Random Back Issues #168 - Batgirl #34

Like Batman hasn't been felt up by someone trying the, "sorry, didn't see ya there," trick before.

We got a kid coloring while his dad peers nervously through the peephole at someone pounding on the door. Dad asks his son if he forgives him. Kid says sure. The next page is a crime scene with two chalk outlines. Another weeknight in Gotham City.

Batman's nosing around with his flashlight, but Batgirl's fixated on the coloring book and the kid's chalk outline. She wants to help solve the murders, but Batman tells her she's not ready to be a detective. Does he explain what she's lacking? Of course not.

Next morning at the docks, someone tries to sell electronics with nothing inside. The buyer, blind or not, doesn't appreciate this. As the seller is hauled off, blind guy - called Ving - gets a call the, 'big, blind, furry eagle has landed!' as we see Batman busting heads in the background. Not sure why you wouldn't just say "Batman's here!" at that point. Cassandra's in the holographic training room Oracle has, still thinking about the dead kid. She punches the wall until her hands bleed. Then she punches some more. 

Meanwhile, Ving's assembled all his people and their merch at some warehouse, where they'll lay low for a week or two. This is how they intend to move into Gotham, hide in a panic room any time Batman starts sniffing around? Doesn't seem like that would work, since nobody could count on doing business with them. If you've got hot merchandise, are you going to sit on it until these guys poke their heads back out? But maybe they figure there's so many stupid crooks in Gotham there'll always be someone to deal with.

Irrelevant, though, 'cause when Ving opens the massive safe, Batgirl's inside. Then she's outside the safe, beating the dog mess out of at least thirty guys, while Ving stumbles around. Directly into Batman, who welcomes him to Gotham. When Ving protests it's impossible for them to have known, Bats replies everything's impossible until somebody does it, something Ving said earlier when one of his guys commented that they said it's impossible to move into Gotham. Clearly the guy only heard part of the sentence, it was actually impossibly stupid to move into Gotham. Forget Batman, you choose a warehouse that's name starts with "Two" and then you're dead.

Batgirl's waiting behind Ving, costume spattered with blood, and that's it for him. She wants to know who actually shot the kid. Batman squints at a hair he took from the crime scene and points at some guy that's already unconscious, then scrawls "DNA" on that poor schmuck's head in red marker as the cops arrive.

Cassandra's not satisfied, feeling they didn't do anything. Batman argues they caught the little boy's killer, and he'll face justice. Batgirl's response? 'Not enough.'  What about all the lives saved because these guys will be in jail? Still no. At which point Batman declares now she's ready to be a detective. I don't know, I feel like teaching her to read would be a helpful thing to tackle first. Also, Batman's a detective, and that didn't stop the murder from happening, which is what I think Batgirl really wants.

{2nd longbox, 112th comic. Batgirl (vol. 1) #34, by Kelley Puckett (writer), Daimon Scott (penciler), Robert Campanella (inker), Jason Wright (colorist), John Costanza (letterer)}

Random Back Issues #12 - Batgirl #18

Don't ya hate it when you show up to crash a payoff to an assassin and another hero shows up following the money? I'm not sure whether to be surprised it doesn't happen more often in Gotham (given the 500 vigilantes in town), or that it happens at all (given the amount of crime at any given time).

Batgirl spotted a guy in a convertible with a shoulder holster, who turns out to be the hitman Deadeye. The guy who hired Deadeye, a Mr. Vink, decides to stiff him on the fee and have him killed, but Batgirl and Robin show up independently to ruin the whole thing. Deadeye gets away, but Tim put a tracer on his car and gives the tracker to Cass, then splits abruptly, following Vink's men.

But Deadeye's out for revenge, so both trails converge at Vink's mansion, where the killer kidnaps Vink's daughter and is able to shoot Batgirl (who impressed Tim by dodging bullets earlier in the issue). Batgirl's only mildy surprised and pulls the bullet out shortly after. Turns out Deadeye has a cybernetic implant, so he only has to think of what he wants to shoot and he hits it, rendering Cass' ability to read body language irrelevant.

Deadeye wants his money, but Batgirl's certain he'll kill the girl anyway, as punishment for Vink breaking the rules. So she busts into his place, and right after the exchange below, charges at him and knocks him out. He got a shot off, but I'm assuming Cass was hit and just kept going. She's done it before when she lost her ability to read body language. I assume because there's no sign of a wound in any of the panels. Cass smashes the guy's gun hand, but if the implant does all the work, can't he just shoot left-handed?

In the aftermath, Tim admits he's been awkward around Batgirl because he's not sure how to handle her background as an assassin, especially in contrast to his 'normal' childhood. Sure, his mother died as part of a ransom scheme on the part of some voodoo drug lord guy (I think?) that also put his father in a wheelchair for a while, but sure, normal. If only he knew what was coming down the pike.

[2nd longbox, 80th issue. Batgirl (vol. 1) #18, by Kelley Puckett (writer), Daimon Scott (penciler), Robert Campanella (inker), Jason Wright (colorist), Digital Chameleon (separator), John Costanza (letterer)]

Sunday Splash Page #68

"Cass' Hatred of Circuses Was a Source of Strife Between her and Nightwing," in Batgirl #28, by Kelley Puckett (writer), Daimon Scott (penciler), Robert Campanella (inker), Jason Wright (colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

I didn't start buying the Cass Cain Batgirl series until after the abysmal War Games storyline. It was several years after that before I backtracked to the earlier issues, by the original creative team of Kelley Puckett and Daimon Scott.

Puckett and Scott handled most of the first three years of the series (excluding issues done by various fill-in artists, including Phil Noto, who isn't a bad artist, but it's whiplash inducing going from Scott's style to his.)

The first two years deal with Cass gaining the ability to speak, but losing the ability that lets her fight so effectively in the process. Regaining it puts her on a collision course with Lady Shiva, a battle Cass knows she can't win. In among all that is Cass trying to sort out her feelings about her father, the assassin David Cain, Oracle trying to protect Cass and get her to experience the world, and Batman being sort of distant. Trusting Cassandra to figure things out for herself, perhaps. 

(The writers who followed Puckett veered heavily into making Batsy an overbearing dickhead who tries to control Cass and keeps threatening to take the costume away for arbitrary reasons. He does that once during Puckett's run, but it's because Cass has no ability to defend herself, only attack, which is fairly reasonable.)

This is also the start of Cass and Stephanie Brown's friendship, so it has that going for it. There are a few pieces, mostly in the last year of the Puckett/Scott run, that don't really pay off. The three beings in the image above, being one of them. It never does seem to get established who they're controlled by. There are also a lot of issues tying into whatever Bat-event was happening that I didn't care about. Joker: Last Laugh, Bruce Wayne: Murderer, that one where Commissioner Gordon got shot. Puckett and Scott usually do their best to work with those, but the stories aren't about Cass, so it's hard to give a shit.

This stretch of his career is far and away my favorite for Daimon Scott. I actually first encountered his work during Bill Willingham's Robin run, which came several years after this. I wasn't a fan then, because Scott seemed to have gone so far into his own style he couldn't tell a story clearly. You can see some of the same tendencies in this run, but they're more reined in. Full-page splashes don't really do justice to his work on Batgirl, because I think his real skill was in laying out sequences of action. Cass isn't much for talking, she does stuff, fights, moves, and Scott really captures that. Whether it's a fight between her and Shiva, or her barely stifling a yawn sparring with Spoiler, or moving from rooftop to rooftop, Scott captures the sense of how smoothly and easily she can do those things.