Thank You, Silence.

It just occurred to me that we have two red-haired, green-eyed ladies in the Batfam*. And they’re not related.

I love Kate Kane. I loooooove Kate and I am SO glad she’s part of the Batfamily. Not to mention that her book is one of the best of the New 52. I also love Barbara Gordon. I adore Barbara and she means a lot to me.

But…really?

I just find it a little ridiculous and frustrating that the entire Batfam are really cool nice white people. Dick’s supposed to be Romani (but apparently only in Devin Grayson stories,I guess) and Damian is mixed-race, and I’m sure you’ve heard me rant several times on how irritating it is that they never color them that way.

But I mean, I’m so glad they introduced Kate to the Batfam because she’s a very very important character; a lesbian member of the family is big and awesome and great. However, why does she need to physically look like the highest-profile female of the Batfam? Like it’s not even a resemblance, it’s just a coloring.

I mentioned a while ago that people should be talking about Batwing and Nightrunner, why aren’t people talking about Batwing and Nightrunner? What I meant by that is that Batwing is AWESOME, and it’s opening up this whole African superhero history that I don’t think even existed before this new series and I personally think it’s really friggin awesome and great, but I just wonder why they had to create a Batman actually in Africa in order to have a black member of the Batfamily. It’s not like there aren’t POC in Gotham. There are many, many different ethnic minorities in Gotham and how many of them are represented in Gotham City in the rebooted Batfam? None. Not one. Cass Cain, Batgirl for 10 years and the only non-white member of the Batfamily* until Batwing’s creation in 2011, was erased.

And Nightrunner. First of all, Nightrunner was friggin awesome (and finally a non-lame superhero for France, jeez). No, actually, that’s my whole point. Nightrunner, Bilal Asselah, was awesome. Everything about him was cool, from his past to his drive to his fear even to his awesome, totally badass name. He deserved his own series because he was a unique, interesting character, and important things could have been done with him.

And then, oop, in the reboot he disappears.

Why?To make room for much more beloved characters? Really? I know Batman’s a big seller but he’s got like, what, 5 books all to himself? My point here is that there was room for Bilal Asselah in the reboot. He was young, he was interesting, he represented a struggle and cause beyond what the rest of the Batfam did. There was room and interest for him in the reboot, but somebody chose to exclude him. Somebody chose to erase him. Just like somebody chose to erase Cass Cain. No, it doesn’t matter to me if there are rumors of her return; they cut her out when, you know what, Black Bat would have made an AWESOME series. Cass’s run as Batgirl was compelling and her character was a solid part of the Batfamily. Even more a part of it than Stephanie Brown, as much as I love Steph. And I do, I really do; but Cass Cain is literally a part of that family, Bruce Wayne’s adopted daughter, and to be honest it kind of began to bother me when I started thinking about how high the likelihood of Steph coming back is compared to the likelihood of Cass coming back. It just seems ridiculous. It is ridiculous. And I feel like there’s this great, strong fandom, especially on Tumblr, and it makes me wonder why are we not getting angry about this? Why are we not upset? These characters - Batwing, Nightrunner, Black Bat - they’re amazing and interesting and it’s not like they’re extremely low profile. Batwing has his own series now, Nightrunner was in Batman Inc. and Cass Cain was Batgirl for ten years. And they are ALL part of the Batfamily.

So now tell me: why aren’t we talking about them?

*sometimes Babs is colored with blue eyes; this doesn’t really change my point at all.

*once again, you could argue that Damian and Dick are both non-white. But they’re not presented that way in the comics pretty much ever, obviously with the exception of Devin Grayson’s stories for Dick.