MAX LORD

likes butter pecan.







Oh wait. Actually, now he totally hates it.

Don't Look Now, Judd Winick!

From Deadman: Dead Again #2 by Steve Vance, Jim Aparo and Rich Burchett (DC Comics; 2001)

One of the half-dozen or so things that bugged me about Countdown #48

Like each of the previous three issues, there was a whole lot to dislike about this week's Countdown. This time out, a lot of it came on page nine, a brief five-panel scene between Donna Troy and Jason Todd that is breathtaking in the amount of continuity mistakes it manages to cram into such a small space.

Donna Troy is standing over the fresh grave of former Titan Duela Dent, The Joker's Daughter, and up walks former Titan and former Robin Jason Todd, who is currently a multiple-murderer and fugitive from justice, a walking threat to Donna's pal Nightwing's very existence as a costumed hero (not to mention Robin and Batman's).

Instead of smacking Jason across the cemetery or calmly asking him to surrender himself to the proper authorities, Donna just kind of chats with him.

Even if I wanted to be extremely generous with writers Adam Beechen and Paul Dini and assume that maybe Donna doesn't know about all the guys Jason has beheaded, and that she for some reason trusts him not to ever reveal Nightwing's secret identity to anyone, I still can't understand why she's not a little more pissed at the guy.

After all, as far as I know, the last time the two of them crossed paths was in this comic book



Now, it was a terrible comic book, probably the worst issue of Titans with Geoff Johns' name on it prior to "Titans East," so I can hardly blame Dini and Beechen for not wanting to read it.

In fact, I've tried very hard to block it out of my own memory because this issue, primarily because, in addition to containing Jason Todd (alive, aged, and evil), it also features an incredibly stupid scene in which he rips off his Red Hood costume



to reveal this costume


which he was apparently wearing underneath his Red Hood get-up...cape, gloves, boots and all.

But anyway, in that issue, Jason Todd broke into Titans Tower, gassed Raven in her sleep, shot Cyborg and Beast Boy with some kind of electricity-emitting darks that knock them both out, and then attacked Robin, beating him into unconsciousness and knocking down the Donna Troy memorial statue in the Titan's creepy Hall of Statues of Dead Titans.

Donna, who has arrived at the Tower in search of cannon fodder to take into her space battle against Alexander Luthor's giant space hands, is there when the team finds her nominal teammate Robin,



who tells them all that Jason Todd just did this to him.

So I gather Donna either has very bad short-term memory (this happened just before Infinite Crisis, so it was only about a year ago her time), or she really, really, really doesn't like Tim Drake.

That, or Beechen and Dini didn't read Teen Titans #29. Like I said, I don't blame them for not wanting to read it, and I'd excuse them both, if they weren't using both of those characters in this story.

Beechen is an even worse offender here though, since he took over Teen Titans from Geoff Johns. Apparently I don't understand what is involved with writing universe comics for one of the Big Two, but I always thought that part of preparing to take over as a writer for a pre-existing title included reading the previous issues.

I mean, it's not like Beechen was taking over Action Comics or Detective Comics here, where there are hundreds of issues featuring characters who have weathered thousands of appearances that no one could keep track of every single one of, but Titans was only forty-some issues old when he took over...that's an afternoon's worth of "research."

A Justice Society of America #5 Review, in the Form of a Three-Panel Cartoon

Weekly Haul: April 18th

I’m getting this up a little later than usual, on account of yesterday’s haul being a pretty sizable one and the fact that, I actually had to leave my house on a Wednesday after I finished reading. So this week, EDILW has fallen down on the job of providing you reviews of everything Caleb read this week in a timely fashion, and the Internet’s already full of reviews of yesterday’s biggest event books.

Troy Brownfield will save you $10 on World War III with a thorough what happened-to-who write up at Newsarama.com. Ami Angelwings will give you the complete blow by blow, and do it much cuter than I could. And Kevin Church uses his technological superiority to point out some of the most ridiculous things that happened in WWIII and DC’s best book of the week. Here, however, you’ll get a panel of Martian Manhunter head-butting Black Adam in the breadbasket (at least, I hope that’s the breadbasket) as seen in World War III #4.

And, of course, you’ll get all these…




52 #50 (DC Comics) Wow, now that’s a pay-off! I might be the only DC reader in the world who feels this way, but I found the conclusion of Black Adam’s fifty-part, year-long story much more exciting than anything that happened during Infinite Crisis. Rather than multiple versions of the same characters scrabbling over obscure bits of continuity, this issue had a huge superhero fight with high stakes and the sorts of fantastic feats I haven’t seen enough of in DC comics since Grant Morrison left JLA.

Behind another beautiful J.G. Jones cover, one-named penciler Justiniano and inker Walden Wong deliver the best and most polished art of any issue of the series yet, and they squeeze a lot of detail into these panels (I almost didn’t even notice the Global Guardians in the rubble on that two-page splash panel).

Adam decimates the Great Ten (whose names seem culled from Wu-Tang members when shouted out in rapid succession like this), while the heroes of the DCU nervously line up along the Great Wall, waiting for permission to cross the border and take on Adam. And when they finally do, Captain Marvel catches an armful of lightning and throws it at Black Adam. That’s DC superhero comics as they should be, right there. And after twenty-pages of superhero-brawling, that whole “52” plot that hasn’t been given much attention lately comes back in a big way, when Professor Morrow sees what Red Tornado and the space heroes saw.

All that, and the line of the week: “Go, Shaolin Robot!”




Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #51 (DC)
Last issue made me awfully happy, since it seemed like Tad Williams was finally going somewhere with the all the untold plotlines floating around in the title since “One Year Later” gave it a new status quo one year ago. But now I’m not so sure I like it. Arthur Curry joins powerless, cranky Tempest, Aquagirl and the new Topo in a journey back to Sub Diego, and on the way they fight some neat-looking fish men (I really like Shawn McManus’ art here), but the whole endeavor just seems really disconnected from the rest of the DCU. For one thing, the old Aquaman just raised Sub Diego back to the surface and cured all of it’s inhabitants in World War III #2, which just came out this very week.

It was nice to see the Justice League in Atlantis to say goodbye to Orin/Aquaman/Dweller, but what was the Flash doing there? That’s Bart Allen under the hood, a character who’s never really met Aquaman except in the occasional adversarial circumstances where his sueprteam is fighting Aquaman’s superteam for some reason or another. And who’s also not a member of the Justice League, like the rest of the visitors. How do Williams, McManus and the book’s editors not know this? I don’t even read Flash (let alone work for the comic’s publisher) and I know who the Flash is.

Confidential to Hal Jordan: Why the hell are you wearing an oxygen mask? Your power ring creates forcefields and an oxygen supply.




