O Cassandra Cain, Cassandra Cain! Wherefore art thou Cassandra Cain . . . A Batgirl by any other name would smell as sweet.



When you look at this card, what’s the first thing you see? Is it the aggressive ATK to cost ratio? Is it the power that’s power-up-esque-but-not-really-a power-up? Is it the two names next to each other up at the top separated by that diamond-y thing? Is it the bit of flavor on the bottom of the card giving out some backstory?

For me, what my eyes gravitate toward is the hella-cool, tricked-out, stitched-up, compound-adjectives-don’t-it-justice picture. I mean, this girl puts the goth in Gotham. She ain’t your daddy’s Batgirl! (Unless your daddy never really followed the old yellow boots and gloves gal, but keeps up with this new Bat on the block, in which case I guess she would be your daddy’s Batgirl. You ever get the feeling I try too hard sometimes . . .)

For those of you out of the loop, the old Batgirl was Barbara Gordon, who, after semi-retiring and having her spine blown out by the Joker, became Oracle, a sort of information network for the Bat clan and friends. The new Batgirl (pictured here) is Cassandra Cain, an assassin trained from birth that, quite the opposite of the chattier Oracle, didn’t speak for much of her young life. But that’s enough of that—I don’t want to go all “beyond creative” here. Let’s get back to the preview.

But first, get ready for a long aside about card naming conventions . . . you may want to skip down to the part where I actually talk about Batgirl.


The Name Game

You may have noticed that strange little diamond-y thing at the top of the card separating “Cassandra Cain” from “Batgirl”. The technical term for that is the, uh, diamond-y thing™. To explain just what’s going on with the whole two names convention, I have to first go over two quirky bits about the DC universe.

First of all, part of what makes DC’s history such a rich tapestry is all the different mantles. Mantle of the Bat. Mantle of Batgirl. Mantle of the Flash. (Feel free to insert a bad mantle joke here. Something about the mantle above your fireplace? I don’t know . . .go nuts.) So many mantles have been worn by so many different people, it’s hard to keep track. Let’s look at some examples.

Batgirl has been Barbara Gordon and Cassandra Cain. Flash was Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, and Wally West. Green Lantern has been Alan Scott, Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, and Kyle Raynor. (And don’t get me started on all the alien GLs!) Even the mantle of the Bat has been held by people other than Bruce Wayne. JeanPaulValley and Dick Grayson both wore the cape and cowl (and let’s not forget me running around in my Batman underoos at age six. Okay, eleven . . .)

The point I’m meandering to is that the fact that a single named character has actually been two or more different people presents some problems when converting said named character to a Vs. card. Take Batgirl, for example. Let’s say we want to do both a Barbara Gordon and a Cassandra Cain Batgirl. If we just put the name “Batgirl” on the top of the card with the ladies’ respective real names on their respective version lines, we run into a problem with uniqueness. If they’re both named Batgirl, you can’t have both in play (unless there’s something weird going on due to a card’s effect). Now, regardless of whether or not both Batgirls were actually Batgirl at the same time in comics continuity, it’s still pretty cool to allow both to be in play at the same time in the game. And for several other mantles (like Flash or Green Lantern), there are plenty of times when two or more characters with the same superhero name coexisted in the comics.

So what options does that leave us for naming the Batgirls? I suppose we could simply call Barbara Gordon “Batgirl” and Cassandra Cain “Batgirl II”. But in addition to inducing groans (as well as confusion amongst players who aren’t sure if Batgirl and Batgirl II are similar enough to violate uniqueness and/or power-up one another) that naming convention doesn’t solve a second problem. A problem which I’m getting to . . . right . . . now!

In addition to having lots of different people that have been the same superhero, DC also has lots of different superheroes who have been the same person. Wally West grew up from Kid Flash to Flash. Roy Harper hopped up from Speedy to Arsenal. Garth went from the wet behind the ears Aqualad to the wet behind the ears Tempest. Garfield Logan changed between Beast Boy and Changeling. The list goes on. The problem with people switching identities is that since a lot of these characters are very cool in both incarnations (okay, maybe not Aqualad) we want the option of doing Vs. System cards of both (or all three in some cases). So the question is how do you handle more than one ID for a single person?

You could treat them as separate individuals; simply name one card Speedy and one Arsenal. Again, the problem is one of uniqueness. The rules would have no way of knowing that Speedy and Arsenal are the same guy, which means you could have both in play at the same time. That’s just not cool. Also, they wouldn’t be able to power-up each other, which is sad.

You could just call both cards Roy Harper and put Speedy or Arsenal on the version line, but it’s kind of un-sexy to have the top of the card just have a normal civilian name, and it looks especially weak to someone who doesn’t know the characters very well.

Another option is to just pick a sort of “prime name” for a person, and put any other identities they’ve had on the version line. For example, all Arsenal character cards would always be called Arsenal. And if we want to do him as Speedy we just put Speedy on the version line. The problem with this plan is that you end up with an image of Speedy in the art box but the name Arsenal on the top of the card. Again, uncool.

To quickly review, we not only need to solve the problem of more than one person to a costume as well as the problem of more than one costume to a person, but we need to make sure the solutions are reconcilable. The most egregious example of both problems at once has to be the Boy Wonder.

There have officially been three different Robins (well, four if you’ve been keeping up with current DC continuity. If not, I won’t Spoil it for you), Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, and Tim Drake. But Dick Grayson also went on to become Nightwing, and he even stood in for Batman for a decent amount of time after the whole Knightfall/broken Bat storyline. So how should the Vs. System handle Robin?

We could call them all Robin, but that only allows you to have one in play at a time due to uniqueness. Frown. Calling them Robin I, Robin II, and Robin III works mechanically, but not only is that aesthetically unappealing, it also doesn’t solve the Dick Grayson as Robin/Dick Grayson as Nightwing problem. So where does this leave us?

There are compromising middling solutions such as always equating the Dick Grayson persona with Nightwing, only equating Tim Drake with Robin and so on, but that eliminates our option of doing a Dick Grayson Robin or a Tim Drake non-Robin (if and when he’s graduated).

We know that functionally just calling the characters by their civilian names works. The only real problem is not having a cool superhero name at the top of the card. Hmmm . .