What I Bought 2/5/2025 - Part 2

I had Weird Al's "Your Horoscope for Today" stuck in my head most of last week. 'The position of Jupiter says you should spend the rest of the week facedown in the mud,' seemed particularly resonant, and I'm not even a Cancer. As to whether I'm a cancer, that's a different question entirely.

Batgirl #4, by Tate Brombal (writer), Takeshi Miyazawa (artist), Wayne Faucher (inker), Mike Spicer (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - The guy at the store asked if Cass was using those throwing stars or if they were thrown at her. I asserted it was probably the second option.

So Cassandra trusts basically none of the people Shiva's thrown in with, but while they argue, the Unburied launch a surprise attack on the train. In the form of one of their guys blowing himself up while inside the train. Brombal introduces two more "grandmasters" to go with that Kalden guy. Chodak's a big guy whose voice balloons have thicker-than-normal lines, suggesting a deep voice. Nergui speaks in whisper and carries giant golden (magic?) scissors. The designs are distinct from each other, while sticking to the general pattern the Unburied followed, but nothing wildly creative.

That's about all we get on them, besides the fact they can fight pretty well. Shiva tries to withdraw with Batgirl, and it turns out Shiva has a few of those special flower petals. What a shock, he said insincerely. But she does confide in Cassandra that she thinks everything that was "soft" in her went into Cassandra, and not wanting to acknowledge that part of herself may be why she left her daughter to David Cain. Before that conversation can go anywhere, the grandmasters catch up, Cass gets KO'ed in one hit by Kalden, and Shiva's a prisoner. Cass used to be able to take more of a punch than that.

One thing Brombal keeps coming back to, either in Cassandra's captions boxes or Shiva's comments, is who is Cassandra, really? In this issue, she keeps trying to think of what Batman (who she calls her father, and I don't love that, given how much of a controlling dickhead he was back in her first ongoing series) would do. But it doesn't seem to be working well for her. Either she can't come up with a plan fast enough, or the "plan" is just "beat everyone up." Cassandra's been defining herself as being different aspects of the people who matter to her, or by rejecting others, but it's like trying to map a territory via negative space. You might get the boundaries, but the specifics are lost.

I have no clue what conclusion Brombal will have Cassandra reach, but I guess that'll come when this arc concludes.