Comics’ Quiet Killer Has Already Ruined Ultimate Spider-Man, and Now It’s Happening to Batman’s Best Partner

Skip to content Add Us On Google Comic books are a strange medium, as new runs and creative teams are an eventuallity with every character, each putting their own spin on things and telling a story only they could using characters that have long since been established. One of the great joys is seeing a new team come together and really hit the ball out of the park, crafting something special, but the same is true in reverse. Sometimes, a writer, artist, or entire team simply does not mesh with the character they are bringing to the forefront, and that can really drag a story down, but even that isn’t enough to stop die-hard fans from supporting it. However, there’s one thing that’s almost guaranteed to.

There are plenty of things that can kill a run, but the number one thing that kills fans’ interest in a comic book is when it’s not interested in focusing on the title character. Obviously, comic books are sold by the character on the cover. Fans stay with the book after decades and dozens of writers because they love the character above all else, but when the book refuses to give fans the titular character, it inevitably falls apart. That was the number one problem with Hickman’s Ultimate Spider-Man (2024), and the same thing is happening to a favorite character of mine in Batgirl (2024). This series is hardly a Cassandra Cain book. It’s far more of a kung-fu Lady Shiva book, and that’s a problem.

When Ultimate Spider-Man debuted, it seemed poised to take over the comic book world. Every issue built to something bigger and better than before in the type of story Spider-Man fans had been waiting years for. But as the story continued, as new characters stepped into the spotlight and revelations were made, a pattern emerged. Uncle Ben and Jonah got more panel time. Gwen’s past and Harry’s uneasy guilt became the driving force against Kingpin’s rule. Richard and Felicia were even the driving romantic subplot. Every issue focused more on the other cast, and less on Spider-Man. Slowly, Peter and MJ disappeared from their own comic.

What’s worse is that, even when they did appear, their sections were generally the worst parts of the issues. The issues focused on Peter’s adventures in the desert were way less interesting than the one on Mysterio, for instance. Hickman clearly had far more of a blast writing every other Spider-Man character over the titular character. Hickman tells a genuinely awesome story about family, perseverance, and overcoming tyranny in these twenty-four issues, but not many of these issues tell a good Spider-Man story. That killed the hype and interest in his comic by a ton. Sure, it was still well-received, but now fans look back on it with souring opinions. The same exact thing is happening to Cassandra Cain.

The biggest problem with the ongoing Batgirl run is that it hardly lets Cass be Batgirl. Sure, she’ll put on the suit and duke it out with threats like only she can, but while the trappings are there, her heart is missing. Her supporting cast usually consists of the Bat-Family, namely Batman and Oracle, but Barbara has yet to appear, and Bruce has made only one speaking appearance in twenty-four issues. The Bat-Family’s appearances feel more like obligations and symbols of Cass’s status quo. They’ve been replaced by Tenji and Jaya, and while there’s nothing wrong with expanding a cast like this, they only add to the feeling that this would much rather be a kung-fu comic than a Cassandra Cain comic.

When you imagine a Batgirl comic, yes, you picture high-octane action, but you also imagine mysteries she should solve, villains she should tackle, characters she should be connecting with. She’s solved exactly one actual crime in this entire series, and it still related to her past. This series spent the first fifteen of its current twenty-four issues having Cass debate the ethics of her life and slashing foes apart with a katana. From Tenji’s introduction to the special attack names from the villains, this series clearly wants to be a kung-fu-focused comic, à la Richard Dragon. Obviously, Cass is a kung-fu-focused character, but there’s also so much more to her character that’s being pushed to the side for this agenda.

Lady Shiva’s shadow hangs over everything in this comic like a shadow. Yes, she’s an important part of Cass’s mythos, but she is not the end-all, be-all that this comic is clearly depicting her as. The long-running mystery with Jaya is all about Shiva’s actions. Tenji’s entire character is centered around proving himself to a mother long dead, who always preferred his sister. Cass herself constantly compares herself to her mother and even acts more like Shiva than herself, simply with a refusal to kill that is constantly, consistently challenged. Everything in this comic revolves around Lady Shiva, and with so much focus on what makes Shiva tick, it’s forgotten what makes Cass work in the first place.

