Yes, that Batgirl is consistently better than Lady Shiva.

The difference is that instead of learning a written or spoken language, Cassandra Cain was taught to read body language. When she was first given the Batgirl mantle, she was good enough that she could tell what you were going to do before you even realized that you were going to do it.

She's since been scaled back, but only a bit. She is learning to speak, but still reads movement and body language to the point that, in a recent storyline, she could tell what Robin had planned in order to get the two of them out of a sticky situation with a giant mob of Penguin's goons without him ever verbalizing anything.

She should easily be the best close combat 'Clix in the Bat family, with high attack value, high defense with Super Senses, etc., but her dial should be reasonably short (ie: 5 or 6 clicks).

I didn't like Identity Crisis as much as everyone else.

*IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT, SPOILER ALERT*



















I mean really, Jean Loring? Lame

I thought that the "Unthinkable" arc in Fantastic Four around #500 was much, much better. Actually, every FF arc since then has been better, in my humble opinion.
Hats off to Comics' First Family, and their amazing book!

Grr, Cassie Cain Batgirl.

Let's make it official, new REV Batgirl in the next DC set(Batman/JLA/Batman). And a new REV Robin for that matter (Batman/JLA/Titans). The old one will probably be retired by then anyways.

Yeah, Batgirl should have, in her vet, at least 10-11 AV, 16-18 DV, and Super Senses, followed by Willpower (2-3 damage though). She also might be the first figure to have an all around bette r(and more expensive) Rookie than Experienced, since she went through a phase where her abilities didn't work, soi she'd have lover AV, DV, and no Super Senses relative to her Rookie.

Dark Knight Strikes Again was good. If you were going into it looking for "Dark Knight Returns: Redux," you got disappointed, but that would have been lame anyway. He takes it in a new direction and it shouldnn't be so casually dismissed. And the artwork is AMAZING.

Nice review too, btw. Props. Keep it up.

You had me in the beginning. Then you had to go and bash DK2. Telling people not to touch it is really, really stupid. Let people form their own opinions. I like DKR, but I didn't read DK2 for years because people said it was so bad. When I finally read it I really liked it. Bruce Wayne as basicly the ultimate punk rocker and leader of an underground revolution against "the man" is great. The way he takes down Supes, priceless. So if some monkey that can't form their own opinions tells you not to read anything, smack 'em, read it, and maybe you'll enjoy it.

I think there should be a unique Alfred in the next set with about 4 clix of life and of course support. The guy has been mending the Bat-family for years plus the Batman Ally TA would be nice too.

I think I deffinetly have to take this opportunity to express my main gripe. Where the heck is Azrael!? This guy beat Batman, Nightwing, Bane and went toe-to-toe with Deathstroke and countless others. He is the Bat-family enforcer and in terms of raw power he is the best. He is faster, stronger and more durable than all of the others, but he still has no figure. Yes, I know he is supposedly "dead," but there was never a body found and there are plenty of really dead characters in the game already. If he is done correctly he could be a very powerful piece. BCF, Leap Climb, Toughness, Flurry, Charge and Regenerate are all powers that could very well fit this character. You could even argue CCE and of course the Batman TA. And how cool would a unique Az-bats in full armor be? For Azrael's kick @$$ costume alone he should be a fig. Just my 2 cents.

It's called my opinion. It's a review. I never said my OPINION was God's LAW or something.

I hated DKSA.

UGH. I had sooo looked forward to this sequel and to see what Miller would give us (DKR being a must read for any superhero fan) ... and it felt like he was just rehashing things from the original (oh ..lets just have Bats kick Superman's butt ...again) and going through the motions. It was bad enough that not even Jim Lee's art can persuade me to give the upcoming "Batman and Robin: All Stars" a try. Though I will definately give "Superman: All Stars" a read just to see what Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely come up with .. can't wait.

I put Frank Miller in the same category as Claremont ... used to be absolutely amazing ... now simply coasting on the merits of their early years.

Nice writeup on the Bat family btw .. looking forward to more.

bizzaro . . . seriously, how can you say that about old Frank? First of all, to consider Claremont ever in anything like the same league as Miller is ridiculous. Secondly, he hasn't put out much comic work lately, he's been busy with the Sin City movie. So the last major work he did was DK2, and before that was Sin City stuff, Martha Washington, and 300. So first of all, I disagree with your analysis of DK2. I don't think he was rehashing it; he was taking things in a completely new direction. However, for the sake of argument, let's accept DK2 was bad. Name another series that was disappointing. The other bulk of his recent work is sensational!! Sin City is absolutely amazing!! The artwork is stellar and the story is incredibly gripping. I'll be honest, haven't read much Martha Washington, but 300 is perhaps my favorite comic series ever. I hardly think it's fair to call Frank a has-been because he had one title that people didn't like. If he came out with three or four more projects that were awful, then I'd agree with you, but that's not gonna happen. Wait til the Sin City movie hits, and then tell me he's coasting.

Good point, next time I'll put the writer's name in the title of the article...wait a minute, I did that this time! Do you mean something besides that?

Actually I'd say the most egregious example of a Heroclix character done wrong is Mystique, who they managed to not give a single click of Shape Change, but that's been discussed ad nauseam before.

Must be another bigoted DC fan..
Claremont wrote the Dark Phoenix Saga for Eris' sake. Sure, now he couldn't write his way out of a paper bag, but yes, his early work compares to Miller's.

And DKSB was terrible. It's common knowledge. After the breakthrough, legend making work on DKR, Miller followed it up with that piece of carp for a paycheck. Must have run out of residuals for Robocop 3, eh?
And speaking of jet boots on a 500lb robot, anyone ever read Batman/Spawn?

War Games was cool, disjointed, but it accomplished it's true goal. I now read Batgirl and Robin, in addition to Batman and Detective, due to the storyline requiring me to try these new books. And i cried when Stephanie died. Every time i read it.

I also cried when i got to page 4 of IDC #6. Jean Loring didn't phase me at all. The story was just That #### Good. See them warning points<-. I got those for comparing that book to my second favorite part of a woman's anatomy. Twice.

As for clix,the only one i've found useful of all the bat people is a V Batgirl/V Nightwing combo. Your opponent commits to taking out ####.(oh, that's carp, you know i mean Richard) , they forget about Babs picking up the outwit later. Batman has such a huge target on his chest in any game i play that i don't bother spending the points. I won't use Contact with Oracle due to the hookerbomb like abuse it's certainly going to engender. Unless they FAQ it. Then it's all good.

Over all my review of this review: i've seen much better content from this site lately. One out of five.

Ohhhhhh yeaaaaaah.

Reading the comments on this thread, that is obviously not true.

You know the real reason most people don't like DK2? Here's the honest to God truth: it's just because part three took so #### long to publish after 9-11. Everything was humming along fine, people that didn't like the book had low substance criticisms like "not as good as DKR" (come on, what is? If that's your yardstick of comic book quality, stop reading them. Now.) or "the art's bad." (the art was... very edgey. Stylized. If you really don't like the art that's cool, but don't go tell everyone it's awful, just say you didn't like the art.) But when part 3 took months and months to come out, people's expectations were built up and let down. In retrospect it's pretty good, but there is, I think, a lot of bitterness floating around from that.

That's fine, but in your OPINION you said "Don't touch DKSA" or something like that, that's no longer an opinion. Don't like it all you want, just don't tell people not to read it, let them form their own opinion, that's all I'm saying. Otherwise, nice article.