Army @ Love #3 (DC/Vertigo) Okay, seriously Rick Veitch—Why on Earth isn’t this called Our Army at Love? It seems like you guys opted out of going all way with the allusion to Our Army at War. This issue features a lot of backstory in what I think is a pretty brilliant satire thus far, but, with the hook all laid out over the course of these first two issues now, Veitch gets to the make-or-break point. Is there more to the story he’s telling then the sharp observation about how to really sell warfare to today’s youth? I guess we’ll find out in #3. I’m really digging his art with Gary Erskine’s inks on top of it.



The Brave and the Bold #3 (DC) The spotlight swings back to earth, for a Batman/Blue Beetle team-up, with just a few pages spared to show what Supergirl is up to back on Ventura. As the cover attests, Batman and BB III are faced with the Fatal Five, villains that don’t do much for me personally, as I’ve never been able to get into any Legions (I don’t think that would be a problem I’d have with Christopher Bird’s Legion though). But it’s Mark Waid and George Perez playing in DC’s sandbox; that’s really the only selling point one needs here. This series should go on forever, or at least until these creators have managed to feature every single DC character in the book. After all, this is exactly the sort of introduction new readers need when it comes to a character like Blue Beetle, whom a lot of us were understandably quite resistant to. BB’s imaginary excuse slip from Batman to his teacher? Genius. I’m afraid I can’t address the Big League Chew-sponsored The Batman/Cal Ripken, Jr. comic that’s inserted into the middle of this one though, as I’ve yet to read it.




Birds of Prey #105 (DC) I really love the Secret Six, and I really love the way Gail Siomone writes them, and I really, really, really love the new recruit, which finally bumps them back up to a membership of six again. I’d love a S6 ongoing, but I guess that doesn’t seem too likely at this point (Maybe if All-New Atom and Gen 13 get cancelled?).

The new Birds line-up, including Barda, Misfit, Manhunter and a new female Spy Smasher, still hasn’t grown on me though, as it just seems so randomly assembled. And as for the resurrection of a character who’s never once even appeared in this title (talk about random), it leaves me cold (Ha ha! Get it? Cold?). I liked the character, and it was too bad when she died, but I don’t seen any reason to bring her back to life at this point. Why on earth should I care if Black Adam puts his fist through a heroine’s chest in World War III, if the very same week I see a character who’s been unequivocally dead-as-hell for over ten years comes back to life pretty much at random? Jesus, who’s left in DC’s graveyard at this point? Just Vibe?

Simone gets off the worst line of the week, when Hawkgirl tells Scandal Savage, “I don’t know who you are, lady-- --but you’ve just awoken the hawk!” Um, what?





Justice League of America #8 (DC) Wow, way to go Brad Meltzer! Regular readers of either EDILW or Newsarama’s “Best Shots” column will have noticed I’m not exactly a fan of Brad Meltzer’s Justice League stewardship. But this issue, the first part of “The Lightning Saga,” crossing over with Geoff Johns’ superior JSoA, is by far Meltzer’s best, maybe better than the last eight issues combined. I think it’s still over-written, with the parallel narration in the opening scenes a little too artificial (the only thing worse than first-person narration in a comic book is cross-narration), and Batman and Superman seem to have had a press conference off-panel announcing their secret identities to the whole world a la Peter Parker that I hadn’t heard abut.

But never mind all that for a minute.

The conflict, involving one of those Legion line-ups I don’t know jack shit about, is set-up quite quickly in an old-school JLA/JSA team-up/quest fashion, right down to the number of the time-lost soldiers in need of rescue, and Meltzer still has time to advance the Something’s Wrong With Red Tornado plot, the Roy Harper And Hawkgirl Totally Want Each Other Plot and get the whole JSoA in the same panel as the whole JLoA. In one issue! Bravo! And sneaking that Interlac key onto page three? Brilliant.

The art comes courtesy of penciller Shane Dais and inker Matt Banning. I didn’t care much for it, and there were too many panels with way too little background, but they did a nice job approximating the style of Ed Benes and Sandra Hope, giving this arc a strong stylistic continuity with previous issues.

Confidential to Batman: You might want to call Clark “Superman” when you radio him in front of a villain who just beat the crap out of you. And when you’re in front of that villain and some guy named Starman that you’ve just met, you’ll definitely want to go ahead and say “Superman.” It’s only two more syllables, man.

Confidential to Hawkgirl: You’ve known Red Tornado for about seven minutes now, are you really familiar enough with him to call him “Reddy?”

Confidential to Vixen: It’s just a hologram, right? Just turn the “tree” off.

Confidential to Power Girl: You don’t know Batman’s secret identity. So don’t fucking call him “Bruce.” Particularly when in the same room as Stargirl, Liberty Belle II, Damage, Hawkgirl, Dr. Mid-Nite, Mr. Terrific, Wildcat III, Hourman II and Vixen, none of whom know either.





Marvel Adventures Avengers #12 (Marvel Comcis) Wow, Jeff Parker got away with an awful lot this issue, particularly considering this is a kids book. The plot? Ego the Living Planet wants to hook up with Earth (machines translate Ego’s come-ons into their closest English equivalents, and they amount to, “Hold up, Miss Thang! What’s the big hurry?” When Ego realizes that Earth is crawling with humans, he changes his mind, telling her “I’ll be back around—you clean that act up and we can discuss.” So, basically, Ego totally wants to bang Earth, until he notices the planetary equivalent of STDs (Well, Parker has Giant-Girl refer to them as “cooties,” but we know what he’s talking about).


Oh, and there’s this:








The Mighty Avengers #2 (Marvel) Brian Michael Bendis continues to do a great job introducing the new status quo of his line-up (in this issue, we see Ms. Marvel and Iron Man make their pitches to each recruit that isn’t Ares), and I love the thought-cloud asides, but the conflict is so goddam base and lazy I don’t know if I’ll be picking up #3. Basically, it’s the Avengers vs. Ultron, Round 4,567, but the twist this time is that Ultron has somehow changed Iron Man into a naked Janet Van Dyne, with liquid metal covering her erogenous zones (and clouds of smoke presumably covering the nipples Frank Cho must have drawn in some panels). Cho’s a good storyteller and he draws all of the characters well. It’s cool that his women’s bodies look like real women’s bodies, with body fat and everything, but he essentially draws the exact same woman with slightly different hair over and over.




