Empresssissiofaustria - Empress Sissi Of Austria

the energy radiating from this is so pure, so pure

WOW, do you remember this?? Do you all remember when Dick said he almost adopted Damian but was afraid of being a bad father to him??? Do you??? Bc dc sure as hell don't

Dc always be little the other characters to give the illusion that bruce did nothing wrong so don't be surprised at the story's lack of logic

I've been trying to write a longer post about Damian's last story in the Robin 80th anniversary special for a few days now because it's the lead up to Bruce and Damian's confrontation in the next Teen Titans Annual, but the whole storyline of them having a falling-out is such a mess, it's hard to make definitive statements about anything.

The set-up in No Justice was badly executed. Yes, Damian disagrees with Bruce on some pages but it's not really important to their later conflict. We never saw their big fight, it happened off-panel. So the beginning is already vague as hell. Nothing in No Justice was tied to Damian personally, so it always felt like a pretty weak excuse to get Damian away from his father. The whole thing felt tacked on.

Also, it's not like Damian didn't give Bruce hints towards why he's angry at him so I don't know why Bruce seems to clueless in the Robin special.

Glass's reasoning for Damian's actions in Teen Titans never convinced me and felt like a huge step back for the character. To this day the book makes it sound like Bruce and Damian aren't on speaking terms and Damian isn't coming home anymore.

The first time Bruce wanted to fix things was in Detective Comics, but everything in that arc turned out to be part of a simulation. So in reality they still had their issues, didn't talk about it, but Damian was at home in the batcave when Bruce woke up anyway:

Maybe Damian wanted to congratulate Bruce on his birthday even though they supposedly weren't talking to each other, I don't know, the story never told me. It also didn't tell me why Damian was still there in the next arc and working alongside Bruce to take down the Arkham Knight just fine. Damian even stayed for several days because Bruce was temporarily blind at the end of the story and Damian got to drive the batmobile for him.

Damian also came when Bruce used the red batsignal in the main Batman book to call for help, unlike Ric, Jason and Stephanie who were at odds with Bruce at the time too and refused. Later he went along with Bruce's plan to send him into Gotham alone during the City of Bane arc to fight Gotham Girl, get himself beaten up, taken hostage and held at gunpoint by Flashpoint Thomas Wayne. He also said this during the arc:

Which speaks of his loyalty to Bruce and to the bat-family, considering he's supposed to be at odds with Bruce, Alfred compared him to Ra's Al-Ghul in their last known conversation and Damian has either a complicated or a non-existent relationship with everyone present in the last panel. Yeah, honestly that little speech doesn't make a lot of sense.

After Alfred's death Damian still comes when Bruce asks for assistance with a case after Lucius pestered Bruce into taking care of the missing children cases in one of his orphanages while Bruce was busy with taking down a gang:

At the end Bruce talks about how it's their responsibility as Wayne's to take care of the kids at the orphanages they own, Bruce builds another wing for the orphanage and Bruce and Damian seem to be on good terms at its opening two months later:

When Bruce finally calls the family for a meeting/wake for Alfred after Bruce build a hospital in memory of their (grand)father figure Damian is probably the character who is the least angry at Bruce for what happened:

And Damian still seems to come home to the manor after Alfred's death...to eat I guess:

And now we have this story:

So Robin has been off the grid for months and the few times they did run into each other he has been cold to Bruce? I mean I guess that's true in some stories, but definitely not all and even in the stories where DC hints at their conflict Damian still ends up helping Bruce. And apparently he's not "off the grid" enough to not come home. I'm...confused by this storyline.

Judging from my analysis I'm not sure why Bruce is lamenting about Damian not living up to his values of loyalty and family, since Damian seems pretty happy to go along with whatever plan his father comes up with in most comics, even if it includes a high risk to his own life. Like Bruce's dumbass plan in City of Bane or spending several days in a snowstorm searching for another child. The fact that both in Detective Comics #1017 and Pennyworth RIP Bruce is shown to be the person who changes the topic when Damian complains about their relationship and refuses to go after his son to comfort him even after Barbara pushes him to do so also makes me wonder how Damian is supposed to strive towards these values when Bruce does such a bad job trying to live by them himself.

I know DC hinted in Justice League #39 that reality is broken and maybe that works as an in-universe explanation for this mess, but as a consumer this is simply unpleasant to read. When I read an issue dealing with this storyline I don't know if they're on speaking terms or not, if Damian still follows Bruce's orders or not or even if Damian still lives at the manor sometimes or only with his team.

Are you insane!!! don't give DC ideas

If you really want to fuck with Batman

You should kill all his children with a gun. In the alley where his parents were killed.

No, you can't claim a mistake now that you have started the resistance, there is no going back, whether you integrate them into our society or fight them to the death.

playing spot the newcomer is easy because they’re the mfs who censor everything

Louder for the people in the back

Talia, Damian and choosing between good and evil

Before Grant Morrison created Damian in 2006 Talia was seen as one of Bruce's greatest loves for a long time. She was the first love interest of Bruce that showed him from a more passionate side:

Bruce and Talia loved each other, but Talia could never really choose between her loyalty to her father and her love for Bruce, even though in most stories she would end up helping Bruce against Ra's.

