Coming Up With An Apt Hero Name Is hard

I've been thinking about Cassandra Cain lately. I'm not sure whether that's because Diamondrock is worried she might be the apparently villainous White Canary in Birds of Prey #1, which in turn makes me worried he might be right* or if it's just because I haven't seen her anywhere since she handed her costume off to Stephanie Brown.

I've been thinking about how to get her back in the costumed do-gooder game, specifically, what codename she could go under. Technically, there's no reason she can't be Batgirl, too. If there can be 7000 Green Lanterns, and 3 Flashes, and so on, I think the world can handle 2 Batgirls. They could work together, or separately** with occasional team-ups (where their cases coincide). Leave one solo, add the other to a team***, whatever floats the boat.

Perhaps that would be considered too confusing, though. Then I thought if Stephanie can be Batgirl, maybe Cass could be Spoiler, but I couldn't come up with a good reason for that swap. Then I thought about reviving her Kasumi identity from Justice League Elite, but when she was doing that, she was pretending to be a stabby killer ninja, and this being comics, that might have some weird feedback effect to some leftover brainwashing and drugs from Deathstroke, and she's back to being evil again. You scoff, but I've seen characters advance such hypotheses before****.

New codename then. Since I was thinking about her working with the Birds, I started thinking of bird-themed names. First I thought of Kestrel, because it's a small, swift, raptor, but it's also the name of an enemy of Hawk and Dove's. Much as I might enjoy Hawk flipping out when Oracle introduces "Kestrel", then promptly getting his butt whooped by someone who isn't what he expected, it's probably needlessly confusing things. Then I though about how Cassandra tends to operate at night, and is mostly silent, so maybe "Owl". I figured it might work, since owls have a tendency to watch carefully with those giant eyes, and Cass is all about reading people with her eyes. Except owls are also considered bookish. I considered Night-Owl (too Watchmen), Hunter of the Night (it'd probably be turned to Night Hunter, which sounds very 90s to me), and I'm at a wall. Maybe she should just be Cassandra Cain, uncodenamed vigilante.

Anyway, it's a little brainstorming exercise I had fun with, and you can throw some ideas in if you'd like. As for me, this is it until Monday. I'll be off at a party at a lake over the weekend. Maybe by the time I return, there'll be comics waiting.

* If it is, I know I ought to trust Gail Simone. If nothing else, her track record with Secret Six would guarantee Cass would be a more interesting villain than she was during her prior jaunt through the dark side.

** Cassandra could be the globe-trotting Batgirl, since she has less holding her in Gotham. Besides, she's already traveled the world on her own before.

*** Teen Titans, the BoP, the Outsiders. OK, maybe not the Outsiders.

**** Specifically after Jean-Paul Valley became Batman, and first went after Bane, but before he actually beat him. He and Tim Drake had a falling out, then Tim and Nightwing chat, and Tim worries aloud that the Azrael costume he designed for Jean-Paul was too similar to one worn by some Bat-foe called, um, Metal head? He had spikes allover the costume, and a sort of whip/flail thing on the top of his head he would swing at people to cut them? Tim thought the design being so close to a villain's may have triggered some of the "system" and that was why Jean-Paul was getting more violent. Cripes, having explained that, why did I even bring it up?