Nightwing Annual #2 (DC) Attention, Dan Didio! You know this Marc Andreyko guy who’s been writing Manhunter for you guys? Did you check out this week’s Nightwing Annual yet? Because it turns out to be one of the most enjoyable Dick Grayson stories I’ve read in…God, I can’t remember the last time I’ve read a really, truly, all-around enjoyable Dick Grayson story (Maybe one of Devin Grayson’s Dick-centric Gotham Knights issues? Wait, that didn’t sound right…). And, as an added bonus, it was also one of the better Barbara Gordon stories I’ve read in a good long time (I’ve generally enjoyed the bulk of Simone’s run on BoP, but the focus has usually been on Black Canary and Huntress rather than Oracle). After a seven-panel recap of Dick’s proposal and a six-page sequence recapping the end of Infinite Crisis and a related nightmare sequence, Andreyko plunges into Grayson’s recovery from his injuries, coached along by Babs, who avoids talking about the proposal as long as possible. During extended flashbacks we see their first date and their first time having sex, and Andreyko seems to fit their incredibly complicated histories together rather neatly. He also refreshingly demonstrates that you can have grown-up “mature” DCU stories that don’t depend on gore and violence for their maturity—there’s also sex. Learn who Dick lost his virginity too, see he and Barbara totally bang and, in a fantastic two-panel sequence, delight as he tries to shield an erection from Batman and Batgirl with his little Robin cape (“Robin? You OK, chum?” “Um, it’s nothing.”) Yes! Andreyko for Nightwing, STAT!




The Spirit #5 (DC) And speaking of sex and DC Comics, damn, the bottom tier of panels on page ten is weird. After five issues now, you know the drill—perfect script, perfect art, perfect design and production, an all-around perfect comic book.




Superman/Batman #34 (DC) Okay, did anyone get what the fuck was going on in this comic book? Because I sure didn’t. Is this an imaginary story? A flashback? A Year One? A reboot? I honestly have no idea. Mark Verheiden tells a tale of Doc Magnus and the Metal Men—including new, female robot Copper—in which Mercury and a human, female friend of Magnus’ talks about the Metal Men going public, and when Batman first sees Magnus, he greets him with a “Who the hell are you?” Two panels later, Magnus tells Batman, “I’m sort of new at this…” The art, penciled by Pat Lee, is decent on the Metal Men, but awfully messy and ugly on everything else. And for some reason, he keeps drawing Lucius Fox in a tuxedo from a 1970s prom. After last week’s 52, this is a gigantic disappointment for a Metal Men story; it doesn’t even make sense, something which happens fairly frequently in Superman/Batman I know, but I was really hoping for more out of this story.




World War III #1 (DC) I didn’t have very high hopes for this series when it was announced. The plotlines sounded for the most part like they were culled by DC editors trawling Newsarama.com boards for suggestions, and the creators are some talented folks who seem to be simply given busy work, writing and drawing dotted lines that connect the characters at the end of Infinite Crisis to where they were “One Year Later” (which, at this point, started one year ago, our time). Didio’s “DC Nation” column says exactly that.

It seems tremendously unfair to readers and creators; the OYL hook was pretty inspired, and a nice way to re-start all of the series on a new-reader-friendly foot which didn’t have anything to do with Infinite Crisis fall-out, but the universe has simply moved right back to IC mode since then (With the five Monitors sub-plot, and the countdown to the next Crisis). Telling stories out of sequence is fine, as long as you tell all of the parts at some point, but in almost every case, the OYL writers didn’t tease, hint at or give any indication that they’d go back and explain how the characters got from Point A to Point G, and it’s left to these four one-shots to do all of that.

That said, I was also tremendously excited. I mean, eighty-eight pages of B- to D-List DC characters, plus 52 on the same day? That’s the sort of single-story binge I haven’t had since DC discontinued their 80-Page Giants. If you haven’t read these books but are curious, I’d caution that they are not at all necessary. This week’s 52 tells the entire story of “World War III” perfectly well, and these issues focus on a few weeks through the eyes of the Martian Manhunter, and world reaction to Black Adam’s rampage. Each issue focuses on a few of the characters and explains their OYL status, but if you’re not a fan of those characters, it’s pretty much pointless reading. Additionally, you can read any one of these all by itself and get a more or less whole story, provided you’re interested in anything other than Martian Manhunter’s story, which is the only one that continues from book to book. As a fan of J’onn’s who was completely confused and annoyed by the 180-degree turn in his character witnessed OYL and in his own eight-issue series, this was right up my alley; your alley may vary.

This first issue is titled “A Call To Arms,” and is written by Keith Champagne (the inker-turned-writer who filled in for Geoff Johns on JSA, closing out the series…and yes, I realize that Paul Levitz wrote two stories after Champagne’s arc, but I’m trying to forget, so please just accommodate me on this, okay?) and penciled by Pat Olliffe, whose work should be perfectly familiar to regular readers of 52. It opens with Martian Manhunter, too-little seen in the weekly series (given his powers, connections and always-a-bridesmaid status, I think he’s actually an ideal character for a “year in the life of the universe” type of story) confronting Black Adam before a mountain of corpses in Bialya. During the battle, they link minds, and J’onn flees from Earth, the blackness of Adam’s mind completely infecting his own (Which goes an awful long way toward explaining why he’s such a dickhead a few weeks later). There are one-panel check-ins with characters all over the DCU, but the rest of the issue is devoted to expositional scenes involving Jason Todd-as-Nightwing (which offers no real insight), and Jason and Firehawk fusing into Firestorm for what I presume is the first time. If you don’t care for J’onn, Resurrected By A Super-Punch on The Walls of Continuity Jason Todd or Firestorm II, there isn’t really any reason to buy this.




World War III #2 (DC) Don’t get too excited by Batgirl, Donna Troy and Supergirl on the Ethan Van Sciver-drawn cover; they don’t exactly get a lot of valuable panel time inside. In “The Valiant,” we find J’onn J’onnz floating in space in the fetal position, using his telepathy to check in with various players in the DCU. Champagne’s still scripting, and Andy Smith is now penciling. Four pages are devoted to Supergirl, who during the Zeta Beam accident was apparently plunged into time, and I have no idea what the fuck happens here. It seems like she’s split in two, and one half flies through J’onn, and she crashes into Metropolis…I don’t know, I’d given up on both Supergirl and The Legion of Superheroes before OYL. The other major points of focus are the Batman-less Gotham City, where we see Harvey Dent and Cassandra Cain, and the fate of Aquaman.

The Gotham thread shows Harvey Dent fighting with Killer Croc, and, like the Jason-as-Nightwing scene, it doesn’t add much of anything, we just see him. The Batgirl scene unfortunately doesn’t do anything to make her OYL 180 make any more sense, and probably actually hurts her awkward redemption story currently unfolding in Teen Titans. Deathstroke is all, “Look, Batman doesn’t like you, he had Harvey Dent take over for you before going on vacation with every sidekick who’s not you.” (And he has a point…still no word on why Oracle and Batman seemed to completely forget Cassandra Cain’s existence during Infinite Crisis, and this week’s even would seem to have been the time to address that). He gives her the whole join with me/power of the dark side speech, and she seems to be considering; he doesn’t just jump her and inject her with science juice. Also unexplained is why she’s dressed like Batgirl and in Gotham, after deciding to give up being Batgirl at the end of her own title.

