Batgirl # 6 (2008)

 By Mark Rodriguez

Cassandra Cain lives with Bruce Wayne and his family while secretly using his resources to track down and kill her father. After Batgirl, Marque and Raveger busted up a plot involving an assassin army, now David Cain has to kill his target himself. The target turned out to be Oracle, Barbara Gordon. Batgirl finally shows up to defeat her father once and for all!! How will this all go down as we reach the epic conclusion?

 

"Batgirl/Redemption Road Chapter 6- The Great Gray Dragom" opens with Batgirl face to face with David Cain as she reminds herself to only see him as an enemy out to kill her friend Barbara and forget he's her father. Cain tells Batgirl that she's probably not there to help him, and she agrees. She says she's here to kill him and takes a swing at him while he takes the shot.

The gunshot blows up Barbara's coffee maker which tips her off to the sniper attack. She quickly tells Charlie to get down as she radios the Batcave. She tells Nightwing that she sees Batgirl and David Cain and they have taken fire. Nightwing says Batgirl ditched him without knowing where she was headed. He says Platinum Flats is hours away and asks if any of the Birds of Prey are in the area. Batgirl says they're not.

Nightwing tells Barbara to get to the safest piece of the building and to consider both of them to be threats. Barbara says it looks like Batgirl is actually fighting against Cain, and Nightwing says not to trust that. He send all available heroes over there. Just then Batman cuts in and says he is close by with Robin. He says they will handle this within the family. Barbara wishes Batman specified exactly how close he was as the rooftop battle continues.

Cain tosses small blades at Batgirl and she manages to knock one back and cut him across the face. Cain goes over how he trained her, and Batgirl tries to block him out. She kicks him in the face but Cain grabs her foot and elbows her in the face. Cain said the other children before her were failures, but with her, he had the genetics and non-linguistic upbringing worked out. He says she's weak and stubborn. He remarks she might say that she wasn't who she was bred to be but it's easy for him to get her to kill again.

Cain hits Cassandra in the stomach and then on the back of the head. As she falls, Cain says he can't keep working so hard to keep her on his side. This time she cost him his army and his partnership with Slade. He pulls out a gun and says it's time to put her down.

 

Batgirl legsweeps him and says she's not weak, she made her own choices. Cain tosses small bombs but Batgirl bounces them back with her cape. Cain has a knife and a pistol. Batgirl knocks the knife out of his hand, and then grabs his other wrist, twisting it and making him drop the gun. She plans to kill Cain so he can't hurt or poison others. She'll use what he taught her against him and she doesn't care what will happen to her afterwards.

Cain holds his wrist and says he'll always be a part of her even after he's gone. He reminds her back when she was five, and the first time she ever saw him go to work. He killed a diplomat and his family. Cassandra couldn't turn away. She has his eyes and a taste for the work of an assassin.

Cassandra remembers differently. She saw a storybook left behind by the murdered family. She picked it up and showed it to her father. He smacks the book out of her hand. She says he taught only what he wanted her to know, and let her see only what he wanted her to see.

Cain pulls out an escrima stick and says Cassandra lacked focus. He calls her an entitled brat and smacks her around with the stick. He says she could have had everything in the world if she stayed with him but all she did was take and take. He starts to choke her with the weapon.

Back to Barbara, Charlie wants to go and help. Barbara stops her and Charlie says she had already proven herself. Barbara says Cain is still extremely dangerous even with one hand. She says if she goes, Cain will use her against Batgirl and then kill them both. She tells Charlie to check if Cain didn't do anything to the building. Charlie obeys and vanishes. Barbara says David Cain is for Batgirl to deal with.

Batgirl tells Cain that him complaining about a girl that ruined him makes him sound like the whiny little brat. Cain angry raises his weapon, set to finish her. Batgirl socks him across the face telling him that he's the one that lacks focus. Batgirl says he never asked what she wanted. She wanted to read, she wanted to talk, but most of all she wanted a father and someplace she belongs. Cain crawls to grab his club but Cassie stomps on his hand. She punches him brutally and then kicks him off the side of the building.

