than the silent one, so it makes him more interesting than he tends to be in recent decades.
There are downsides though. Forcing the burden of explanation and dialogue onto the other characters means talky and overly reactive versions of characters we're used to a quieter demeanor from. It still basically works though. Except, perhaps, in the sections Batgirl isn't present for, which can feel a little like rambly explosions of dialogue by writers who had been holding their breath to write a mostly mute character.
And, maybe more significantly, it creates the urge for the writers to undermine the limitations that make this fresh and clever, which might be what they're trying to do for some of this volume. I'll withhold judgment on whether they know what they're doing until after I've read the next one.
My biggest complaint is with the art, and maybe more so with the interaction between writer and artist. This isn't really a spoiler but I'm going to mark it as one just to keep my complaining out of the way for those who aren't interest:
So what, one art error, get over it. But such errors are telling: whenever I see a mistake like that, it puts me on alert for the other careless errors that I'm sure will come. When I saw a scene from behind a glass clock face, I automatically knew this art team would be likely to draw the face wrong, so now I'm distracted analyzing the background details... and I think I did find a panel where the face didn't make sense, and there's definitely a later external view where the position of the hands relative to each other doesn't make sense to someone who's used to reading analog time, which the artist apparently isn't. Point is, these little details may or may not matter to the story, but once we know the creative team as a whole is careless with details, it impacts the way we read the story, how we process what happens, and how much we accept that what occurs was considered and intentional. It changes our perception if they let us see behind the curtain and be disappointed by what we find there.
But more generally the art is fine. A few panels are really excellent, a few are rather bad, but most of it is serviceable, and the slightly cartoony proportions seem to work as a reminder of the youthful nature of our protagonist, and as a way of utilizing the cartoonish expressiveness made possible by the loosely defined quality of the costume.
One other complaint: The annual that ends this volume is very uh... what is it? Batman and Batgirl are in India because... we don't know, Batman refuses to tell the thugs he's interrogating what he's after, he just thinks they know what he wants to know. But that leads to an unrelated tangent to pursue, and we forget about why they're on the other side of the world in the first place. That leads, more or less coincidentally, to a separate storyline, which introduces a point of view that can tell us information that seems to be taking us somewhere important to the now-main story... but it turns out it is the story, the end goal here was the exposition we got along the way (the real treasure was the friends we made along the way™), and the point where we realize this reads a lot like those little PSA comics pages in the 90s where superheroes discuss real life issues, not quite addressing the audience but clearly delivering a morality play for their benefit. And the result is that... now I have a very vague basic awareness of an issue with the class system in Indian culture, but no idea at all how it came to be or how the broader culture sees it and why they maintain it. That accomplished, the story ends, having taken us nowhere that means anything to us, and we still don't even know why Bruce and Cassandra are chasing street thugs in India in the first place.
I kind of feel like deducting a star just for how much the final story in the annual felt like a frustrating waste of time, and a letdown after the enjoyable regular issues, but I'll choose to ignore it and give four stars to the rest of it for being an enjoyable read that pulled me along and kept me wanting to pick it up every day. I don't even know entirely why I enjoyed it as much as I did, but an above average job of maintaining my interest gets an above average rating, though certainly not a perfect one.
At the same time, it gets me thinking about what makes an interesting Bat-character these days, if this is one.
• Put her in all black, with a subtle version of the necessary Bat-emblem and the yellow utility belt to break up what is otherwise just a bat silhouette (clever really), nearly featureless but able to be more expressive because of the lack of distinct facial features that must be drawn with realistic proportions.
• Make her (nearly) mute. That way the stories move along quickly and dynamically because it's not even possible to drag things down with the main character's detailed narration, and we just get used to going along for this streamlined ride with someone who sees the world in movement and flow and action. It's not as minimal as, say, some sections of the elegant Ellis run on Moon Knight, but it does keep this story more anchored in show-don't-tell mode than the average comic. It also forces Batman, when he shows up, to be a source of exposition rather than the silent one, so it makes him more interesting than he tends to be in recent decades.
There are downsides though. Forcing the burden of explanation and dialogue onto the other characters means talky and overly reactive versions of characters we're used to a quieter demeanor from. It still basically works though. Except, perhaps, in the sections Batgirl isn't present for, which can feel a little like rambly explosions of dialogue by writers who had been holding their breath to write a mostly mute character.
And, maybe more significantly, it creates the urge for the writers to undermine the limitations that make this fresh and clever, which might be what they're trying to do for some of this volume. I'll withhold judgment on whether they know what they're doing until after I've read the next one.