As for the Aquaman thread, basically the people of Sub Diego are losing their ability to breathe underwater, and Orin cuts a deal with two water giants (I assume Neptune and Poseidon, but it’s unexplained) for the power to save them, whatever the cost. The result is that Sub Diego is raised to the surface and all of its inhabitants cured, but Aquaman goes all squiddy and loses his mind. Note that in 52 he’s been going nutty, growing his hair out and dressing in a robe for weeks now, and that in this week’s issue of Aquaman there’s still a Sub Diego populated by water-breathers.

We also see a few panels of Donna Troy as Wonder Woman, a role she apparently played for just two weeks, and there’s a page of Black Adam beating down the Doom Patrol. Aquaman fans will definitely want to check this one out, if only for some clue as to what’s been going on in Sword of Atlantis, but even Supergirl and Batgirl fans probably won’t find anything in here they didn’t already know.





World War III #3 (DC) Champagne passes the writing baton to John Ostrander, and just in time too, seeing as how J’onn J’onnz and some old Suicide Squad characters are about to be featured. This one’s called “Hell is For Heroes,” and J’onn’s got his shit together well enough to return to Earth. Using his invisibility and shape-changing abilities, he begins to track Black Adam down, following his path of destruction while considering how crappy human beings are. Tom Derenick is on pencil duty now, and I think this is probably the best looking of the four issues, but that may just be because I dig Derenick’s style.

The Teen Titans have a couple of tussles with Black Adam, and two of ‘em don’t make it out alive. Meanwhile, some Checkmate types bicker, Amanda Waller makes some plans and attempts to recruit Bronze Tiger and Kate “Manhunter” Spencer’s new status quo is revealed. J’onn comes to the realization that he’s engaged in quite a few lies himself over the years, and thus burns down his old John Jones secret identity. By this point, he’s got it together, and is on his way to China, because “The time has come for an ending.”

In other words, it is on.




World War III #4 (DC) Ostrander’s joined by Penciller Jack Jadson to bring it all home in “United We Stand,” which details the final battle against Black Adam in Beijing, told from J’onn’s perspective. The opening page is a twelve-panel grid, showing extreme close-ups of many of the heroes—Alan Scott’s Green Lantern logo on his chest, Hakman’s hand gripping his mace, Wildcat cracking his knuckles— which is pretty tense and dramatic, building up to an awesome two-page spread featuring just about every DC hero who wasn’t missing during the missing year, marred only by the close-up of Power Girl. Guess what the focus of the extreme close-up on P.G. is. If you guessed her boobs, you’re right! But to show just how serious this battle is, her boobs are spattered with blood.

Ostrander writes a pretty elegant few paragraphs of narration, as J’onn picks up the stray thoughts that go throgh the heroes’ heads on the cusp of battle during this spread, and then we plunge into the Great Ten vs. Black Adam battle.

And before you know, it’s time for a Black Adam vs. J’onn rematch, with J’onn giving Adam the super-head butt pictured above (eliciting an “Aarrh!”) and a face-full of Martian vision (“Yarrgh!”). Their tussle is a nice climax to this series, particularly the part where J’onn gives Adam all his memories of all those he killed back, plus all of J’onn’s memories of the Martians who died during the fire plague as well. Ostrander has Adam draw a parallel between the two as men who have lost their families, and Adam swearing a rematch will come, which would make for a neat next Martian Manhunter series (“You have earned a mortal enemy this day, Manhunter! I will see you broken once more!”)

Adam goes down the exact same way he did in the pages of 52, but Jadson draws the scene in an even more mythological arrangement, with Captain Marvel holding a lightning bolt like Zeus, rather than awkwardly holding an armful of lighting (I liked the armful better, personally). Anyway, that’s why J’onn J’onnz looks like a creepy BDSM Skrull and acts like such a dickhead OYL. And that’s why John Ostrander shoulda wrote that eight-part Martian Manhunter mini previewed in Brave New World.

Finally, cut to those damn Monitors again, talking about the heroes’ darkest hour which is yet to come (but which will presumably include a lot of tie-ins). This is the one issue of the four that is probably the most general, and if you only want to read one of them to add to your 52 reading pleasure, this is probably the one for you.





Ultimate Spider-Man #108 (Marvel) I really appreciate that Bendis is always trying new things with the storytelling on this book, even after 107 issues, although I don’t think either Mary Jane’s news report video or the whole battle in Moon Knight’s fucked-up mindspace worked all that well. It sure was fun seeing Bendis’ 616 creations Jessica Jones and Ronin interacting with his Ultimate Universe versions of MJ and Spidey though. Another very solidly written and drawn issues of one of the most reliable comic books on the shelves.



X-Factor #18 (Marvel) With a couple of old X-Men characters—Blob, Marrow, Callisto and Some Lady I’ve Never Heard Of—appearing this issue, and the M-Day/House of M/Son of M fall-out intensifying, I find my interest in the series plunging. Peter David still knows how to construct a plot well though, and I did enjoy watching Layla Miller’s machinations all fall so perfectly into place here.

EDILW Presents: Wonder Woman Wednesdays!

Wonder Woman’s had a rough time of things lately.

She’s the First Lady of Superheroes, a position she’s earned by, um, being the first lady superhero. She’s one of only three Golden Age comic book characters whose adventures have been in continuous publication from the time she was created to the present (You know the other two). She’s one of the most widely recognized comic book characters in the world, even among the “civilian” population.

The lady deserves some respect, you know?

But what does she get instead? I don’t know—what’s the exact opposite of respect?

The rejiggeirng of DC’s fictional universe that occurred in Infinite Crisis drastically changed Wonder Woman’s status quo in the company’s shared setting, so that the decades-old rejiggering of Crisis On Infinite Earths was de-rejiggered, apparently knocking George Perez’s run on her title out of continuity/canon (And here’s a dispiriting thought: This is apparently no longer canon, but this is).

At the same time, her series, which was experiencing one of it’s rare peaks in quality thanks to writer Greg Rucka’s acclaimed run on the title, was cancelled to make room for a brand-new Wonder Woman series, to be written by relative newcomer Allan Heinberg (Whose previous comics credits included maxiseries Young Avengers and co-writing a JLA arc with Geoff Johns).

In relaunching the title, Heinberg took his clues from the 1970s TV show, introducing a new, nostalgic/retro status quo that was more in keeping with the Wonder Woman of the ‘60s and ‘70s then the one readers have followed the last 20 years in comics (and, in the past few years, on the Justice League cartoon).

This Wonder Woman had a Clark Kent-like secret identity (Diana Prince, an Amazonian secret agent who wore her hair up and a pair of shaded glasses) and worked for the U.S. government’s Department of Meta-Human Affairs. She’d stepped down from her role as ambassador, thus leaving the world stage to be a secret agent and fight supervillains. Heinberg delivered the first four-issues of an intended five-issue run over the course of a year before DC removed him from the schedule due to missed deadlines.

