Here's to the loss of racial diversity
Spoiler warning.
And not the kind that you think. This is the issue where, after months of teasing, the new Batgirl is revealed to be Stephanie Brown.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about this issue, and none of them stem from the writing. The book does well in depicting Steph's struggles with maintaining a normal life as a college freshman, versus taking up the heavy mantle of the Batgirl. And it's a struggle where she expectedly makes errors in her effort to the role that fell into her hands.
All well and good. It will be interesting to see how far her commitment to the cowl takes her, especially with the suggested tutelage of Barbara Gordon forthcoming. I have great hopes for her, believing as I still do that she would have made a great Robin.
The issue I have about the book is likely shared by many fans. See, I'm a Cassandra Cain fan. It's difficult not to be a fan if you've read her story all the way back from No Man's Land till right before DC editorial violated her in One Year Later. Cass grew into the role wonderfully, rising as she did from one of the worst backgrounds imaginable. It appealed to me that she was antithetical to the rest of the Bat family in so many ways. She was taught to be an assassin, not a hero. Unlike Bruce, Dick and Tim, both her natural parents are alive, but both are villainous. While the rest of the Bat family struggle to keep from descending into darkness, Cass would struggle to emerge from darkness into light. It also appealed to me that she was distinctly Asian. I liked how an iconic role like Batgirl could be given to a person who wasn't blonde, blue-eyed and white.
While the way she made her exit in this book in no way matched the horrors of her OYL story arc, it still left a sour taste in my mouth, and an unfulfilled longing to know what would happen to her. It was so unexpected, and too mysterious, as if the writer or DC editors had not yet decided what to do with her. Never mind that her reason for leaving went against what she said was her motivation in her original series. (FYI, she served the symbol and the crusade behind it, NOT the Batman). Never mind that the best way to honor the man who would have been her new father would be to fight on as Batgirl. At the very least, the fans of this badly-treated character deserve to know that their heroine will stay such, and will remain in the realm of the Bat.
