The question is, does it have to be a happy legacy? Does the
character taking the mantle have to be glad of it, and like their predecessor
or not? If yes, the answer is Cassandra Cain.
Cass took being Batgirl seriously. At first, because she
understood what the symbol meant, and what Batman expected of her, and she
worked hard to live up to that. To the point of getting herself briefly killed,
even. But Barbara was the one she turned to with questions about things. The
scene above actually started with Cass asking Barbara what a soul was, and it
went in other directions when Oracle didn’t have a solid answer. I have no idea
what would have happened if Cass had asked Bruce that question, but probably
nothing good considering the attitude he usually took in her book.
The end result of the conversation is Cassandra gets
curious about Babs’ time in costume, which sounds very different from her own,
and ultimately steals Barbara’s old costume. Which leads to a sequence where
Cass struggles to adjust to fighting in boots with heels on them, and Tim behaves most
unprofessionally when they have an impromptu team-up. The costume gets a little
torn up, but Barbara’s not bothered at all. Her first real question is whether
Cass had fun or not, to which Cassandra replies that she did.
They had their differences. Barbara tried very hard to not
only act as buffer between Cass and Bruce’s worst tendencies, but also to
introduce Cassandra to things she thought a girl her age should get to
experience. Things Cass was not terribly interested in, like vacations and
cruise ships. Barbara got frustrated with Cass’ slow-to-indifferent progress
learning to read, and Cass was sore at Barbara when she had a falling out with
Batsy after War Games. But they reconciled before the end of Cassandra’s series,
and were willing to help each other (I’m just going to ignore that whole
post-Infinite Crisis stretch where Cass was nuts/brainwashed and Oracle didn’t
seem to be doing anything, because that was just a bad editorial decision all
around).
On the other hand, there is one DC character I like more
than Cass, and he’s also a legacy character.
It just isn’t a real great legacy.
Ray Terrill’s dad was the original Ray. He was also a HUGE
jerk, at least throughout Ray’s mini-series and ongoing. He had his
brother pose as Ray’s dad and pretend any exposure to light would kill Ray, as
opposed to granting him awesome power. Christopher Priest would later explain
why Happy feared that outcome, but for a long time the apparent explanation
was, “He’s an asshole.” When his brother dies, he finally reveals himself to
Ray, but with some nonsense about how he’s a ghost now, and needs Ray to save
an island from a volcano.
When Ray sees through that ruse, after almost failing to
save the village, and then almost dying in the eruption he redirected into the
ocean, Happy tells another load of bull. This time he’s an alien who was
stranded on Earth, where he met Ray’s mom. So Ray is half-alien. This also
turned out to be a lie, and Priest later revealed Ray’s mom didn’t die in
childbirth, but she thought Ray had been stillborn. So when she meets Ray (at
the same time he’s learning she’s still alive, living with his dad in the
countryside out West), she thinks he’s Happy’s kid from some affair her husband
had. Sheesh. Maybe Ray should have asked that New Genesis guy if he could adopt
his name as a legacy. He’d only have to add “Light” to the front of his name. Still, a
legacy is a legacy, I guess.
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