YEAR 1999: BATGIRL

Though the Barbara Gordon Batgirl remains the best known to the general public, Cassandra Cain is on the whole a more original transformation of the "female Batman assistant" concept.

In keeping with the darker spirit of comic books in the 1990s-- as well as her surname, modeled on that of the first person (according to the Bible) who committed a murder-- Cassandra begins with a stain on her soul, in contrast to the many simon-pure heroes of the Golden and Silver Ages. Long before becoming Batgirl, young Cassandra-- the child of assassins Lady Shiva and David Cain-- is trained to become an assassin herself.  Not knowing any better, she does kill a victim, only to have such a negative reaction as to flee the influence of her father.  She later finds sanctuary and re-training with the Batman Family, and adopts the name "Batgirl" with the blessing of Barbara Gordon.  She later lost the title to another claimant, and then to a renascent Gordon-Batgirl.

The scripts, initially by Kelly Puckett, were fairly complex but I personally did not take to the manga-influenced art of co-creator Damion Scott.

TOP 50 FEMALE/MALE FIGHTS IN COMICS: 50

I could have made any post #50, since none of them are rated in ascending or descending order. But I may as well choose as my #50 another #50.

BATGIRL #50, by Dylan Horrocks and Rick Leonardi, happily qualifies by both my selection-terms: it's both a fight of good duration and one with symbolic resonance for the central character and the "Batman Family" of which she's a member.

The basic setup: Cassandra Cain is raised by her natural father David Cain to become a supreme assassin. As the issue's opening pages clarify, Cain did so with training-methods that most would call child abuse, but as a result Cassandra became a martial artist, superior in some respects even to Batman. Batman (for whom David Cain was formerly a martial-arts mentor for a time) rescues Cassandra and through an involved set of circumstances, Cassandra became the new Batgirl. As a child of martial (rather than marital) abuse, Batgirl becomes the poster child for the slogan: "whatever does not kill me makes me stronger." Nevertheless, tensions do develop between Batgirl and her "new father" Batman, some of which have roots in Cassandra's ambivalent relationship to her real father.

BATGIRL #50 brings out those tensions by exposing both heroes to "Soul," a drug designed to cause victims to lose control of their inhibitions, eventuating in a long and grueling Bat-fight that only ends when Batgirl works through her "issues" and her better self surfaces. The final page makes it unclear as to whether Batman was fully exposed to the drug as was Batgirl: when he implies that he may have prolonged the fight to help Cassandra work things out, Barbara Gordon asks him if the whole fight was some sort of "screwed up therapy session." Clearly, it is to Batman, and probably to the authors as well.

Next week I'll address the greater subject of "superhero trauma" in a concluding post to top off this series (and maybe the blog as well), because said trauma, and the concept of stylized violence in art generally, bear closely upon my reasons for doing the blog at all.

BATTERY GIRL

As in "assault and..."

THE FEMININE WILL

If at all possible, view the following picture w/o paying attention to the cover copy from ACTION COMICS #346.





If one does not read the explanatory dialogue, the picture looks for all the world like Superman being decked by his female cousin Supergirl. To the knowledgeable fan who knows that both characters are gifted with super-powers, it's at least plausible for Superman to be stunned by a punch from his cousin, even though Superman looks like he might weigh in at twice whatever Supergirl might weigh.

However, if one knew nothing about the mythology of either character, and saw only a very muscular man being knocked silly by a slip of a girl, such a reader might have to suppose he was looking at a nonsense-scene, in which the normal rules of weight and mass simply didn't apply.

What's interesting is that while the above scenario does take place within the realm of super-powered beings, where it's entirely probable for a super-powered woman to fell a mere mortal man with a single blow, this sort of scenario is hardly confined to stories with super-powered beings in comics.

For instance, here's an example without super-powered types:





In BATGIRL #50, the then-current Batgirl-- who, once again, looks like she might weigh in at half what her opponent Batman does-- has a long and grueling battle with her bat-mentor in which the two seem evenly matched, though at the conclusion there's some suggestion that Batman may have manipulated the fight to some extent.

Granted, Batman and his non-powered allies don't live in "the real world," but they are meant to reflect the real world far more than those stories featuring super-powered beings.

And in terms of verisimilitude, BATGIRL #50 puts aside the question of what would really happen if a man and woman of roughly equal skills, but with such very disparate weights, fought one another.

Now, I'm not objecting to BATGIRL #50 or any similar story putting aside verisimilitude for the sake of a fantasy. I think that the fantasy works on its own terms in many if not all cases, and that BATMAN #50 is one where the suspension of disbelief is justified for the dramatic effect.

But when comic books are rife with examples of this type of female empowerment-- in which a spindly supermodel-type can beat down a big strong man with a single punch-- I'm dumbfounded that any fan, male or female, can complain about the lack of females having "agency," as I've quoted HER MAJESTY saying in earlier posts.

"What do women want," indeed?