Next up was a not-very-good one-issue fill-in story, making way for best-selling author Jodi Picoult. Rather than giving Picoult the sort of carte blanche they’d given best-selling author Brad Meltzer with the Justice League characters in Identity Crisis and Justice League of America or Heinberg on Wonder Woman, Picoult was assigned to write a six-issue arc that built on Heinberg’s new version of the character. (Imagine instead a Picoult-written miniseries or original graphic novel, in or out of continuity).

If Heinberg’s Wonder Woman was mediocre, Picoult’s was actually terrible.

Like Heinberg, she ignored much of the last 20 years or so worth of Wonder Woman stories (Perhaps rightly so, perhaps not, depending on Wondy’s continuity, which no one knows the status of post-Infinite Crisis). In addition to keeping Heinberg’s innovations of a secret identitied-up ex-Goddess of Truth who’s trying to learn what it’s like to be an ordinary human buy hunting superhumans as a secret agent, Picoult played Wonder Woman as a fish out of water character who can’t order coffee, pump gas or work turnstiles, all of which seems…off. (If she’s a founding Justice Leaguer again post-Infinite Crisis, as IC and JLoA have made clear, that means she’s spent at least the last 11 years living in the United States, on more than one occasion living with normal American families and even working in a fast food joint).

It’s hard to say just how much of the title’s current suckiness is Picoult’s fault and how much is editorial’s. At any rate, the results have been a story featuring the dense continuity that keeps new readers from easily getting into a comic (at the least, you'll have to have read about Max Lord's killing and the previous story arc of the title, and Manhunter sure wouldn' hurt) accompanied (ironically) by the sort of continuity errors that keep hardcore fans from supporting the book.

Picoult on Wonder Woman should have been a creative, public relations and sales slam dunk for DC (and were she writing a miniseries or original graphic novel, it probably would have been), but instead it’s simply turned into strike two on their Wonder Woman relaunch.

DC’s already announced the next writer: Gail Simone. Simone is a very good comic book writer (in addition to being a woman), a writer who at her absolute worst is still guaranteed to be able to deliver stories at least as good as Heinberg’s, but on a monthly rather than quarterly schedule. Which is great news.

The bad news? Simone’s Newsarama interview intimates that she’ll be working with the post-Infinite Crisis status quo, and, of course, there’s still four more issues of Picoult’s run, and another two-issue fill-in stint, before Simone takes over.

But not all is bleak for the Amazing Amazon! We at EDILW are planning to do our part to make things a little less grim for our favorite star-spangled shorts rocking heroine, which is why we’re launching a new feature this week—Wonder Woman Wednesdays. Each Wednesday we’ll have a Wondy-centric post, and the plan is to keep ‘em up coming at least until Simone begins her run on Wonder Woman or we run out of funny Golden Age panels to post out of context and make bad jokes about, whichever comes first.

Delayed Reaction: Batman: War Crimes

Batman: War Crimes (DC Comics), by Various

Why’d I Wait?: Same reason I waited on most of the last three volumes' worth of “War” stories—I’d seen just enough to know this probably wasn’t something I’d want to spend money on.

Why Now?: Well, I’ve read three volumes worth of “War Games” via borrowed-from-the-library trades already, what’s another 132 pages?

Well?: My initial impulse was correct—I did not like the stories contained within this collection. But beyond the quality of the stories and the bizarre plot points (particularly in the final one), let’s look at this as it was published in this edition, as a collection of several different stories into one single volume which, presumably, is meant to be seen as a single, unified work.

It’s hard to imagine a crazier fucking trade collection.

Conatined within are stories from six different comics, two different Batman ongoing series and two different Batman specials. None of them continue into one another, exactly, and the result is an anthology loosely organized around the principle of what post-“War Games” Gotham City is like. Read straight through, it has the same jarring clashes of art styles that the trilogy of “War Games” volumes had, but it lacks the sense of propulsion that moved those books forward; War Crimes moves in fits and starts.

I’m not exactly sure why it was published as a trade collection at all, really. The main purpose of most of these stories is simply to set up the new Gotham's status quo, but, post-Infinite Crisis and “OYL,” that status quo has changed again. Nothing in this book is the least bit relevant to the future of Batman comics (and, as we’ll see in a moment, little of it is consistent with past Batman stories, either). In that sense, it’s a book so dated that it’s one of the least essential ones to include in anybody’s Bat-library.

Let’s take the stories one at a time, shall we?

First up, Bruce Jones and penciller Eddy Barrows give us “Strangers in Paradise,” in which Black Mask is interrupted during some torture by a lieutenant in his crime organization, and he then walks us through the current state of the Gotham underworld, summarizing the events of “War Games” and the first half of “Under the Hood.”

Next up, Will Pfeifer and Ron Randall do something similar from Commissioner Akins’ perspective; this story at least has something salient to say—I like Akins’ use of the word “criminal mastermind” to describe Batman, and there’s a creepy, three-panel Joker story embedded within this short story.

That’s followed by another short story by Andersen Garych and penciller Tom Derenick (recently seen kicking all kinds of ass drawing Steve Engleheart’s JLA: Classified and JSA: Classified snoozefests), this one featuring Cassandra “Batgirl” Cain and Tim “Robin” Drake training together in Bludhaven. It’s a great little character piece featuring the two, accentuating their differences, and clearly showing who is far superior than the other in which area of expertise needed by Gotham crimefighters. (What I really dig about this Batgirl and this Robin is that each of them make up half a Batman; B.G.’s driven and an unstoppable hand-to-hand combatant, but has a long way to go when it comes to being a detective; Tim’s an incredible detective, but lacks the will to ever actually be a Batman). The story is particularly weird to read after the developments of recent issues of Robin, however; this is just one more story that completely contradicts the whole Cassandra Cain Is Suddenly Evil For No Reason plotline.

Finally, after three lead-ins, this brings us to the actual “War Crimes” story, a four-parter that may go down in history as the most insane Batman story ever (even including the Silver Age one where he rode a giant Batarang).

After Stephanie Brown’s death and time spent as both the Spoiler and Robin is revealed on television—which would make figuring out Batman’s secret identity pretty easy, although that never really comes up—Batman learns that there was something funny about Stephanie’s death at the end of “War Games.” It seems treatment may have been withheld, and her medical records from that night are suspiciously missing, and difficult for him to track down.

As he investigates that solo, he also has to contend with the Joker, who is seeking revenge on Black Mask for taking his job by killing a Robin (Nevermind the fact that “Under the Hood” makes it so that the Joker never actually killed a Robin before), the Black Mask (who is dressing up as Batman in an effort to discredit Bats), and a new player with a badly burned face whose identity is spoiled by one of the covers.

Everybody fights, the Joker again seems lame (don’t ask how he got away from Red Hood, who was holding him captive last time we saw him; I have no idea), Batman takes his shirt off in the middle of a fight and Black Mask is captured and escapes moments later.