My biggest complaint is with the art, and maybe more so with the interaction between writer and artist. This isn't really a spoiler but I'm going to mark it as one just to keep my complaining out of the way for those who aren't interest:
Spoiler
The main reason I didn't buy this for years is because I looked at the preview pages and it started right out with an absurd art error. Someone comments on the pro grade camera present for a combat test of young Cassandra, and the response implies that the best equipment (with "high speed film") is required to capture the speed of what's about to happen. The writing is fine, he videotapes the training, that's a plot point that returns later so it's good to establish it early. The problem is that the artist drew the camera as a large format view camera... the slowest and most labor intensive possible (reasonable) way to shoot a single still frame. It shows him operating it by getting right behind like he's looking through a viewfinder... with no shade over his head to view what should be an inverted and reversed image on a ground glass, or nothing at all if the film cartridge is in and it's actually ready to shoot. It's like saying they need the fastest plane available and then the artist draws a Model T, and nobody caught it and had it corrected. They didn't understand the assignment.So what, one art error, get over it. But such errors are telling: whenever I see a mistake like that, it puts me on alert for the other careless errors that I'm sure will come. When I saw a scene from behind a glass clock face, I automatically knew this art team would be likely to draw the face wrong, so now I'm distracted analyzing the background details... and I think I did find a panel where the face didn't make sense, and there's definitely a later external view where the position of the hands relative to each other doesn't make sense to someone who's used to reading analog time, which the artist apparently isn't. Point is, these little details may or may not matter to the story, but once we know the creative team as a whole is careless with details, it impacts the way we read the story, how we process what happens, and how much we accept that what occurs was considered and intentional. It changes our perception if they let us see behind the curtain and be disappointed by what we find there.
But more generally the art is fine. A few panels are really excellent, a few are rather bad, but most of it is serviceable, and the slightly cartoony proportions seem to work as a reminder of the youthful nature of our protagonist, and as a way of utilizing the cartoonish expressiveness made possible by the loosely defined quality of the costume.
One other complaint: The annual that ends this volume is very uh... what is it? Batman and Batgirl are in India because... we don't know, Batman refuses to tell the thugs he's interrogating what he's after, he just thinks they know what he wants to know. But that leads to an unrelated tangent to pursue, and we forget about why they're on the other side of the world in the first place. That leads, more or less coincidentally, to a separate storyline, which introduces a point of view that can tell us information that seems to be taking us somewhere important to the now-main story... but it turns out it is the story, the end goal here was the exposition we got along the way (the real treasure was the friends we made along the way™), and the point where we realize this reads a lot like those little PSA comics pages in the 90s where superheroes discuss real life issues, not quite addressing the audience but clearly delivering a morality play for their benefit. And the result is that... now I have a very vague basic awareness of an issue with the class system in Indian culture, but no idea at all how it came to be or how the broader culture sees it and why they maintain it. That accomplished, the story ends, having taken us nowhere that means anything to us, and we still don't even know why Bruce and Cassandra are chasing street thugs in India in the first place.
I kind of feel like deducting a star just for how much the final story in the annual felt like a frustrating waste of time, and a letdown after the enjoyable regular issues, but I'll choose to ignore it and give four stars to the rest of it for being an enjoyable read that pulled me along and kept me wanting to pick it up every day. I don't even know entirely why I enjoyed it as much as I did, but an above average job of maintaining my interest gets an above average rating, though certainly not a perfect one.
You can definitely tell comics have change a good bit since this was originally published. It's not bad by any means, just different to what I'm used to.
I like Cassandra a lot, so I had fun reading this, but the plot was a little scattered. I didn't care much for the annual included in this trade.
I don't have much else to say really. The art could be weird sometimes, but I think that's just because the art style is different now for DC. I like Cassandra's costume a lot tho.
I like Cassandra a lot, so I had fun reading this, but the plot was a little scattered. I didn't care much for the annual included in this trade.
I don't have much else to say really. The art could be weird sometimes, but I think that's just because the art style is different now for DC. I like Cassandra's costume a lot tho.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
So, some strong marks against this series. Peterson writes Batman and Oracle like their idiots, for one. The art is hard to deal with as well, going from "that's a fun exaggerated style" to "I can't look at this mess anymore". But, I still dig Cassandra Cain, so we'll keep moving forward.
A great first volume about Cassandra Cain. Reading about her training with Barbara & Batman was really interesting, as well as the peek at her origins. I wasn't keen on art style later in the volume, but enjoyed the story enough to want to continue!
This may be controversial, but she's my favorite Batgirl. I love the concept behind her being raised as an assassin from birth.
Great read. Granted I read a lot of the single issues but it's great to see them all bound together. I hope out library gets the rest of the volumes. Love Barbara as oracle. Cassandra is much more accessible as a character than j originally recalled which was great!