and the way they did get her to speak was lame. she should have learn much more gradually than she did but whatever.

The whole “her heart was so pure” thing is also completely wrong. I think it was pretty interesting what they did there. For one thing, Cain mostly taught her to fight to kill but she never killed anything. Her superhuman(the extent is)nature she can read people is what caused her to run away. She did not decide to become a hero from that event. just that she didn’t want to continue killing people, because she could read the agony she made that man feel in a superhuman way. This is similar to what they do to Superman whenever he goes to a hell dimension.

I’m not a fan of anything they’ve done with the character. Including billing her as the toughest fighter ever. Because that’s not how it should work in fiction, and they had already established someone as the best, and knocked him down twice, just for the sake of new characters(like what they did with Xavier too). But I do think she has potential, and people are reading into the mask stitching, really ridiculous things. I’ve seen stupid gimmicks on male too, Look at Onomatopia, what sexist remarks can you gleam from that? There isn’t, and you drew one from a girl character because she’s a girl.

Comic books are almost universally targeting men, even so all superheroes, male and female dress ridiculously, with very few exceptions and most of those characters can be carefully ignored, because they are crappy characters by any standard. Take one quick look at Superman’s costume, not his bright, red, undies which so thoroughly show his massive…erm…. crap I worked myself into a corner on this one. Comics would be less successful if all the characters looked like normal people, let alone if they were barrels of ugly, due to scarring and just not being very attractive, which is generally associated with constantly fighting people, who are trying to kill you, with non-lethal force.

As for her appearance, that is because of the artist, depending on who is drawing her she can be reasonably built or kinda freakish looking, but given the absolute truth that muscle is way smaller than fat, and she has only the minimum amount of that for a healthy person, it is understandable that she look a little disproportionate, I would also like to point out that her proportions are more accurate than say Wonder Woman’s are, I’m not even going near anything Robert Liefeld has done. Now as for her story, how many other characters have a similar background, as a huge comic nerd who knows bigger comic nerds none of us came up with any names, and I see you didn’t either. Once again Males are also as disproportionate, look at any male superhero, few exceptions here as well Spiderman comes to mind, and try finding a normal person who can match their build, good luck. This should help: http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/2555/batgirl27122ev3.jpg <- drawn by someone trying to make her look like a reasonably proportioned human being

I have a question: when trying to stab a person in the heart, while they are facing you, they manage to avoid the attack, but just barely, where do you think the hole in their clothing would be? Answer that and you will understand the hole showing the “massively egregious cleavage” (she is still showing off less than Power Girl and Wonder Woman are). Think about it she is fighting one of the top 5 assassins on earth, she is going to take a hit to the chest at least once, and it’s probably going to cleave clean through her costume.

Batgirl’s silence is related to her background as well, once again you failed to do the research, take note that for the first 17.5 years of her life her (she “should” be like 20 by now, yet just got adopted by Bruce Wayne)only language was body language, no reading, no writing, no talking, just fighting (which mind you she is the best non-powered combatant in the DC universe). She has been gradually working through this, she can now talk (thanks to a psychic who didn’t know what he was doing) and can at least operate a computer, which one would assume would mean she can read and write. Think of it as if she were merely a stoic, as many of the Batman family are. They don’t really explore this until Batgirl #4-#5.

Beechen claims that his making Batgirl a villain was an edict from above, no one was happy, except the jerk who made that decision, maybe. Suffice to say all the fanboys got up in arms, me? I (read:fanboy) just dropped almost all of my comics. I naturally picked up the Batgirl mini-series in hopes that they would apologize for replacing the character with something else for a year. I’m not 100% satisfied either, Beechen is not treating Cassie the way she deserves to be treated.

My only suggestion is that you actually research something thoroughly BEFORE posting your opinion of it on the internet, because if you don’t you will usually wind up gnawing on your foot.

[...] at Comics Worth Reading agrees in Batgirl’s Creepy. However, in More About Cassandra, jlg1 [...]

And Colleen, I think the whole thing with Misfit was meant to be humorous, and you’re looking way too far into it if you’re going to drop a great series because of it.

This is what Gail said on her Black Canary storyline:
“It’s interesting, but if you read BoP from my very first issue to issue #99, you’ll see it’s very clearly a huge, single Black Canary story (with lots of little side bits along the way). Essentially, Black Canary was sort of a weak sister, a little bit, not from what Chuck had done, but other DCU writers. There’s this one panel that seemed to show up over and over again, Green Arrow being righteously angry at someone, being fun and entertaining, while Black Canary places one hand on his arm or shoulder to calm him down. I used to refer to that portrayal as Dinah being a professional wet blanket.

