The Four Color Media Monitor

IO9 wrote about the history of Batgirl, and DC editors' mistreatment of nearly all women who took the role. And one of the biggest flubs was when they tried to explain away Cassandra Cain being turned into a mass murderess:

But as controversial decisions had dogged Barbara Gordon, soon enough they would dog Cassandra as well. In a 2006 event called One Year Later — which, as you might guess, jumped the entire DC continuity one year ahead into the future — Cassandra was revealed to have become the head of the League of Assassins, casting down the Batgirl name.

As the Mary Sue explained, "Writing Cassandra Cain as a murderer and assassin, or someone who had become "disillusioned" with Batman's mission really leapt miles away from the core character." After years of building up a storyline about Cassandra's penitence over her past as a killer, DC threw that away for a shocking reveal that she had gone on a killing spree — showing a huge disregard for one of their most popular female characters.

There were fan campaigns to get DC to undo Cassandra's turn to villainy, but the damage was already done. Later, her killing spree was retconned as Cassandra having been drugged by the villain Deathstroke — which did not assuage the anger of fans who were annoyed that she had been abruptly turned into a villain, and then shoved to the side in order to put the focus on Tim Drake as Robin. Cassandra later returned to the role of Batgirl briefly, before handing the mantle over to Stephanie Brown — and then vanishing into obscurity.

Cassandra would return as the new reformed Batman character Black Bat, fronting Bruce Wayne's operations in Hong Kong as part of the Batman Inc. storyline. But for the most part, fans felt that Cassandra Cain was tossed away, first by being turned into a villain and then by being shunted into the background, where she's remained ever since.

Another interesting reason why attempts to appease the audience for Batgirl didn't work: because Deathstroke was in an equally bad situation, already compounded by Identity Crisis. After many years of his reforming post-Judas Contract, the awful 2004 miniseries was just the beginning of abruptly turning him into a one-dimensional villain again, and revealing he was behind Cassandra's drugging only furthered the wreckage. As for Tim Drake, he's fared no better in the New 52, having his own background retconned to make him less recognizable.

So much potential was trashed in the wake of Identity Crisis, and won't recover at the rate they're going by.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, misogyny and racism, Titans, women of dc