Batgirl (2000) #1 (and why I think it's the perfect first issue)
When I first read Batgirl (2000) the first issue was honestly deeply confusing to me---I hadn't read Cass's origin and was going in only having read one DC comic before. But upon rereading it, it is genuinely the perfect set up issue for the rest of Pucketts run. Not only does it provide necessary background information on Cass that was semi-established in her origin, but it introduces us to the three most important supporting characters in her book: David Cain, Barbara Gordon, and Bruce Wayne, while showing us her struggles and growth with communication, as well as her decisions to harm, to flee, and to save as she ages. And all of this is done in parallel to an unnamed character who she meets across various stages of her life.
So let's break it down!
David Cain--Childhood
We start the chapter where it all begins for Cass---with David Cain. In this flashback we see David filming Cass as he has her challenge a group of five men in a fight, unarmed. The most important of these men is the one in the front with the scar on his face and a "merc" tattoo, as he is a mercenary hired by David to fight Cass. Cass is as we see her in nearly all of her childhood flashbacks---confident in a way that borders on arrogance (if she didn't have the skill to back it up of course), self-assured, and efficient with her fighting. The mercenary in a way mirrors this arrogance, as he is the one who doubts that the little girl in front of him could do damage, and refuses to pick up the knife Cain offers him. He is also, of course, the one who gets his jaw and then arm broken upon reaching for said knife once he immediately regrets that decision.
This is a Cassandra Cain before she kills a man, one who is living in her father's bubble. Someone whose language is fighting, and who adores combat. This is a Cass before her bubble bursts.
Which leads us to the next stage of Cass's life:
Barbara Gordon--The Lost Days
In the present we see a Cass as she is now--freshly dubbed Batgirl, living with Barbara Gordon. We open up with Babs sparring with her using escrima sticks, something Cass is visibly happy to be doing. As they spar Cass looks over Babs' shoulder at the frame of Batgirl that Babs had previously given to her at the end of Detective Comics #734, as a thank you for saving her father's life. That is, as far as we are aware, the first time Cass saves someone, and it then becomes associated with Batgirl through the gift of the picture frame. This is the beginning of Cass's association of what it means to save people and what it means to be Batgirl--and she isn't even Batgirl yet.
This ease of existing together is later juxtaposed when Babs tries to question Cass verbally on how she is feeling, and Cass runs away from her. Here we see the unsurety of Cass's communication--her confidence with the physical and her insecurity with the verbal. It is an insecurity that leads her to fleeing, an action that is notably out of character for our stubborn, assured protagonist.
Before that conversation, however, we see Babs go over what she knows about Cass---which is next to nothing: only that before she was found by Barbara, she was simply "drifting." It is then that we see another flashback of Cass as a child, sometime after her kill in what is presumably Vietnam. She isn't smiling as she was in the first flashback, she looks like any uncertain child on the run. It is here where she meets the mercenary for the second time. He is yelling at and assaulting a man as they fight over a bottle of alcohol. He, notably, has a bandage around his elbow, in the same spot where Cass stomped on him as he reached for the knife. Which means the first and second time she meets him were close to her first kill. The merc takes the alcohol from the tearful man and orders him to "shut up" just before he sees Cass watching. He is immediately afraid, and smashes the bottle, orders her to stay back, and threatens her with it.
But Cass is not watching the merc, she is watching the man cowering on the ground. This is a Cass who has just killed a man. A Cass who knows how to fight, but now knows what that fighting was leading her to. She has never saved someone. She does not know how to save anyone. She is a child. She may even be afraid. The mercenary threatens her once more. Cass flees. She does not save that man.
The merc sees his shattered bottle, the alcohol he fought someone for now on the floor, and he weeps. He once again parallels Cass. Both of them are at their lowest. Cass---who has just killed a man, who has no home and no family. The merc---an alcoholic who we can assume is out of the job if he is stealing alcohol from someone off the street.
If the David Cain section of this issue is Cass at her most confident, but also her most ignorant, then the Barbara Gordon section of the issue is Cass at her most insecure, but someone who is learning. Learning to speak. Learning to move on. It is the transitional period. Which brings us to Cass's final parental figure of this issue:
Bruce Wayne--Batgirl
Just after the flashback of Cass on the run we see her in the present, shadowing Batman as they patrol. They encounter a man trying to sexually assault a woman. Bruce slams the man against the wall and forces him to apologize while Cass watches, looking stunned. In the background we see the women running away down the alley, similar to the way Cass ran as a child. This Cass, however, watches. And she learns.
