Nerd Rage #13: Whatever Happened to Cass and Steph?

Probably the oddest odd couple of the DCU

Beta is Dead is now three years old and to celebrate I thought I’d revisit an older topic. Recently one of my old articles was floating around tumblr and brought some eyeballs over to the blog. It’s certainly a hot topic and still pretty relevant even today but sadly it’s outdated. Similar its sister article, which isn’t as popular but still just as relevant I’d say, is also out of date due to the events of the past two years. So I figured now would be a pretty good time to pick up where I left off with two of my favorite superheroes, and former Batgirls, Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown.

Now I feel I covered the details of who these two characters are very well in past articles (here and here) so if you don’t know who they are you can check those out. However if you’re too goddamn lazy here’s the short version of what I previously wrote:

1) Cassandra Cain, daughter of the amoral Lady Shiva, was a martial arts prodigy who was literally bred and raised to serve as the ultimate assassin and bodyguard for Ra’s Al Ghul by the League of Assassins. She rejected this and eventually joined Batman as the new Batgirl. After years of serving the role DC Comics decided to try turning her into a villain, becoming a murdering despot despite being totally against her character, but it backfired and resulted with a public backlash before turning her back to normal. Soon after this she abruptly quit being Batgirl, leaving the mantle in the hands of…

2) Stephanie Brown became the vigilante known as The Spoiler in order to rebel against her super villain father the Cluemaster. She became a frequent ally of Robin (Tim Drake) before a series a events led her to replacing him as Batman’s partner…only to quickly be fired from the role. DC then killed her off in a particularly controversial (and brutal) way while also denying that she was ever truly Robin. After a few years she was retconned back to life and soon afterwards took up the mantle of Batgirl from her friend Cassandra.

Today I’d like to catch up with both characters and see where they are now and what can be done for them in the future. If you regularly read this blog you likely already know what became of them during The Great DC Reboot of 2011 and you may also know what I’m going to say. Everyone else may want to prepare themselves for good old fashion nerd rage.

The very best of friends acquaintances!

Two former Batgirls after the jump.
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