Favourite Heroine Wizard Fan Awards 1999

A new Batgirl was introduced during No Man's Land. She first appeared in No Man's Land #1, not that you would know from reading that comic that it was her and not Batman.

The NML storyline starts three months after Gotham was declared a No Man's Land and with Batman not having been seen in that time. It emerges later that he has been secretly creating a number of new bases from which to operate. It is because of Batman's absence that the woman who would become Batgirl decided that Gotham needed the Bat. When Batman did appear and saw that there was a new Batgirl, he immediately knew who she was and set out to test her willingness to follow his orders. When Batman decided that The Huntress didn't live up to the name of Batgirl he confronted her with her failings.

When the new Batgirl first appeared, there was considerable interest in who was behind the mask: Detective Renee Montoya was the favourite. It would be months before the character who would eventually be the new Batgirl appeared. This brings up a number of questions: They clearly wanted to introduce a new Batgirl at the start of NML but at what point did they decide that Huntress was wearing the Batgirl costume and when did they decide that they would need to introduce an entirely new character to be Batgirl.

The character who would become the new Batgirl was given her new role very quickly after her introduction, as one of Oracle's couriers in No Man's Land.. The daughter of an assassin called Cain, who had been one of Bruce Wayne's teachers: you need to know how assassins operate to be able to defend yourself against them.

Cassandra Cain, as we now know her, was introduced in the 2-part story Mark of Cain and was given the job of Batgirl in the next issue (Assembly, LOTDK #120). I feel that her introduction was rushed, we've only just met her and already she's Batgirl. J Michael Straczynski is fond of quoting Anton Chekov in relation to dramatic structure in that if you are going to use a gun in act 3, you have to show it in act 1. If the Bat editors knew about her earlier then she should have been written into the story earlier, otherwise people will say where the frag did she come from? Greg Rucka's No Man's Land novel supposedly deals with her arrival in Gotham in more detail, but the fact that it didn't appear in the comics in the first place suggests that she was created after they had introduced a new character using the name of Batgirl..

Cassandra Cain has a major problem in that she has never learnt to speak: her father concentrated on teaching her how to kill believing that the language of violence was all she needed for the life he had planned for her. One of the developments in modern comics is the way in which writers delve into the minds of the main characters making them pseudo-narrators, there has been no sign of the writers doing this in any of her appearances I've read. This brings up the question of how much she understands of what people say; in 1984 George Orwell made the point that if you don't have the vocabulary then you can't understand the concept.

Batgirl is considered to be a martial artist on the same level as as: Batman; Connor Hawke, who succeeded his father Oliver Queen as Green Arrow: Richard Dragon, who taught Barbara Gordon after she was put in a chair by the Joker; and Lady Shiva, who taught Robin and also taught Bruce Wayne in Knightsend.

Thr initial issues of the new Batgirl series have been very successful in terms of sales, it remains to be seen how the character will develop and if she will remain so popular. DC said that she got her series because of the interest generated in Batgirl during NML, but this interest was generated before Cannsndra Cain appeared.