Cass is a character defined by mainly three things: her mastery of martial arts, the space between her and others that she wishes she knew how to close, and her kindness. All of these are important to building the unique character that she is. She is a woman trained to be the ultimate killer, born to the most renowned assassin and greatest fighter, but who chooses to embrace love. Much like Batman himself, she turns her pain and guilt into fuel to save lives. Cass is an instrument of vengeance on criminals, but she does it out of a sense of trying to show them a better way and punish her own actions as a child. She fights to save others and redeem to try and find a path towards redemption for herself, fighting for a way back into the light.

There’s a saying that if you can’t imagine your Batman comforting a child, then you haven’t written Batman, but Punisher in a funny hat. That goes doubly for Cass. Kindness and an unyielding obsession with saving every life she can define her. She will beat up criminals, but in a way a mother scolds an unruly child, and still somehow make the time to smile at a victim and promise them that everything is going to be okay. None of that happens in this series. Instead, Cass lives constantly on the edge of breaking. She thinks herself damaged beyond repair and wallows in it. She constantly bemoans her own dark past and is a hair’s breadth away from snapping and beating someone half to death.

The entire conceit of Cass’s character is that she took a life when she was a kid, and the regret and shame are so palpable that they drove her to work herself to death and back trying to absolve herself of the sin. She is arguably more against killing than Batman himself, and yet this version seems to be one small step from doing just that every time she’s pushed. We all know that Cass won’t actually kill anyone, so just like when Batman stories focus too hard on pushing this idea, it just falls flat and creates unnecessary drama. Yet, all this comic seems to do is let Cass drown in the misery of her life and her past.

Instead of fighting to make a safer Gotham during “Bad Seeds,” she wonders if she’s condemned to eternal failure because she was born with darkness inside of her. The vast majority of Cass’s often-excessive internal monologue places her focus squarely on her past, but it forgets to look forward. Cass never gets to explore her life as it is, or work towards making it better. All she does is wallow in her own gloom, which, to me, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of her character. Even the solicitation for issue #25 directly calls her everyone’s favorite brooding girl. Yes, Cass definitely spends a ton of time brooding, like father, like daughter, but she’s also a character who has always represented the future.

Cass became Batgirl at a time when that identity was thought to never be able to return, and she became a character who had every reason to fall into darkness, but always reached for the light. She should be a symbol of perseverance and hope. All of that is to say, her current comic mischaracterizes her and seems much happier to write a story about the daughter of Lady Shiva than Cassandra Cain, who is that and so much more. Importantly, this comic is not bad. It dragged a bit in the middle, but its shift to short, contained arcs has really pulled back some of the passion from the first dozen issues. I look forward to this comic every month, and it has a bright future ahead of it, but the divide between Batgirl and Batgirl is only growing wider.

Eventually, that disparity will become too much for some fans to stick around for, even when it’s a character who needs to show that she can maintain an ongoing. This type of comic, where it has a clear quality but also is losing sight of its own main character, is the type that dies a slow, sad death. It’s the kind of comic that slowly fizzles out as fans lose interest, instead choosing to come back when a new writer takes the character in a more beloved direction. Of course, that new writer isn’t guaranteed for every character. It wasn’t even guaranteed for the new Ultimate Spider-Man, of all people.

More than telling a phenomenal story, a great comic has to tell a story about the character fans come to the book for. This was the number one complaint for Ultimate Spider-Man, it was the fire behind every complaint leveled against Tom King’s now-ending stint on Wonder Woman (2023), and it’s the thing that might one day kill Batgirl. As I said, I really enjoy this comic, and I love Batgirl, so I hope that this is something other fans are willing to tell me I’m wrong about. Still, the way things are going, there is that nagging feeling in the back of my mind. I am not saying that Batgirl is anywhere near becoming what happened to the other two, but it definitely could use more focus on Batgirl herself.

What do you think of the current Batgirl run, and what’s a comic that you think has fallen into this exact pitfall before? Let us know in the comments below!