Birds of Prey #1 and Guess Who

If you're a long time reader of this blog you can probably guess what I'm going to talk about tonight.

Birds of Prey #1 was really good. Gail Simone delivers (as always) and Ed Benes's work looks better than it ever has. He may be getting better or he may have a new inking/coloring team. Whatever it is, it looks great.

The action is as high octane as expected, it's great to have the team back together (I still think Lady Blackhawk is one of the coolest characters ever), and I'm intrigued to see how Hawk and Dove fit in with the team.

But you know all this. And you know that I'm only here to talk about those last few pages of the book. I'm here to talk about the "White Canary" and the chance that she might be Cassandra Cain.

If White Canary is Cassandra then it looks like all the work that Geoff Johns and Adam Beechen (yes, Adam Beechen) did to rehabilitate here will have been for naught. And I have a hard time believing that Gail Simone--who has always been one of the creators most receptive to fans--would do that to Cassie.

I cannot imagine that DC would try to make her a villain again after the disaster it was the first time. The Internet (this blog included) absolutely erupted after the Robin "One Year Later" story. Some people liked it (I thought it was good except for Cassie's villainous turn) but a lot more seemed to be very angry.

There was a lot of undeserved anger directed at Adam Beechen. I know, because I was among those doing it. That was wrong, because Cassie's heel turn was editorially mandated. The people at the top clearly didn't get how attached the fans were to her. They hadn't learned all the lessons from "Emerald Twilight."

So what exactly am I saying here? I guess I'm trying to convince myself that White Canary isn't Cassandra Cain. I'm trying to convince myself that it's Cassie's long lost twin, raised in secret by Shiva to be her successor. I keep telling myself that Cassie will show up at the end of the arc, defeat her evil sister and join the Birds of Prey.

I keep telling myself these things. But they never seem to come true. My favorite character in comics is still in undefined limbo. Still, I have hope; Gail Simone has always been good at giving me that. She's a great writer and since she's a fan, I'm sure she gets where I'm coming from. With anybody else I'd be pretty angry right now. With her? I'm going to wait and see.