Then comes the conclusion, wherein we learn who “killed” Spoiler. Or, at least, who withheld medical treatment from her, which lead to her death (I guess Black Mask technically killed her, since he brutally tortured her within an inch of her life before she even got to the clinic where she died).

Ready for the weirdest fucking character 180-degree turn of all time, even weirder than Batgirl going batshit insane in the pages of Robin? Dr. Leslie Thompkins, elderly medical doctor, avowed pacifist and one of Bruce Wayne’s closest friends and confidants (even though she disagreed with his being Batman), decides to break her Hippocratic Oath and let Stephanie Brown die. This happens at the end of a story where she saves the lives of murderers and criminals, and stands up to the police and gangbangers when they come into her clinic, saying that she can’t let any harm come to her patients, even if she has to break the law or risk her own life.

She lets Spoiler die. Why? She was thinking that maybe if Batman lost an ally in his war on crime, he’d hang up the cape and cowl once and for all (Even though it was the death of loved ones which lead him to become Batman, even though the crippling of Barbara Gordon or the death of Jason Todd—still in effect, as far as she knew—didn’t deter Batman one bit).

Rereading Leslie and Batman’s final conversation at the end of the book, I still can’t see how any of it makes any sense. She claims she wanted “to end it all—all the secret warriors in hoods and capes. The endless violence. I could no longer be a party to such madness. Best to sacrifice one to caution others from putting on those stupid masks.”

Uh, yeah, that’s one way. Or she could have saved Stephanie Brown’s life, then publicly outted her, Batgirl, Robin, Nightwing, Catwoman and Batman, with enough evidence that she’d have to be believed, thus ending, or at least making very difficult, their lives as “secret warriors.”

More ludicrous still, this pacifist who has spent much of her life bitching at Batman for punching out crooks and spraying them with sleeping gas, pulls out a revolver and says, “I’m too cowardly to take the last step. That’s what you’re here for, Bruce.” Or in other word, “Look, I know you don’t kill, and have never killed anyone, and yes, I know I’ve spent my entire life telling you to be less violent, but, would you mind shooting me?”

He says no, of course, and then gives her a speech about how killing to stop the cycle of violence is “a sick idea from an evil mind.” And evil mind like Police Commissioner James Gordon’s? Or any of the GCPD who have killed in the line of duty? Or soldiers fighting in wars? Or Wonder Woman, who offed Max Lord and never had Batman trying to bring her in? Or former fellow Justice Leaguers like Aquaman, Green Arrow, Hawkman, Guy Gardener or Major Disaster? Or Superman, who killed the Phantom Zone criminals before vowing to never kill again? Or like Batman himself, who tried to kill the Joker at the end of “A Death in the Family?"

I particularly like when he tells her that she’s dead to him, “What’s left is just another soulless killer—one more name to be added to my criminal database.” Like this is the start of her criminal career or something, and she might appear in a mask and cape in next month's issue of Batman calling herself the Treatment With-Holder or something.

Would I Travel Back in Time to Buy the Original Issues Off the Shelf?: No. But man, if I could time travel, what I wouldn’t do to disrupt the Bat Office editorial meetings regarding this whole stupid crossover…

The Broken Universe: "Batgirl: Destruction's Daughter"

I was pretty surprised when I saw Batgirl: Destruction’s Daughter on the Diamond shipping list for release this week, as I have no idea why DC would actually want the stories within that trade collection to be read by any more readers.

Not because they’re not any good (Re-reading Andersen Gabrych’s three story arcs that comprise the collection this week in one sitting, I was reminded what a strong send-off it actually was for the character, bringing her personal story to a close while clearing her from the board to simplify the sprawling Bat-mythos).

No, I was surprised because it’s downright impossible to enjoy Adam Beechen’s debut story arc as the regular Robin writer after reading “Destruction’s Daughter.” As I’ve pointed out before here, Beechen’s arc presents Cassandra “Batgirl” Cain in a completely opposite manner than the way in which she was presented throughout the entire run of Batgirl, particularly in these last story arcs, "Destruction's Daughter" and "Blood Matters."

For example, in Robin, Tim follows a subtle clue left for him to find Cassie. Inside a fake Batgirl costume that Lynx was dressed in, Tim finds a tiny roll of paper, with Navajo writing on it. In narration, Tim tells us that Batman taught he and Cassie Navajo just in case they ever went up against the Signal Man. Which is odd, because in "Destruction’s Daughter," Oracle and Batgirl again discuss her inability to read (any language, let alone Navajoh), and Oracle even runs experiments on Cassie’s brain, determining that it’s possible for her to learn to read, although it will be difficult.

In Batgirl #67, part two of “Destruction’s Daughter,” Cassandra visits the Bronze Tiger in Detroit, and he lays out to her David Cain’s attempts to train an ultimate assassin in the past. First he tried training a whole crop of kids, but it failed, and he put them all down, the last of which was likened to a “mad dog.” He then tried raising a “few” from infancy, as he did with Cassandra, but ultimately decided that genetics must be the key, and he therefore decided to try with his own child, Cassandra. Near the climax of the Destruction’s Daughter trade, Cassie even faces off against one of these other children of Cain’s, Mad Dog.

But in Beechen’s Robin story, Cassie freaks out at Cain and Robin, ranting, “I thought I was the only one! The only one you trained! The only one you taught! The only one you loved!” Clearly, she knew that she wasn’t the only one for at least a year, so why did the discovery of this Annalea send her over the edge all of a sudden?

In “Destruction’s Daughter,” Nyssa al Ghul and Shiva try to thrust leadership of the League of Assassins on Cassie, but she repeatedly refuses. She’s uncomfortable with killing, obviously, but also with leadership of any kind. When she smashes up Nyssa’s operation and the League-in-training divides into two factions, one looks to Cassie for leadership. It’s a role she’s very uncomfortable with, owing to her poor language skills, and she stumbles through giving them the most basic instructions.

But one year later, in the pages of Robin, not only has she apparently mastered her language skills, never pausing for an elipses as she did throughout the run of her own book, but speaking in complete sentences. She’s also taken over the League of Assassins, and now acts as it’s leader.

More troubling though is her sudden decision to start killing again. Though she was trained from birth to kill, after she committed her first murder, she freaked out and ran away from Cain, spending almost a decade as a mute runaway. After she became Batgirl, succeeding Batman became her number one ambition, although she still felt she was unworthy of life, having taken one herself (a duel to the death with Lady Shiva during which she had a near death experience cured her of this).

Throughout "Destruction’s Daughter” and “Blood Matters,” she continually re-asserts this belief:

“Heroes don’t kill.”

“My heart only knows one thing…killing is wrong. No matter what. Or who. Isn’t it?”

“Killing is killing. And killing is wrong.”

Throughout this last storyline, the villains and supporting characters like Alpha tell her that she must kill, it’s her destiny to kill, and some of them even make the argument that killing is actually the moral thing to do in some cases, if you’re taking a life from someone who would go on to take many more lives themselves.

