Cassandra Cain

• 1. Introduction

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  Cassandra Cain is a DC Comics superheroine who first appeared in Batman #567, published in July 1999. Writer Kelley Puckett and penciler Damion Scott are generally credited with inventing her. They gave her a trait that is rare among comic book heroes. She could not read, and she could barely speak. Even so, she grew into one of the most capable martial artists in Batman's world. Along the way she wore the names Batgirl, Black Bat and Orphan. She has been a hero, a hired killer and the head of the League of Assassins. How does a girl raised without words end up fighting beside Batman? What drove her to turn on the people who trusted her? And why did readers organize to protest when she did?

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• 2. A Language Without Words

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  David Cain was searching for a perfect bodyguard for Ra's al Ghul when he watched Sandra Wu-San fight her sister Carolyn in a martial arts tournament. He decided Sandra was holding back against her sister. So he murdered Carolyn and lured Sandra into a trap. He offered to spare her life if she bore his child and left that child for him to raise. Sandra agreed. After Cassandra was born, Sandra set out to become Lady Shiva.

  Cain trained his daughter as an assassin from birth. He never taught her to read or write. Her only language was the movement of other people's bodies. She learned to read those movements so well that she could predict what a person would do next. Cain wanted a world-class fighter and a successor, and he made violence and combat her first form of communication.

  When Cassandra was eight, Cain took her to kill a businessman. As the man died, she read the feelings in his body and understood what she had done. She ran from her father. Her activities after that night are a mystery, until the story arc known as No Man's Land.

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• 3. Gotham in Ruins

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  An earthquake leveled Gotham City and sealed it off from the outside world, and in that wreckage Cassandra saved Commissioner Gordon's life. That act won her the approval of Bruce Wayne, and she became the new Batgirl. Her father tried to ruin it by sending Wayne a video of her first killing. Wayne kept faith in her anyway. She had taken several bullets to save the life of a hired assassin, which proved how much she valued human life.

  In 2000, she became the first Batgirl to headline her own ongoing comic series. Wayne sent her to live with Barbara Gordon, who worked as Oracle. Barbara said she preferred to live alone. But Cassandra was never home and never spoke, so little changed.

  Then came a costly fix. A telepath rewired Cassandra's brain so that she could think in words. The change dulled her gift for reading body language, and she had relied on that gift completely in a fight. She could no longer fight crime effectively. Worried, Wayne took away her costume and began teaching her defensive skills.

  In 2004, during the "War Games" story arc, Batman leaned heavily on her to keep the violence of a Gotham gang war under control.

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• 4. Friends and Fights

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  A cruise ship is where Cassandra met Conner Kent. He shared her first kiss, and she even visited him at his home in Smallville. The romance never became serious. Cassandra was not known for her private life, and this was the exception.

  At Batman's suggestion, she moved to Blüdhaven with Tim Drake, the third Robin, who supported her financially. The Penguin hired Deathstroke to kill her. Deathstroke passed the contract to his daughter Rose, the current Ravager. Cassandra beat Rose by playing on her emotions and leaving her open for one critical strike. Deathstroke then had no choice but to get his daughter medical attention.

  In Blüdhaven, Cassandra also built a friendship with Brenda, who owned the local coffee shop. She had a very short relationship with a boy named Zero. All of her friends were killed in the Blüdhaven disaster.

  Batman also sent her undercover as Kasumi in the Justice League Elite. Working under Vera Black, the team tracked and eliminated metahuman threats. Green Arrow and the Flash were among her teammates. Coldcast became the first Leaguer to learn her true identity. When he was accused of murder, the team discovered he had been manipulated by Menagerie. Menagerie was himself being steered by the spirit of Manchester Black, who wanted to drive his sister to destroy London. The Elite, united by the spirit of Manitou Raven, freed Vera and defeated Black. The team disbanded after that mission, and Cassandra turned to a different puzzle, the identity of her mother.

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• 5. Shiva

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  Lady Shiva could read people the way Cassandra once had, and Cassandra noticed. She asked Shiva to teach her the skill again. Shiva agreed on one condition. In a year's time, they would fight a duel to the death. Cassandra accepted, because she would rather be perfect for a year than mediocre for a lifetime.

  When the year ended, Cassandra died within minutes. Shiva restarted her heart, having realized that Cassandra had a death wish. She wanted a real fight. In the second fight, Cassandra won, but she did not kill Shiva.

