>>150295418
>Give it to me STRAIGHT, is her new solo decent?
It's really frustrating, because it seems to me like the writer is trying pretty hard to make it work, and he might even be trying the right things, but he chose to try them at a very wrong time.
What he's doing is he's trying to tie Cass more tightly to the Denny O'Neil kung fu mythos from the 70's/80's, where Shiva comes from. This is kind of a logical thing to do because 1) she already has a built-in connection to that crowd via her mother, and 2) it's a way to give Cass connections that aren't just Bat-family stuff. Allies and enemies that belong purely to her. He's also doing a bunch of continuity cleanup at the same time, Shiva's backstory had a lot of contradicting details and he's kind of putting them together in a way that mostly makes sense. This is all good in theory. In fact I'm half liking it.
So what's the problem? The problem is the timing. Cass has been effectively a non-character for EIGHTEEN YEARS. There was a seven year period where she didn't have a single appearance (because Didio banned use of her) and after that she's been reimagined thrice (Eternal, Shadow of Batgirl and that Black Label BoP book, which all can fuck off). She's been in the shitter for so long that people can vote who weren't born when she was cool the last time.
Then, miraculously, she gets a solo book again. Once-in-a-generation chance to fix her career. Her new book should have had one goal only: showing people why they need to give a shit about her. Make her look cool. Let her show off her best shit to a new audience. It was so, so important that the book does that. And... it doesn't. It doesn't really do that.
Brombal had the idea of making her an underdog for the whole first arc. She spent the first six issues getting dragged from scene to scene against her will and pretty much getting her ass kicked. Then she vanished from her own book entirely for two issues, which were an extended flashback (cont).