Cassie seems to become convinced of this at the end, when she agrees to another fight to the death with Shiva, pausing to ask how many Shiva has killed since the last time they fought. And certainly the “Isn’t it?” in the quote above shows that she was at least mildly confused about the absolute “Killing is wrong” line that Batman follows wholeheartedly.

But though she technically kills Shiva, breaking her neck and then impaling her on a hook that immediately begins to rip through her flesh, that hook is over a Lazarus Pit, which magically restores those immersed in it to life (indeed, Shiva appears in Robin even before Cassandra does).

The last page of Destruction’s Daughter says that Cassandra Cain was “born to be something unlike the world had ever seen. A dancing hunter,” an metaphor for her assassin’s training used throughout the last three issues of the series, “But she didn’t want that.”

And yet one year later, she’s doing just that. She also takes lives left and right. She claims to have killed Nyssa, Lynx and Annalea, and either she or David Cain broke the necks of the various ninja henchmen that had assaulted Robin.

It’s perhaps worth noting that between the end of Batgirl and the “Boy Wanted” arc of Robin, DC (unwisely, in my opinion) rebooted their continuity. As part of Infinite Crisis, DC continuity was temporarily unraveled, and then violently put back together, with changes big and small having occurred. So, in effect, Batgirl continuity, like all other DC continuity, was destroyed and rebuilt during the crisis, and the changes to it haven’t been revealed.

It’s quite possible then that contrary to what Oracle said in pre-Infinite Crisis continuity, Cassie could learn language and had learned Navajo in the new post-IC continuity. It’s possible that she was a better speaker and more charismatic leader than we thought. And it’s possible that she really did want to be leader of the League of Assassins after all, and that she didn’t really regard killing as such a big deal after all.

But if that’s the case, why on earth would DC publish Batgirl: Destruction’s Daughter at all? If something was so wrong with Batgirl continuity that it needed to be erased and changed during the Crisis, then why continue to introduce these broken stories to new readers? Clearly one of these storylines is no longer true and should not be read; by publishing this in trade format, DC seems to be implying that it's the Robin arc that gets Batgirl wrong.

On this, then, we agree.

Seven Better Things For DC To Have Done With Batgirl Than What They Did in Robin

Cassandra Cain was raised by her father, the assassin David Cain to be the world’s greatest killer, at the expense of teaching her anything most human beings would find useful things to know how to do—like speak. Instead, Cassandra “spoke” the language of movement, being able to read body language to the point that she could flawlessly predict the moves her opponent would make.

But after her first kill as a little girl, Cassandra became revolted by her own actions and her father, and fled his care, resurfacing in her late teens in Gotham City. There she became an agent of Barbara Gordon, Batman’s information broker (and the original Batgirl), and, after saving Commissioner Gordon from Cain’s attempts to assassinate him, Oracle and Batman took Cassandra in, making her the new Batgirl.

This happened in 1999, in the midst of the big Batman crossover story dubbed “No Man’s Land,” one of the stronger such Bat events. Shortly afterwards, Batgirl would graduate to her own title, the first 25 issues of which were rather excellent, comprising a grand wuxia-style epic set in Batman’s universe, featuring a unique hero (female, Asian, illiterate, partially mute) and wonderful art by Damion Scott. (They’re collected in trades Silent Running, A Knight Alone, Death Wish and Fists of Fury ). After Scott, and original writers Kelley Puckett and Scott Peterson left the title, it’s quality plummeted, but usually had something recommending it, be it James Jean’s gorgeous covers, or, in it’s last months, Pop Mhan’s fantastic pencil art.

Anyway, back within the DC Universe itself, things were going to hell in a highly flammable hand basket, particularly in Batman’s world (see Identity Crisis, Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1, the five “Countdown” minis and Infinite Crisis). Batgirl was booted out of Gotham and briefly set up shop in Bludhaven (a miserable low point in the series collected in Kicking Assassins, but for God’s sake, don’t read it).

From there, she left the states all together, on a quest to find her mother real mother, who turned out to be the most likely suspect: The world’s greatest martial artist and killer, Lady Shiva (This story is to be collected in Destruction’s Daughter, due in September).

In a battle to the death between Batgirl and Shiva—their third—she snaps Shiva’s neck and impales her on a hook, seemingly killing her, and breaking her promise to herself and Batman never to kill again. But the hook she impaled her mom on is dangling over a Lazarus Pit, so named because it brings those who fall into it back to life.

On the last page of the last issue of her series, in narration, Cassandra Cain tells us that she’s deciding to reject the path of the assassin that is her blood parents’ way (Shiva had just made her the Darth Vader pitch prior to their battle) and the superhero path of her surrogate parents, Batman and Oracle.

Then a year passes, “off screen” as it were. This is the missing year that most of DC’s titles skipped ahead during the line-wide “One Year Later” event, with that missing year currently being told in real-time series 52.

She pops up in Robin, where she’s made a 180-degree turn and taken her mom up on her offer to become the leader of the League of Assassins after all…a year ago, she couldn’t read and was just learning to speak, but she had wrested control of a group of assassins. She now kills without compunction, despite the fact that her first kill changed her life completely and instilled in her a deep guilt that lead for her to wish for her own death. She seems to be wearing her mom’s old hand me downs, and is chatting like a Bond villain.

Basically, DC took one of Batman’s two current sidekicks, turned her evil for no apparent reason, and made her into an antagonist for Batman’s other sidekick, Robin.

What could they have done with her?

1). Left things where they were at the end of Batgirl Cassandra had already relinquished her role as Batgirl and was shown walking off into the sunset, with writer Andersen Gabrych tying up many of the character’s loose ends and bringing a sense of closure to her overall story. He had also, wisely, essentially assigned her to story limbo.

Where is Cassandra Cain? What’s she doing? Will she ever be Batgirl again? Will she grow up to be Batwoman? Will she be a hero? Will she retire and become a civilian, grow up and have a totally civilian life? Will it forever be a mystery? By having her simply disappear at the end of her series, claiming to quit/move on, DC left it so we would never really know. Unless they decided someday that they wanted us to.

From DC’s standpoint, this would have cleared her off the board, making room for a smaller supporting cast in Batman’s life, as well as a new female version of him that is about to debut to much fanfare (You may have heard of a certain lesbian Batwoman by now). But at the same time, this move doesn’t remove her from the board completely—if anyone ever has a great idea with what to do with Cassandra Cain in the future, the character will still exist and the potential to tell that story will be there, waiting to be tapped.

In a big company with a long history and cohesive fictional universe like DC’s, it makes very little sense to ever un-create or de-create a character, as they did by turning Batgirl evil seemingly at random.