They go back out on patrol again. This is the third and final time Cass runs into the merc. He is now sober, and while he steals money he is reciting the words: "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change... and courage to change the things I can." This is the serenity prayer used in Alcoholics Anonymous. It is also, in my opinion, practically a thesis statement for the arc Cass goes through during Puckett's run, which is all about accepting her past as a killer, but overcoming her death wish and continuing to live even past the guilt.
Cass finds the merc, she disarms him, she slams him against the wall the same way Bruce did the night previous. He gets away, fleeing the same way she fled from him, the same way the woman fled from the man assaulting her, and before she gives chase she sees Batman's shadow overcasting her own. She pins the man again by the throat, and repeats the same words he said to that man in the alleyway of Vietnam: Shut up.
This is what makes the merc recognize Cass, even with the mask, he looks at her with horror and accuses: you. Cass knocks him out.
Once more Cass and the merc parallel one another, in moving on from the lowest points in their lives. Cass in joining the batfamily and donning the Batgirl mantle, the merc in sobering up and returning to work. The difference, however, is that fully moving from her mistakes means confronting the merc for a final time.
Later Cass meets back up with Batman, who explains that when Cass is on the streets, she represents him. Cass most certainly agrees with this, considering the ways she was emulating him when chasing down the merc. Cass cups his cheek, and Bruce tells her that's not necessary. To me this is both a thank you and an assurance. Cass is thanking Bruce for giving her Batgirl, and giving her that chance to begin to start anew, as she has finally beaten the stranger who has mirrored her at every stage of her life. It is also assurance. Yes, she is him. She can be him. He has no need to worry. Obviously, anyone who has read the rest of Puckett's run knows this isn't true, and while Cass is incredibly similar to Batman, she is also her own person. This panel is the prelude to that conflict.
The issue ends once more with David Cain, drinking as he watches the tapes of Cass on repeat. The entire issue is opened and closed with David, an apt decision considering David is the cause of Cass's trauma and remains haunting her life even when she's no longer with him.
Training and Communication
Something that echoes across all three sections in this first issue is Cass's training, namely with her parental figures. Fighting, as we know, is Cass's first language, and these training sessions are indicative to her communication with each parent. David Cain watching through his tapes, Babs with the escrima sticks, and finally Bruce and Cass with their fists.
With David, she is not communicating with him 1:1, but rather he is observing her through his camera---a trend that follows throughout Batgirl (2000) has he continues to observe her through film, glass, security footage, the scope of a gun, etc--but rarely face-to-face. Cass is confident in her language, but there is a disconnect between her and her father. We see this disconnect later in the book through David's misunderstanding of why Cass broke and ran away after her kill---with him believing the issue was simply her being too young, rather than Cass being able to see death as its own language and rejecting it outright.
With Barbara, she is fighting with escrima sticks, a new weapon for her that Bruce taught her in about five minutes. She's still confident, and happy, but Babs still manages to catch her off guard and disarm her. This is a demonstration of Cass's instability in her new environment, with new social rules and new skills to develop. Namely, language. Escrima sticks are in a way adding to her physical language, and so she is able to be disarmed. Verbal language is an entirely new beast, her insecurity with which manifest in fleeing, as we saw previous.
With Bruce she spars with her fists, the weapon she is most comfortable with. Still, she begins half-heartedly until Bruce orders her to fight with everything she has. They do, the training room is destroyed, an Bruce begins to tell her she's out of shape before he ends up coughing up blood. Cass's face is a pure smug confidence. She's proud of herself, and Bruce is proud of her. This is Cass gaining back that confidence she once had, in being able to fight with her first language and with someone who understands. Someone who is, for better or worse, just like her.
The Rose
One last thing I want to talk about is the rose we see in this issue as a more minor symbol. The first panel of the first issue is a panel of Cass as a child putting together a puzzle with a picture of a rose on it. Later, during her section with Babs, she can be seen holding a stem with a single rose petal, plucking the petal from the stem, and tossing it into the city street below.
