Damian Wayne irrevocably changed the Bat-family for the worse
Every superhero comic book character, even the most obscure, is somebody’s favorite. There are no boring or bad characters, just ones who haven’t found the right story for you yet.
To that point: If your favorite comic book character is Damian Wayne, son of the Batman, know that I respect you, and I love that you love him. You must understand that there is no joy in my heart as I say this. I am begging you, stop reading this now.
I think Damian Wayne was a mistake.
“Who is Damian Wayne?” is a thing you might wonder if you only clicked this out of a blanket love of messy drama, in which case, I salute you.
Once upon a time in 1987, writer Mike W. Barr and artist Jerry Bingham made a Batman story in which Bruce Wayne and Talia Head, daughter of immortal disaster eugenicist Ra’s al Ghul, had a baby. The story was declared non-canonical in Zero Hour (a small potatoes-crisis event only the most vigilant DC fans remember), but on a long enough time scale, nothing stays unreferenced — especially not when Grant Morrison was given the keys to Batman 30 years later.
To say that Morrison is a writer with a penchant for making consequential plot points out of obscure comics references is a (humorous) understatement. With artist Andy Kubert, Morrison reintroduced this child of Batman and grandchild of Ra’s al Ghul — who Talia had kept a secret from Bruce until the boy was 10 years-old — as Damian Wayne. Under Morrison’s pen, Damian replaced Tim Drake as the youngest Robin, and he continues to hold that title to this day.
On the page, Damian has settled into a reliable identity. He was raised as an assassin, and struggles with rule #1 of being one of Batman’s allies: No killing, period. He was taught to idolize both his mass-murdering grandfather and his heroic father, and story to story, he struggles to unpack those conflicting philosophies. He’s torn between love and respect for his mother, and the fact that she has made various and sundry supervillain-ass moves to
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