Damian Wayne, Batman’s secret son, changed DC Comics 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 replace him in her affections (clones) or force him to kill Batman (replacing his spine with a mind control spine). Also, he’s best friends with Superman’s kid, which is really cute.

All in all, Damian is a conflicted, grumpy, just-turned-teenager both searching for and spurning guidance, all done up in superhero wrapping. And when writers and artists remember to write and draw him that way, he’s also a great touch of visible racial diversity in Gotham’s mythos. I wouldn’t argue against anyone who finds that compelling. Indeed, among the easiest ways to give me a new obsession is to show me a child character raised as a weapon who is desperately trying to rise above that role. I love that shit.

The only complaint I can make about Damian’s character in isolation is that he illustrates a frustrating double standard, which is really a complaint about sexism in fandom and society at large. That is, if Damian were a female character, rather than a male one — if Damienne Wayne was the secret goth daughter of Batman and granddaughter of Ra’s al Ghul, who had world-class assassin skills from the jump and got to live in Wayne Manor and be instantly accepted as Robin by basically all the other Batman characters (whom she’d treat with a universal sneering disdain) even though she’d just murdered a man — she’d have been slapped with the “Mary Sue” label so hard she wouldn’t have survived Flashpoint.

My real beef with Damian Wayne is not about his character, but about its knock on effects in Batman stories. Simply by being Batman’s only biological son, the very existence of Damian Wayne necessarily has led to the diminishing of Batman’s relationships with his foster children. Since Morrison and Kubert dropped one close blood relation into Batman’s family of orphans and friends, innumerable stories have been written that position Damian as foremost in Bruce’s heart, and his assumed successor as Batman.

To pick one telling example, one of the first Batman stories after Morrison’s tenure (following Damian’s death at the hands of a clone created by his mom to kill him; normal comics stuff) was a whole story arc in which Batman traveled the world seeking a way to resurrect Damian and nearly beat his murderer to death. All this as if Jason Todd, the Robin famous for dying, whom Batman did not seek to resurrect or lethally avenge, was not, you know, right there. Once, the question of which Robin was best fit to become Batman after Bruce was arguable, but Damian has since become the default Batman of the future. From Morrison’s work in flashforward stories, through to today’s Wonder Woman backups, and even a whole animated film, writers have treated Damian’s claim to the mantle as if it were a royal dynasty.

Image: Prime Video

Some of these choices, like Damian’s inclusion as the Robin of the Harley Quinn cartoon, were certainly made because of the convenience of his placement as the youngest and current Robin, or of the relative simplicity of “Batman’s son” compared to “Batman’s adopted orphan circus acrobat,” or out of the sheer comedy of Robin being a small kitten who thinks of nothing but murder all day. But that doesn’t extricate the positioning of Damian as the obvious heir to Batman’s legacy, or as the one Robin that Batman feels most keenly for, from the message Of course it’s Damian. He’s Batman’s real son.

And that message makes me livid — not just because it impugns upon the character of my favorite superhero, but because Batman comics invented the non-familial superhero unit in the first place.

Ever since Robin’s 1940 debut, the forging of strong relationships outside of biological ties has been a huge part of the draw of superhero stories. Despite starting the whole sidekick/mentor trope, Batman multimedia has focused on his loner status, and Batman’s expansive found family, far beyond Robin, was a primary element of Gotham City stories for decades following the 1980s.

Four to five Robins, one to three Batgirls, a slew of off-again-on-again paramour villains like Talia and Catwoman; various secondary vigilantes like Huntress, Azrael, the Question, or Batwoman, whose presences were tolerated, welcomed, or seethed at depending on the circumstances. And above it all, Alfred Pennyworth; with a dry wit, a kind word, and severe disapproval when warranted.

The knock on effect of Damian’s existence is that he’s become, in a myriad of subtle ways, Batman’s most important son. And the knock on effect of that, among creators who see the problem this creates for Bruce Wayne’s moral character, is that all of his relationships with his other children have to become more conventional and less fraught.

The general drift away from Batman-sidekick interpersonal drama in comics that started with Morrison’s tenure has only exacerbated the tidiness of current Bat-family relations — if there’s less time to spend on inter-character complexities, things have to become less complex. If Damian calls Batman “father,” then other orphaned Bat-family kids must be shown to understand implicitly that they are also Batman’s children, not merely his mentees. Dick Grayson’s chafing under Batman’s shadow is resolved. If part of Damian’s whole deal is struggling with the murder rule, it’s hypocritical of Batman to hold that against Jason Todd. Tim Drake’s anxiety that his secret life and secret found family is driving a wedge between him and his widowed dad? Don’t worry about it; Tim’s just a member of the Bat-fam now.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll dabble in softer interpretations like Wayne Family Adventures from time to time. But for truly riveting superhero drama, the Bat-family needs messiness. Any X-Men comics fan will tell you that the interpersonal drama is half, if not most, of the appeal. Where they had Charles Xavier and Magneto’s messy falling outs, Batman fans had Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, who would never admit the profound depth of the bond between them in words, but would demonstrate it in heartbreaking action over and over again.

Bat-family drama is at its best when it’s a messy, gothic tangle of towering respect undercut by legitimate resentments. Batgirl asking “What are you doing here?” and Nightwing replying, with dark and far-too-easy sarcasm, “Following a pattern of obsessive behavior instilled in me at an early age.” It’s the Robins agreeing that they’ve truly had it with Batman’s emotional repression this time, right before they spit in a villain’s face that they were “trained by the best.” A group of disconnected people with a cave’s worth of emotional baggage who still share a drop-everything loyalty to each other.

But Susana, isn’t Batman loving Damian more than the rest of the Robins exactly the kind of “messy” you’re talking ab— Nonononono, I’m going to stop you right there. Favoring your biological children over your foster kids is not a relatable character flaw. It’s primal, primo villain shit. I don’t hate Damian Wayne, but that, above all, is what I hate about Damian Wayne.

It’s not Damian’s fault that many of his stories turn Batman into a villain. The real tragedy is how the rest of the canon had to bend over backwards to make Batman back into a hero.