Monday, October 10, 2011

A Response to Scott Snyder, Part 3 (Damian Wayne)



In conclusion...

Robin (Damien Wayne)



Grant Morrison’s Batman mega-arc has always been right on the cusp of long-standing continuity. There are always questions raised about what from the past is part of continuity, whether these events are then part of regular DC continuity or something specific to Morrison’s vision, blending the Golden, Silver, Bronze and Modern ages into hyper-time, no matter what crisis may be threatening the time stream.

Damian’s history technically dates back to the Mike Barr Elseworlds one-shot, Son of the Demon. In it Talia Al Ghul, daughter of Ras Al Ghul, reveals herself to be pregnant to Batman, who of course believes it to be his own child. Ras and Batman bond over the situation, relishing the merging of their two empires under compromised goals and motives, until Talia has an apparent miscarriage, at which point Batman bids the Ghul’s goodbye, but not before the twist revealing their hypothetical child was not lost to a miscarriage, and instead was born and adopted out.

Using the Superboy-Prime time-punch as his modus operandi, Morrison wove Son of the Demon back into continuity, opting to introduce Damian Wayne, the son of Talia and Batman, who has been raised in secret by the League of Assassins. Damian was introduced in Morrison’s first arc of his Batman opus, looking at a television screen and saying “There, that’s my father” to the sight of the super hero. The storyline would see a fun series of sequences of Batman and company trying to raise a spoiled, self-entitled, super-assassin who would just as soon cut your head off over not getting a laptop as he would listen to a speech about sacrifice.



Damian popped in and out of the Batman title for the next year, leading up to Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis, the events of which left Batman in a time limbo, forcing Dick Grayson to don the cape and cowl and, unwittingly, taking on Damian as the new Robin. The change to the status quo was quite shocking; Damian had only appeared a little over half a dozen issues at this point, and here was this former cold blooded murderer in one of the oldest super hero costumes in the world. The dynamic between the jovial, optimistic Grayson and the cold, matter-of-fact future heir to the Batman throne shot to the top of the sales charts, where it remained for almost 2 years.

Damian has been featured in numerous cross-overs and team ups. He was on the Teen Titans for 3 issues, featured in a World’s Finest mini-series, and has had numerous adventures with Supergirl of all people, in both Supergirl’s solo series and Superman/Batman. The crown jewel of Damian’s DC adventures would be Paul Dini’s Street’s of Gotham, which featured a very long storyline, first Dick and Damian uncovering a child abduction ring, that led to an amazing solo-outing pitting Damian vs. the scarred serial killer, Zsasz.

Damian has secret bunkers throughout the city, weapons and vehicles, as well as becoming partners with a frail orphan with the ability to turn into a hulking monster named Abuse. Damian schemes and goes under cover, ending in a duel with Zsasz that has Damnian nearly slicing the flesh monster in two. The series was sharp and fresh, giving us a hard, down to Earth look at a character who, at the time, was still fairly new and had hardly been seen on his own. Dustin Nguyen provided stylinsh, thick line work with dirty colors, giving Damian’s adventure a very unique, non-DC look that really added to the overall martial arts feel of the character.



As Streets of Gotham wound down with the rest of the universe in preparation for the big reboot, I held out hope that Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen would be given a Damian Wayne Robin book. There has always been a Robin book, with Jason Todd being the lone exception. Both Dick and Tim each had Robin series that went into the hundreds of issues, the Robin character has always been featured prominently in the Teen Titans, not to mention the general relationship they tend to develop across the universe. Damian has not had this opportunity.

With DC actively trying to court a younger audience I find it annoying that the most popular new character in over a decade, a 12 year old brash assassin son of Batman, cannot find his way into the mainstream DCU. Right now Young Justice, DC’s flagship cartoon at the moment, features a teenage Dick Grayson leading a pre-Teen Titans cast of sidekicks. Now, I’m not a marketing specialist, but from talking to people the average person doesn’t know who the hell Dick Grayson is. Everyone knows Robin and a few are aware of the circus origin of the first Robin, but no one really cares who Robin is in the general media. DC could have used Damian in Dick’s place and exposed the character to a wider audience while also joining their continuity a little bit, making the transition from cartoon to print easier.