2.) Killed her in Identity Crisis This was an epic miniseries in which it seemed, for a while at least, just about any character could actually die. By series end, writer Brad Meltzer had bumped off Elongated Man’s wife and a longtime Justice League supporting cast member Sue Dibney, Robin’s father, Firestorm and Captain Boomerang. Big events? Sure, among certain circles, but none of those characters had a Bat- or a Super- or Wonder- in their name.

Now, imagine if Batgirl were a victim! Sure, Cassandra Cain hasn’t even been around a decade yet, but the name “Batgirl” has more recognition than the majority of comic book superheroes.

Of course, Meltzer and DC editorial in general had been (rightly, I think) criticized for the incredibly brutality to women that occurred in Identity Crisis, a brutality that didn’t always prove necessary and seemed out of place in a DCU comic book about the Justice League—it was revealed that Sue Dibney was raped, and allusions to the villain being raped and molested in prison are made at the end. In light of all that, maybe killing another woman in this series would have only sent more charges of misogyny hurling Meltzer’s way.


3). Killed her in “War Games” Bat-crossover story “War Games” was supposed to be a rather pivotal point in the Bat-cast’s lives, as it essentially split Batman from his sizable support staff, which had grown to include not only Robin, Batgirl and Alfred, but also Nightwing, Oracle, the Spoiler, Catwoman and Dr. Leslie Thompkins.

In another act of rampant Women In Refrigerator-ism, the Spoiler would be brutally killed. This teenaged heroine, former girlfriend of Robin and one-time fill-in Robin was really Stephanie Brown. During the course of the story, she is captured by the villain Black Mask, who tortures her within an inch of her life. She ultimately escapes and is taken to Bruce Wayne’s friend and longtime ally Dr. Thompkins, who allows her to die (I don’t know why, and no, it doesn’t make sense).

Spoiler had her fans, of course, like any comic book character. But she was a minor character at best, one of the most minor in Gotham City. Imagine if it were Batgirl, one of Batman’s closest allies and a widely recognized “name” hero, who had died in the story instead. Again, this would have allowed Cassandra to be removed from the table, and to leave the table essentially the same character she was, rather than simply becoming a villain.

4) Something similar to what happened to the last Batgirl And speaking of brutality to women in DC Comics, what ever happened to Barbara Gordon, that freed up the name “Batgirl” for Cassandra to fill? In Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke, the Joker shot her in the spine, stripped her naked, photographed her body and then used a slideshow presentation of her naked, paralyzed body to try and break the spirit of her kidnapped father, commissioner Gordon (also naked, and put in a cage…Ah, the comics of the 1980s! )

Barbara Gordon survived of course, though she retired as Batgirl and was stuck in a wheelchair for life. She essentially entered into story limbo, at least until John Ostrander resurrected her as Oracle in his series Suicide Squad(criminally, still uncollected into trades), one of the worlds most accomplished computer experts, hackers and information brokers. She would rejoin the Batman cast, graduate to her own ensemble book Birds of Prey, and later the JLA and become one of the most important (and interesting) characters in the DC Universe.

What would be the point of having Batgirl II suffer a similar fate to Batgirl I? Well, the attack on the original Batgirl went a long way toward making the Joker seem like the most savage, evil motherfucker in comics, and explain why Batman was such a gloomy, brooding, pissed off son of a bitch compared to the rest of superherodom.

And, of course, it put Barbara Gordon into limbo until someone came up with a great idea of how to use her—one that turned out to make both creative and business sense.

5). Killed her in Infinite Crisis Okay, so “killed her” her or there is coming up a lot, huh? Well, a memorable death can go a long way toward establishing a real sense of suspense and danger in a fictional universe, and certainly beats a random character development like “So I woke up today and decided, ‘Hey, I’m evil now!’”

A lot happened in this series. No less than three (fictional) cities disappeared, continuity was rejiggered and heroes and villains died by the boatload, but the only “big” death was that of Superboy, a-decade-and-change-old character who surfaced in the wake of 1993’s “Death of Superman” story.

He carried his own title for about 100 issues, but it was finally cancelled. He was the second character to use that name (Superman used to go by “Superboy”), and he was a clone of Superman, meaning he was easily brought back to life.

His death wasn’t quite as big a deal as the deaths in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, which Infinite Crisis was a sequel to—Supergirl and the Flash.

But imagine if Cassandra Cain had died in the Crisis. This would have been a nice parallel to the original, where Superman’s young, female protégé lost her life, and would have allowed DC to do a parallel of the most classic image of the original Crisis, that of Superman holding the dead body of Supergirl and howling in anguish, while saddened heroes looked on. Just switch the “Super’s” to “Bat’s” and voila! Instant Crisis homage.

Where, when and how would the death of Batgirl have fit into Infinite Crisis? In the penultimate chapters, writer Geoff Johns sent Nightwing and Superboy on a suicide mission; the former lived because he’s too popular to die, the latter died. Now, while Nightwing and Superboy are both younger versions of Batman and Superman, they’re not exactly equivalent (Nightwing is a grown-up, former sidekick, while Superboy is still a teenager and very much in the sidekick stage of his development).

Batgirl and Superboy, however, are both teenagers with roughly the same amount of experience. Plus, they once had a minor romantic relationship—very minor, three team-ups, one date and one kiss—which might have given their last battle a sort of Bonnie and Clyde/Romeo and Juliet intensity


6). Killed her at the end of her own title Actually Batgirl did get killed at the end of her own title. She took a knife to save someone else, and she died…but was put in a Lazarus Pit and was brought back to life by her mother, Lady Shiva. So Shiva could fight her to the death. We’ve already discussed how that turned out, but imagine if Cassandra would have died from that knife wound, or was killed by Shiva? That would have been a major shock—after all, how many heroes actually die in their own series? Hell, it was the last issue anyway, they might as well have offed her. A death in any of the aforementioned crossovers or event stories would have been more spectacular, but a death in her own series would have certainly been the bigger surprise.

7). Made her into the “Jade Canary” One of the (admittedly many) strange things about Cassandra Cain’s resurfacing as a villain one year later to menace Robin is that she was missing for a year at all. Given Batman’s rep as “the world’s greatest detective” and Oracle’s ability to find anyone anywhere at any time, it seems odd that they never found her—or apparently ever even looked.

But during that “missing year” in the life of the DC Universe, Lady Shiva struck a deal with Black Canary in the title Birds of Prey. She would send Canary to her former teacher, allowing her the benefit of the experience that made her the world’s greatest fighter. Canary agrees, but only if Shiva fills in for her, working alongside Oracle’s team of female vigilantes. Shiva does so, taking the name “the Jade Canary.”

At the end of the story arc, Black Canary abandons her lessons when she sees they’re making her too cruel, and Shiva leaves the Birds. Why not have Shiva’s daughter, and Oracle’s former surrogate daughter, join the team, using her mom’s now unused name? This would have cleared Cassandra out of the Bat-universe a bit, but allowed her to still be a hero.