  Later, Cassandra gathered evidence that Shiva might be her mother. She sought her out and rejoined the League of Assassins. Nyssa al Ghul proclaimed her the "One Who Is All", and the League's students split, half following Shiva and half following Cassandra. In the clash that followed, her "adoptive brother", the Mad Dog, mortally wounded her as she saved one of her students. Shiva revived her in a Lazarus Pit and answered her questions about her parentage.

  Cassandra asked whether Shiva was still killing, and whether she would ever stop. Shiva said she was still killing, and added, "It's why I had you." Cassandra agreed to fight her to the death once more. After a closely matched battle, she broke Shiva's neck and paralyzed her. She seemed ready to place Shiva in the Lazarus Pit, but Shiva begged her not to. Cassandra instead impaled her on a hook hanging over the pit, apparently killing her. Then she gave up the identity of Batgirl and returned to a wandering life. That life would not last.

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• 6. The Villain Year

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  Robin #150, published in July 2006, revealed a shocking turn after the "One Year Later" jump. Cassandra was now the head of the League of Assassins. Tim Drake had captured David Cain and brought him to the League as ransom to free her. Instead he found that she was the new leader. She handed him a gun and told him to shoot Cain and join her. Tim refused, so she shot Cain herself. Their fight ended when the platform beneath them exploded. When Tim returned, Cassandra and Cain were gone and the ninjas' necks had been snapped. Tim had secretly recorded the conversation. It cleared his name, but it also branded Cassandra a murderer.

  In Supergirl #14, from April 2007, Dark Angel hired her to kill Supergirl. Cassandra kidnapped Captain Boomerang as bait and fought Supergirl at the League's Tibetan headquarters. Her swords gave off red sun energy that stripped away Supergirl's powers. Then crystals mysteriously grew out of Supergirl's body and injured Cassandra. In another story, she approached Dodge, a would-be hero who could teleport. She wanted him to steal a drug that gave humans metahuman strength, so that she could build an army. She also murdered the businessman who made it.

  The Teen Titans pages offered a different explanation. Batman, Robin and Nightwing had left on a year-long trip, and Harvey Dent was charged with protecting Gotham instead of her. Deathstroke preyed on her longing for a loving father and on her sense of abandonment. Apparently he injected her with drugs from a distance, and they warped her mind. He recruited her into Titans East, where she wore the Batgirl costume again. Robin later injected her with a counter-serum, and she vowed to kill Deathstroke. During a later battle she tried to do exactly that, but Nightwing stopped her and knocked her unconscious. Nightwing demanded that Deathstroke face the courts. Deathstroke escaped with help from Inertia, and Cassandra and Duela Dent vanished without a word.

  Readers were furious. Wizard Magazine #182 called the storyline one of the most controversial changes to come from DC's "One Year Later" event. Fans organized websites and letter-writing campaigns. Critics generally praised the portrayal of Tim Drake but not the portrayal of Cassandra. Writer Adam Beechen said he was told the first arc would present Cassandra as a major new enemy for Robin. He said nobody gave him a reason for the change, so he worked out the details with his editors. Dan DiDio said, "I'm glad to see there was a reaction created, it shows that people care about the character and want to see something happen with her." Soon he and others promised that she would go back to basics, as in her early adventures before she could talk.

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• 7. Many Names

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  In October 2007, DC announced that Cassandra would take up the Batgirl identity as a member of the Outsiders, in a series written by Chuck Dixon. She moved into the team's apartment but showed little desire to socialize. Green Arrow was furious that the former leader of the League of Assassins had joined. After a mission in which he and Batgirl fought one another, the two gained an unusual respect for each other. The team accepted her more fully after she freed them all from the Chinese military. When the 2008 "Batman R.I.P." storyline left the Outsiders without their leader, Cassandra took command. She believed Batman had recruited her for exactly that contingency.

  When Batman was found, she moved into Wayne Manor, hunting her father and Deathstroke. Her research showed they had started a school to train her "sisters". She fought her father on a rooftop and sent him over a ledge. When he lost his grip, she tried to save him and failed. Batman accepted her back and said he would adopt her. Yet after Bruce Wayne's apparent death, she passed the cowl to her close friend Stephanie Brown in 2009 and left Gotham.