My initial thoughts on the rose as symbolism was of the obvious--roses are symbols of love, usually romantic, but considering there's no romance in Puckett's run of Batgirl 2000 I decided to focus on the platonic/familial love. The first rose we see is fake, an image, and Cass is building it up herself while in David's custody. If I take this as a symbol of Cass and David's love for eachother then it is something artificial, easily put together and easily taken apart. I don't quite love this interpretation because I truly don't believe Cass and David's love for each other was in any way artificial and that is proven ten times over in Batgirl 2000--but before Cass's kill it was lacking the full context. Cass does not know she is training to kill and she is raised in relative isolation, her only reference of family is David Cain, who is of course not exactly a typical father. So the love is there, it's just locked within a puzzle that Cass herself has to figure out, which is again something she spends all of Puckett's run doing.
The rose petal into the street to me is Cass letting that love 'go' in a sense, and giving it to the people of the city of Gotham. Notably this is after her confrontation with David during No Man's Land, where Cass spends much of her time as a courier for Babs, and then literally throws herself and Cain out a window and onto those very same streets of Gotham. The building she's in front of also looks fairly similar to the building she first saves Jim Gordon in front of in Mark of Cain Part 1---but that might be a stretch. Nonetheless It is its own way a pledge of loyalty and love, to saving and helping people. A final rejection of the man that raised her and what she thought was a sacrifice of herself onto the streets she's been helping people on. Cass throwing the petals out of the window also comes directly after she watches Bruce save the woman in the alley, and Cass watches her run away. This again feels like a transitionary period for Cass, and to Cass I think she believes that "fleeing" is something for the innocent and victims, aka, people that are not her. As we recall she fled in the same way from the merc when she was a child, and Cass has never forgotten that. Again, this feels like a pledge, an "I will not do that again." That she follows as long as she is Batgirl and even well beyond it.
I also was talking to the lovely and amazing @casscainmainly about the rose because it was a symbol that confused me initially, and she has her own really amazing meta about the rose (that goes into the part it plays in #17). She was the one who also first pointed out to me that, like many of the things in Cass's life with David, the rose with him is artificial. CCM discusses how the rose symbolizes Cass herself and her relationship to place in her meta, and in our conversation over DMs she brought up that her life has transitioned from something fake and artificial (the 2D rose in the puzzle) to something more real and tangible (live rose petals.) Cass's life is in transition so although the flower is real it is still just the petals that she lets list through the busy streets of Gotham, onto the people below. It makes the full rose we see Cass with in #17 hit harder, as it cements her place and her life in Gotham as something more permanent.
Conclusion/Final Thoughts
As I said before I really do think this is the perfect issue because it introduces us to several of the most central story beats in Batgirl 2000 (of which there are Many) in a mostly silent issue and within 23 pages. Which is insanely impressive. We get Cass and David's early days relationship which is tainted by Cass's own ignorance. We have David and his tapes, reliving the glory days (something we will see time and time again), and ending off the issue in such a way that the reader knows to expect him to linger through the narrative. Babs and Cass and their miscommunication, Babs and her focus on Cass's wellbeing as a person and a child. Her stressing the importance of Cass and spoken language, in studying. Cass's own avoidance of this, not even looking at Babs because she's too busy staring at the picture of Batgirl. Thinking about being Batgirl, wanting so badly to only be Batgirl so she can save people, so she can not be a coward. And of course Bruce as the person who gave her the suit, the one who is so much like her. Someone she feels confident with and who she understands. These are the relationships that follow us through the rest of the book, and they establish an important baseline that we then she shift as Cass develops throughout the narrative.
Then of course there was the merc, the one-off character who parallels Cass the entire story. From her arrogance to her despondency and cowardice and to her once again burgeoning confidence. Someone who she overcomes, ending the issue with a sense of lightness--we can only move forward from here, can't we?
All this to say that Puckett, Peterson, and Scott are truly the best to do it, and they really know how to make the most of a visual medium without spoon feeding an audience. Even while I was writing this meta I kept realizing more things and having to add more and more to it. It's insane what they were able to do with this issue. More writers and artists treating readers like they're intelligent and capable of picking out details without it being spoon fed to them through narration. Please!!
There are a few Duke reading lists on League of Comic Geeks already buttttt here's my personal take on it, focused on stories that I think advance Duke's character and narrative!!! So not completionist but aiming to be comprehensive + get more people to join Duke nation. Very indebted to @duketectivecomics' reading list as always :)))
This is my personal list of Duke reading recs, including all the stories I think meaningfully impact his character, story, or relationships!
kianamaiart
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
ellievsbear
blakekathryn