I really got sick of seeing it. What it was saying was that she was only interesting as Green Arrow’s Jiminy Cricket, or as a hostage, and I thought that was a tremendous waste of a great character.

Sometimes you have to pull these characters apart to their elements, and strip some of the crud that’s accumulated, to remind everyone of what lies underneath.

So we started (too much yelling from Black Canary fans) by putting her at almost her lowest point ever…beaten, legs broken, and four issues of being handcuffed to a bed. I think the fact that despite all that, she was still the one in control, that’s what makes her great.

And that incident had her thinking, why the hell does this happen to me, and not so much, say, Green Arrow? So the mega-story has been her search to become as good, as dangerously skilled, as she possibly can be.

But in the end, she hits a moral and ethical wall…she gets to the point where if she takes one more step, she goes down a path where she stops being Dinah and becomes a little more like the tortured martial artists at the top of that chain; Batman, Shiva, Richard Dragon, etc. No one seems to top that pyramid and keep their full self intact.

So Dinah says, enough, this is enough, and I get to stay myself. I don’t need to be a cold-eyed terror. Early on in our run, she has a dream that she’ll go that route, and become the Witch Canary…that was her moment of clarity and caution. That’s not a life she wants. Sounds a bit Doctor Phil, until you realize the path is nothing but broken bones and cracked skulls along the way.

That was the Black Canary story I wanted to tell, and thank goodness I was given the room to do it.

That said, Canary is still a big part of the heart of BoP and I would hope her leaving isn’t permanent. I don’t care for her as just another superhero among hundreds.”

It’s the other way round for me – I find it hard to think of Barbara as anything but Oracle, since she’s been Oracle for most of my life.

Now, this is what Dinah said when she left the BOP:

“I have a choice here. To be something I thought I never could be. Something a little bit like a mother.”

It seems fair to say that the choice she speaks of is a choice between fighting crime and raising Sin.

Just tossing that in. I’m not fond of that Batgirl illustration, either, although I’ve warmed to the character considerably over the past couple years. For me, it’s hard to think of Batgirl as anything but Barbara.

As for Misfit…she’s a little odd.

Gail

Meaning…?

That website was basically made as a little advertisement when #25 came out. It wasn’t an encylopedia-type thing.

Concerning BoP;
1) The writer, Gail Simone, is a woman.
2) Black Canary left the title because the JLA writer wanted to use her. Simone has said she would like to bring her back sometime in the future.

Yes, you could argue that Cass’ costume is fetishistic. I mean, doing so would ignore the fact that her costume is actually a highly practical one, and that there was a serious reason behind the mask-stitching, and that at some level all superhero costumes are allegedly fetishes.

Yes, her costume could be construed as fetishized. So could Wonder Woman’s. So could Starfire’s. Black Canary, for her part, has spent the majority of her career dressed like a prostitute. Is this a problem? ‘Fetishistic’, sexualized’, and ‘exploitative’ have different meanings. The first two are not necessarily problems, if unaccompanied by the third.

Basically, I think some of you are not getting past ‘OMG icky costume’. And once past that point, there is a lot to see.

The character profile pic . . . I’m not going to make any attempt to defend that. DC mistreating it’s female characters? In other news, the sky is blue, and water is wet. I will say, though, that her own series was never like that.

The image shows she’s taken a severe beating but still refuses to back down & has been hitting back hard. Why not use to illustrate an encylopedia-style entry for the character? She’s meant to be a hardcore fighter after all, that pic seems to sum that up.

[...] Johanna of Comics Worth Reading thinks that Batgirl is creepy. [...]

[...] Batgirl’s Creepy by Johanna Draper Carlson and Does Batgirl have a more flattering angle?? UPDATE by Heidi MacDonald from THE BEAT – Johanna and Heidi look at the picture that DC has of Cassandra Cain/Batgirl on their Web site and wonder what DC was thinking (from Comics Worth Reading and THE BEAT) [...]

[...] In the past few days, Melissa Krause, Johanna Draper Carlson and others have written about DC’s creepy-weird portrayal of Batgirl/Cassandra Cain — as Johanna says, “She looks like an ant!” — including her “official portrait” on the DC website (it’s apparently since been removed). [...]