  When Wayne returned, her disillusionment turned out to be a ruse. She had handed over the mantle willingly, following her mentor's orders in case of his death or disappearance. In Hong Kong she worked as a vigilante with no codename. Tim visited and tried to persuade her to come home, but she said Stephanie needed the Batgirl role more than she did. Before leaving, he gave her a copy of her old costume and hoped she would wear a Bat-symbol. She took the offer. In 2011, Grant Morrison's Batman Inc. series revealed that she had taken the name Black Bat. She brought down a heroin-smuggling operation in Hong Kong.

  Guilt over explosives that had left China for Gotham brought her home. A villain called the Architect had destroyed three Gotham bridges, killing dozens of civilians. Cassandra joined Red Robin, Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne to stop him. Damian mocked her and suggested Bruce had sent her to Hong Kong as a demotion. She still pulled him out of a nightclub seconds before a bomb destroyed it. Once the Architect was captured, she chose to stay in Gotham.

  After the New 52 reboot, she appeared in what might be a variant timeline, as a member of Barbara Gordon's League of Batgirls. At San Diego Comic-Con in 2015, James Tynion IV announced she would enter mainstream continuity in Batman & Robin Eternal, using the code name Orphan. In that story her father forced her to "listen" to body movements rather than speak. He meant her as a gift for the villain Mother, who rejected her. Mother still used her to kill Miranda Row, the mother of Harper Row. Harper later forgave her. David Cain sacrificed himself to kill Mother, trapping her in her disintegrating fortress. Cassandra then took up the Orphan identity to keep protecting others.

  As Orphan, she joined a boot camp for young Gotham vigilantes run by Batman and Batwoman, and she was its best fighter. Her full history was restored in 2021 after the Infinite Frontier relaunch. In Infinite Frontier #0, Barbara explained that Stephanie and Cassandra shared the Batgirl title. Cassandra later joined the Birds of Prey. In August 2024, DC announced her first solo Batgirl series in nearly two decades, written by Tate Brombal and drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa. It follows her conflicted relationship with Shiva and a group of assassins called the Unburied, whose magic healing poppies Shiva stole and ate.

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• 8. Fighter, Costume, Icon

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  Batgirl #67, from October 2005, shows Oracle running tests on Cassandra's mind. Her verdict was that the language centers of Cassandra's brain were spread across both hemispheres rather than centralized, so reading and writing would not hold together. The 2008 Batgirl miniseries gave another answer. During the year Batman, Nightwing and Robin were abroad, Cassandra and Alfred worked on the skills she lacked. By day she took speech and ESL courses, and the formal training sharpened her thinking about language.

  Cassandra has no inherent superpowers. She has trained under many masters, and the source lists Kung Fu, Jeet Kune Do, Muay Thai, Kōga-ryū Ninjutsu, Vovinam, Jujutsu, Mushin and Escrima among her styles. Government experts once noted her speed so closely that she was mistaken for a metahuman. She can also learn a martial art simply by mimicry. Beyond fighting, she is skilled with many weapons and has studied ballet. Her Blüdhaven days with Tim Drake gave her a little investigative training.

  Her Batgirl costume was first created and worn by the Huntress in the early days of "No Man's Land". It is skin-tight black leather. The mask covers her whole head except the darkened eyes, and symbolic stitches surround the mouth. Her logo has a yellow rim on black, unlike the yellow bat Barbara wore. Her utility belt holds grappling hooks, batarangs, mini-explosives, tracking devices, binoculars, plastic handcuffs and smoke pellets. As Black Bat, she wears a domino mask, bandaged hands and a ragged, almost smoke-like cape.

  Fans have long treated Cassandra as a favorite, and many see her as a positive piece of Asian representation in superhero comics. Her first graphic novel, Shadow of the Batgirl, debuted on the 4th of February 2020. It was written by Sarah Kuhn and illustrated by Nicole Goux. On television, Young Justice renamed her Cassandra Wu-San and had Lady Shiva remove her vocal cords. Batwheels, with Leah Lewis voicing her, makes her cheerful and able to talk. In the film Birds of Prey, Ella Jay Basco plays a twelve-year-old pickpocket who idolizes Harley Quinn. After accidentally stealing a diamond that Roman Sionis wants, she joins Quinn's crew, then hands over the diamond and becomes Quinn's apprentice.

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