With the relaunch Damian has been scrubbed pretty hard out of sight. Damian used to have appearances every month across the universe, including backup roles in most Bat books, now in the first month of the New 52 he is relegated to the first issue of Batman and Robin and a few cameo panels in Batman #1. Dick Grayson in the newly launched Nightwing doesn’t mention him, he isn’t name dropped in any other Bat book, he has no prominent role or storyline to carry out, and now that Morrison’s Bat Opus is on hold for a few months, Damian is all but invisible.

One of the most common complaints about the industry, from both creators and fans, is there aren’t enough new characters, that we keep reading the same stories over and over with different details about Superman’s birth and origin or The Hulk merging and separating from Bruce Banner over and over. Damian is relatively brand new. Despite being introduced in 2006 he has been left inside the Bat Books and outside of one Batman: Brave and Bold “what if” story that represented a wildly out of character Damian, he has never been mentioned on any television show or movie DC has released.

If DC wanted my money they would launch a Robin solo-title. He has a motive, he has an identity, he has gadgets and safe houses, partner’s (Abuse) and acquaintences to grow into relationships (Alfred, Stephanie Brown, Barbara Gordon), and most uniquely, he is one of the DC characters with a future already laid out. Batman #666 and #700, both written by Grant Morrison, features stories of a grown-up Damian who has inherited the mantle of the Bat. Damian is haunted by a guilt over the death of the Batman, inflicting severe punishment, even death, upon the new breed of futuristic Gotham scum, with his own rogue’s gallery including Professor Pyg and Flamingo, two characters who would show up in out present, along with Max Roboto and Jack-A-Napes, villians yet to be seen outside these futuristic adventures. The future Batman wears a trench coat, designed to take the place of a cape. His arm protector’s are now sharpened blades used to sever limbs and torsos, leaving bloody stumps in place of mayhem. He has a disturbed relationship with Barabara Gordon, the wheel-chair bound chief of police who can’t help but blame the Dark Knight for the death of “a friend.”



In these two comic books Morrison has created quite the future for our beloved brat. His cockiness and lack of remorse today gives way to the haunting weight on Damian’s shoulders in the future. It is intriguing and mesmerizing, some of the most imaginative comics in recent years, oozing the brutality and absolute justice today’s crowd wants out of it’s Batman. Just as I plead for a Robin solo-series, the Holy Grail of “crap I’ll never get” is a futuristic-Damian-Wayne-as-Batman series. Immediately we have to come to the conclusion Morrison won’t be writing it if it ever happens, but I have faith that DC would stack the property rightly, giving an already fully-formed character a prominent role that he deserves.

Scott Snyder began this little series by asking use who we, the fans who actually buy comic books, feel deserves a solo-series. Damian Wayne. Make it happen Scott.

3 comments:

  1. Umm... Dick Grayson never hard his own series as Robin. Tim Drake was the first Robin to get his own series and the only reason he got his own series is because they tested it with 3 separate minis (Robin, Robin II: Joker's Wild, and Robin 3: Cry of Huntress). Dick didn't get his own series until Nightwing and if you're going to consider Nightwing, then.. you also have to consider Red Hood's on-going as Jason Todd's series.

    Also, Damien Wayne is the most popular new character? Really? Because most of the people I KNOW want him to meet a crowbar via Joker. Damien was irritating, incompetent, and just doesn't deserve to be Robin except that he's Bruce's child. He's shown not to be anything remotely interesting. He's a brat. The only thing I lament is that he can't actually be the shortest lived Robin ever.

    Also, I just want to know.. who the hell finds Talia al Ghul all that interesting? I mean.. she has no personality at all except what her DADDY gives her. It's creepy. I miss the old days when Batman and Catwoman had a child.. a child that deserved her own solo title and only ever managed a brilliant scant issues of a back up feature until Paul Levitz left his character in the hands of a new team that didn't know how to deal with her.

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  2. You got me on Dick's solo series but I stand by the rest. Because you don't like him doesn't mean he hasn't been central in a large portion of the best selling comic books the past few years.

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  3. Technically, Tim Drake was the first to have a standalone series titled Robin, but the Dick Grayson Robin was the cover feature in Star-Spangled Comics from issue 65 until 95 and then remained in the book until it switched to a war book with 131. That's 1947-1952 at a time when other hero books and anthologies were failing.

    He had a long-time backup strip in various Batman books - enough that they released a Showcase volume of those stories.

    The Batman Family book had Robin and Batgirl team-up but was very pointedly NOT a Batman starring book.

    So while Dick Grayson may have not had a self-titled book, he was a proven draw for decades before he became Nightwing.

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