I tried people, I really did.

I’ve never liked Steph much and I’ve made no secret of it, and I dislike her in the Batgirl uniform for a variety of reasons (up to and including the fact that her actual costume is ugly as sin with its thigh pouch and hideous purple) but I have bought every single damn issue of that series and I have tried my best to have an open mind and I have supported it with my dollars and even talked positively about it on this blog – about how even though I don’t like Steph much, that I think Bryan Q. Miller has done a great job with her voice on the series and that overall it’s a really positive book for young women and girls – the kind of book we need more of.  That it’s an important book because of the niche it fills and the audience it respectfully reaches out to.  I was even excited because Dustin Nguyen was coming on board.

And this bullshit is the thanks I get?!  It may be adorable, but it’s horseshit.  Check it out…a “tiny adorable history which Cass has been COMPLETELY EDITED OUT OF!”  And worst of all, the bit seems to imply that this is STEPHANIE’S VERSION OF EVENTS…which makes her seem like a bitch that edits out her best friend when convenient.  Oh screw it, I’ll just post it – from The Source.

Honestly DC…just because you know how fucked up your handling of Cass has been for um…YEARS…does not mean you can have Nguyen draw an adorable little revision and we’ll just swallow it up.  And I really don’t know what your goal is here, because you’re DEFINITELY going to piss off the Cass fans (like me) but most of the Steph fans are ALSO fans of Cass because the two characters were best friends…so just who are you thinking is going to love this…?  Why do it?  Do you really think the book is such a crazy irreplaceable success that people will just read this and be all “oh, yeah, that’s totally how it was.  Cass who?”  Unlikely.  And I notice Steph has conveniently left out her time as Robin as well…which she would never do…so this all just smacks of you guys trying to gloss over everything you’re not so proud of regarding your female characters in four cute cartoon-y pages.  Epic fail.

Regardless, you just lost a reader and a reviewer.  I HAD been working on a post for CBR’s Comics Should Be Good about how despite my Steph dislike, the book had become quite good, and more importantly, IMPORTANT.  Guess where that article is now?  That’s right – the fucking round file – where it belongs.

Congrats DC.  You pretty successfully rehabbed a character, so that even people like me that dislike Steph were buying your book…but now, with that little “Cass apparently never existed stunt” you lost a reader.  And we’re at it, the realization of Batgirl/Oracle is pretty tasteless as well.

So, Batgirl can come off my pull list…what other DC books on my list are TOTALLY UNNECESSARY.

Time to do some culling.