 

Cain is hanging off the ledge, asking for help. Cassie is about to stomp on his hand to make him fall but stops herself. This is what she wants, but the pain won't go away even if he dies. She stands back and takes off her mask, choosing to do nothing. She figures this isn't killing him, this is just choosing not to save him. If he is able to save himself, she'll take him to prison. If he doesn't... she can live with that. Just then Cain loses his grip and Cassie reaches out to save him.

Cain landed on another ledge which wasn't low enough to be a fatal fall and Batman was there to catch him. Cassie said she tried to save him and Robin says he saw her. He says after everything Cain did to her, it's impressive she moved at all. Batman says she didn't kill him when she could have and she even tried to help. He says she's free from the worst things he taught her. Batman says he knows how she feels, that her mission isn't over. Batman says that Nightwing, Oracle and Robin feel the same way. The mission is never over, but every criminal they stop brings them one step closer. Cain has taught many killers, and even though she stopped some there are more out there. Robin radios Barbara to tell her that Batgirl is fine but Nightwing won't be too crazy about what's about to happen.

Batman tells Cassandra that cleaning up Cain's messes is s worthy mission. He says when they return to Gotham, he wants to starts adoption proceedings. Batman says she is one of them and she should have let her known sooner. Batman says he wants to her know that while he's around she'll always have a real family.

 

My thoughts- 

So I originally found the first five issues over at Bent Wookee Comix and wasn't expecting the final issue to be hard to find at a decent price. It's been a minute so I think I might have gotten this one from Amazon because it might have been before I discovered Hipcomic. The pages look like the comic was stored in a humid place, but luckily it's not the classic newspaper print paper so the pages themselves aren't too messed up.

Overall it was a cool story as Cassandra literally faced her demons and even ran into Deathstroke and Ravager along the way. Throughout the story Cassandra has her inner monologues about where she felt her life was headed and what to do with herself after she killed Cain. Marque was the perfect dark mirror which shown the kind of person Cassandra might have become. Marque was also rebelling against her father but she was completely consumed by revenge and cared little about innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.

Despite her self-doubts, I was along for the ride with Cassie and wondering if she was going to kill her father. I temporarily forgot about the overall no-killing rule within the Bat-Family. Her attempts to save her father, despite everything, put her in Batman's good graces despite earlier doubts. I do like the different dynamics with the Bat-Family. Robin trusts Cass. Barbara actively helped cover up for Cass. Nightwing doesn't trust her at all. Batman was more on the fence, waiting for the final verdict on her. Trusting her, but not fully, at least not yet, as Batman tends to do.

I was expecting Marque to show up in this. Yeah, she got her ankle slashed, but I'd imagine she'd be trained to somehow continue. I guess I was expecting her to show and either get killed Cain to further enrage Cassandra, or become a liability... or both. After doing some digging around, it surprised me that this mini-series is, to date, her sole appearance. You'd think Cassandra's blood sister would return, especially when she survived this story when they could have just as easily killed her off. I guess Cassandra never returned to check up on her like she said.

The story ends on a happy yet foreboding note. Batman gives Cassandra the hug her father never gave her and tells her that as long as he's around she'll always have a real family. The 'I'm' in 'as long as I'M around' was in bold. Just below we get the message about an upcoming story called 'Batman R.I.P.' Man, these characters never get a break. I mean what happens to Cass when Batman 'dies'?

The comic had more ads regarding Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe, but we seen those in the last one. The ad that stood out the most for me was The Dark Knight movie coming out on BluRay with over three hours of bonus features. That's... a lot of features...

 

Now that I finished this classic mini-series, we're going to jump forward several years as Cassie would hand the mantle over to Stephanie Brown and become the Black Bat instead. Then she was mostly missing (from existence??) during the New 52 until she returned under the codename Orphan which lasted into the Rebirth reboot. Now she's back as Batgirl in a new series as part of DC's All In line that started in 2024. Yes, I wanted to finish reading up on this one before jumping into modern day.