While she was morally gray, Talia was originally a kind character, who fought against child rapists, murderes and other villains, patched Bruce up when he was hurt or down and even threw herself between Bruce and bullets that were about to hit him. In the 1987 graphic novel "Son of the demon" the two even married and Talia got pregnant. Bruce went pretty much overboard trying to keep Talia and their unborn child safe and almost got himself killed in the process. Which is why Talia lied to him about suffering from a miscarriage and asked him to leave her. Later she gave birth to their unnamed son and gave him to an orphanage:

The graphic novel was later taken out of continuity because DC didn't like the implication of Bruce having sex and not knowing that he had a child when he's supposed to be the world's greatest detective.

The reason I'm mentioning this story is because it would later serve as the base for Damian's creation in 2006. While the idea of Bruce and Talia having a child came up in Elseworld stories before (Ibn in "Kingdom Come" and Tallant Wayne in "Batman: League of the Batmen") the introduction of Damian marked the first time their son became canon in the main DC universe.

When Grant Morrison started his run on Batman he decided to bring "Son of the demon" back into continuity, but didn't bother to read the graphic novel he only vaguely remembered. His vague memory ended up basically destroying Talia's original character, something she hasn't recovered from since 2006.

In his memory they didn't have a consensual relationship and Talia raped Bruce to have a child. Morrison reduced her to the "Asian Babymama" trope and turned her into a mustache twirling villain, a worse version of Ra's basically, who turned evil because Bruce rejected her. Suddenly she was willing to sacrifice both Bruce and Damian to reach her goal of ruling the world. I have a lot of issues with this premise, most importantly its racist and sexist undertones, but this post wouldn't end if I started ranting and there are fans who are more knowledgeable about Talia and better at explaining why this sucks so much.

Grant Morrison later admitted that he remembered the story wrong and tried to explain that Talia went evil because of the continuity changes Superboy Prime punching the universe caused (Don't ask, comics are weird) and that when Bruce accused Talia of drugging him Bruce was actually lying about getting drugged, because he didn't want to admit to himself that he had loved her and slept with her out of his own volition.

If you don't believe me, here is the link to the interview: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/hotb/2016/11/15/064-the-zorro-of-arkham--an-interview-with-grant-morrison

Think what you will about that explanation. Fact is, the last time Bruce commented on Damian's conception he said this:

So to all the people who love to yell that Talia is a rapist and Damian a rape-baby, kindly shut up. Morrison's mistake got retconned years ago.

Anyway, Damian inherited Talia's struggle to choose between Ra's and Bruce, only that they turned Talia into a second Ra's and gave all her previous conflicts to her son, which is probably one of the reasons DC is unwilling to return her to her former character.

Some writers like Patrick Gleason have tried to give her some redemption, like when he wrote that Talia had been posessed during Morrison's run and cleansed during her resurrection, but the rest of DC pretty much ignored his attempt.

I'm not a fan of DC's extremely black and white, good and evil narrative they have created for Damian and the execution is pretty lackluster.

First of all, it's pretty racist that the Al-Ghuls lost a lot of their complexity over the years to serve as Damian's dark and evil side of the family, while the batfamily (which is pretty white) is presented as the light and good side. It gives me major "white saviour" vibes and has lots of unfortunate implications, especially because DC likes to pretend that Damian is white and only touches his arab/chinese roots when they write him in a more negative light. DC does the same thing with Talia, where they draw her as white when she's more sympathetic and give her brown skin when she's evil.

Second of all, DC loves to label Bruce as a man of high morality, but I think he's actually a pretty bad hero and parent. Some part of me is convinced Talia isn't allowed to be a better mother because it would make Bruce look bad in comparison.

I talked enough about why I don't think of modern Batman as a good person and a hero in my previous post, so I'm going to focus on Talia and Ra's Al-Ghul.

Making Talia evil robs her of her character and history, erases one of Bruce's most important romantic relationships and after a while it just lacks story potential. If the Al-Ghuls have no redeeming qualities then writing Damian struggling so much between the two sides becomes baffling after a going through this character arc several times.

You can argue that Damian got gaslighted for years and that he was still an impressionable child, but if the Al-Ghuls are really as evil, brutal and selfish as DC writes them nowadays it makes it really hard to sympathize with anyone who thinks about joining them (which happens a lot with the batfamily).

Another fact that DC loves to forget is that originally Ra's used to be an eco-terrorist. He planned to wipe out some part of the human population to save plants and animals from extinction, which is extremely relevant today. Ra's is a villain, we don't have to argue about that, but he used to have more depth that made him interesting as a character and made it more plausible why someone might join him. He also loved his daughter, which explained why Talia struggled to leave him in her old stories.

The way they are written now it makes little sense why Bruce should have so much respect for Ra's, something that made their relationship special, there is no reason why Bruce ever loved Talia and decided to sleep with her and there's no reason why Damian should ever return to the League.

Establishing a more loving relationship, both between Bruce and Talia, even if it's in the past, and a better relationship between Damian and Talia has a lot more story potential for Damian's seemingly never ending storyline where he can't decide if he wants to follow Bruce's methods (whatever that means for modern Batman) or the way of his mother. Because as it stands his character developement is stuck in a loop where he just looks like a boy who is unable to learn and can't see how one of the possible options has nothing going for it.