"I don't kill...but I don't lose either"
Review:
Cassandra Cain is one of DC Comics hidden gems, we'll not so much hidden rather carelessly misplaced, mistreated, and looked over in favor for continuously trying to shiny up Barbara Gordon as Batgirl. It's a strange issue considering Cassandra's own popularity, Barbara's importance as Oracle, as well as many young new, diverse legacy heroes currently flourishing in Marvel that a character such as Cassandra has gotten a raw deal. Thankfully, there might be some hope as she not only made her appearance in the new DC universe in weekly series Batman and Robin: Eternal with majority of her original origin in tact but her original run as Batgirl is being reprinted. Especially good what with the original TPB, which was called Silent Running instead of Silent Knight, being long out of print and being pretty pricey on likes of Amazon and Ebay. One nice change from Silent Running is that Silent Knight is a bit beefier giving readers issues 1 to 11 as well as annual of Cassandra's run where the original TPB only had half of that.
The volume entails the beginning of a mysterious young, mute girl starting out as Batgirl while under the caring tutelage of the original cowl bearer Barbara Gordon. Cassandra was literally born to fight, as well as kill as planned by her assassin father David Cain who substituted teaching her speech to read and communicate through body language. Thus making her able to read her opponent and predict their moves. However, Cassandra long rejected the path of a killer and throughout this volume we see the character's compassion, morality, and loyalty to Batman as well as stubbornness and sometimes reckless-ness giving new readers what makes her tick. This volume has Cassandra coming up against such obstacles as meta human thugs, gangsters, and as well as dealing with gaining the ability to talk but lose her skills in the process (which sadly involved a rather lazy plot twist).
The art by Damion Scott for the most part is a very nice blend of animated but mostly realistic art style though you'll notice him become more cartoony as it goes on. For me I was little disappointed as I loved his work in this early section of the run and his stuff gets a little weird ie the art from that Raven mini a few years back. Still the art gives us plenty of impressive fight scenes and fittingly the story being told through silent panels. Most pleasantly surprising, Scott even manages to have Cass emote through her full-face mask and look actually like a teenager.
Recomendations:
For whatever teen shelf or Batfamily collection you have get this book. It tells the tale of DC's young Asian Batgirl who managed to hold on to a action packed as well as emotionally charged series for nearly 80 issues and has been mistreated by her company. Things are looking a smidge better now for her but the support can't hurt and more people deserve to know of the other Batgirls outside Barbara Gordon.
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