Musings: Cassandra Cain

Okay, so I've been reading a lot of responses to Cassandra Cain's new role in Robin. (I'm personally eating crow for my interpretation, which was very very wrong.)

It really is nice to see fans mobilizing. Cass was a character that was a little too contrived for my taste, but I sympathize with the loss of a good character. The letter writing and other campaigns are a good sign.

But I think some of them are taking the wrong tactic.

See, a lot of them are focused on what Beechen "got wrong" about the character. About the Navajo and the speech and the rest. They're listing them as ways Cass is out of character.

Which she is.

But she also isn't.

This is New Earth. Infinite Crisis was designed in a way to allow writers/editors from this point on to cherry pick DC canon. We get some good things out of it...Leslie's no longer responsible for Stephanie Brown's death, Batman's more human, and a lot of dead characters have come back. We've got a Donna Troy with a workable origin.

But in the process, we got a different Cassandra Cain. Which means, I'd bet, that as far as DC's concerned, Mr. Beechen didn't get Cass wrong. This navajo reading maniac IS New Earth's Cass, and the one we remember from Batgirl either didn't happen as we remember, or something really screwed up happened during the last year.

This could actually be a promising sign though. Because enough people writing in about the original Cass might be able to do something after all.

Because this universe has duplicates. There was a funny example in the online 52 thing I referenced once.

We've got Power Girl and Supergirl. We've got an Aquaman that I've heard is tied to an earlier version, while the post Crisis one we know is still around...in some form. (I'm shaky on the details, I don't read Aquaman.)

Maybe there could be a better Cass roaming around out there. Or not. I don't know. I admit, I'm interested to see where they're taking this though.