Talia al Ghul is a piece of...

[SicariiDC]

WOW. I know im super late but "holy terrible mother batman"...i just read batman vs robin and it baffles me how awful she is. I know its comic books, but damn.

[beetlebum]

The Talia you see in Batman and Robin was an abomination.

Grant Morrison turned Talia into a one-dimensional villain in order to fit the narrative he wanted to write, and he had her kill Damian in his metaphor for divorce (because nearly everything has to be symbolism with him, even if some of it is convoluted).

Now, while it is true that Talia is one of Batman's 'rogues', and she has killed and engaged in various forms of skullduggery in the past. However, Talia is usually more wonderfully complex than people who aren't familiar with her character, give her credit for. After all, if Bruce didn't see anything redeeming in her, I'm sure he wouldn't have gotten into a relationship with her.

After all, there was that one time she even went out of her way to save Damian from Ra's.

Not to mention her part in resurrecting Jason Todd, which was partially spurned on by her love for her Beloved, shows you just how complex and selfless she can be at times.

From here:

Talia took Todd in out of her love for Batman, while her father, Ra's al Ghul, was interested in the secret behind his resurrection. The League of Assassins tracked and eliminated everyone in Gotham who knew of Todd's resurrection to prevent Batman from finding out. They also interrogated the Joker's henchmen who were with him during Todd's murder, in hopes to find out how the boy could have survived.[24] Talia later restored Todd's health and memory by immersing him in a Lazarus Pit in which her father was also bathing and helped him escape the house of al Ghul. It is suggested by Ra's that the power of the pit resulted in Todd's mental instability. Ra's refers to Todd as a "curse" and a "pestilence" unleashed on the planet, saying that madness may affect him in "hours, months, or decades".

If you don't know much about her character, then I don't necessarily hold it against you if you have a bad impression of her, especially if that's the only version of her you've been exposed to. But for those of us who have read Talia long before Batman and Robin, it hurt our hearts to see this. I wonder if DC will ever do us a solid and return Talia to the way she was pre-reboot, long before this change happened to her. But I'm not holding out my breath for it anytime soon.

Edited to add: If you're curious, you can read the great onlytalia's take on why Grant Morrison got Talia al Ghul horribly wrong. She has made those arguments for me better than I have, mainly because I don't have the time and energy to fully document everything that I disliked about Morrison's characterization of our Beloved.

[beetlebum]

http://40.media.tumblr.com/2d16f9d7e...memo1_1280.png

Proof that Talia can just be so darn likeable at times.

[Nite-Wing]

Talia is a villain being complex doesn't make her any better than the dozens of other murderers in the Batman Rogue's gallery.
Batman in particular holds all of his villains to the same standard.
Talia is only sparred a trip to blackgate or Arkham because she usually escapes and doesn't operate in Gotham.

Morrison has a tendency to view complex villains negatively
For instance Magneto is a terrorist nothing more under Morrison's pen
The same measure is how Talia is treated under his pen but with Talia there is really nothing to her character that makes her immune to scorn.

Her actions with the damian clones and heretic abominations pushed her all the way to one side of the villainous scale.
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/...an+029-010.jpg

[Carabas]

The Talia you see in Batman and Robin was an abomination.

Grant Morrison turned Talia into a one-dimensional villain in order to fit the narrative he wanted to write, and he had her kill Damian in his metaphor for divorce (because nearly everything has to be symbolism with him, even if some of it is convoluted).

Now, while it is true that Talia is one of Batman's 'rogues', and she has killed and engaged in various forms of skullduggery in the past. However, Talia is usually more wonderfully complex than people who aren't familiar with her character, give her credit for. After all, if Bruce didn't see anything redeeming in her, I'm sure he wouldn't have gotten into a relationship with her.

Let's not forget that even before Morrison started his Batman run, Talia underwent some dramatic changes in the run-up to Infinite Crisis, was a founding member of The Society, and has the blood of many thousands on her hands from when The Society destroyed the entire city of Blüdhaven, and from the battle of Metropolis.

The Damian stuff is kinda small potatoes compared to what other writers had her do.

[JBatmanFan05]

Morrison's direction with Talia was a tiny bit bold, but totally worth it (the super divorce, the woman scorned) and was well rooted and founded in her increased badness that ramped up starting in Batman Legacy/Bane of the Demon from the late 90s.

The harsh truth is that comic Talia didn't remain like how Denny wrote her initially, like how BTAS portrayed her. She killed more and more and sided with her father more and more to the point where she really had little case to assert she was not just like her father. And Morrison seized upon that and said: What if Bruce turning down the family trio was the last straw that really hardened her heart to full-on villainess?

And Morrison doesn't get credit for all the little touches of regret and humanity that he gave Talia in her fall to true evil. She didn't quite do it all unblinkingly. She did what she did, but it hurt her and you could tell. Grant retold her origin (accurately!) to show that...she was raised wrong, raised poorly, without a mother, by a sociopathic megalomaniacal mass murdering criminal father....and of course it affected her life & her mind in a big deep way and set her up for her callous cruel choices against Batman and Damian and the world.

All in all, Morrison took comic book Talia to her logical extension, saved her from being stuck in the same old hypocritical false routine with Bruce where Bruce pretends she's not a monster like her father and she stubbornly thinks Bruce will marry her despite Bruce repeatedly turning that down.

[SicariiDC]

yeah, so morrison's talia isnt my first encounter with her, but def the most infuriating...especially from the aspect of a parent. having a 6 year old son myself, she might even be worse than the joker...like when she takes control of damian thru his spine...lol, just blow up a vague amount of innocents, dont do that to your own kid...

and i thought she drugged batman? i thought selina was the one he actually truly loved...idk

[SicariiDC]

http://40.media.tumblr.com/2d16f9d7e...memo1_1280.png

Proof that Talia can just be so darn likeable at times.

damian damn near looks cute here...lol

edit: what is that from btw?

[Kurtzberg]

and i thought she drugged batman? i thought selina was the one he actually truly loved...idk

It's something of a fluid situation in regards to Talia and Bruce, the original story from which Morrison drew his inspiration, there was no drugging, Talia and Bruce was completely consensual.
Morrison failed to recall certain details, such as that and admitted as such in interviews, so for a period of time there was a situation where Talia and Bruce involved some form of drugging involved. Though the situation seemed to evolve even over Morrison's run from Talia drugging Batman to her possibly taking some fertility drug to ensure she conceives, or at least went from Batman explicitly calling it rape to a far more ambiguous situation.
Later, the situation was retconned back by Tomasi to a consensual encounter and Bruce admits to Damian that he loved Talia for a time, but it was always a doomed relationship. Although other writers may still be referencing the previous state of affairs, I'm not sure.
So yeah, it's a bit of a mess in regards to that one particular point.
As to Selina being the one Bruce truly loves, depends on the writer, there will never be a definitive "one" for Bruce. Love interests for Batman fall in and out of favour, for some it's Selina, for some it's Talia, for others it's someone else entirely, for most it's Gotham/Justice as his one true love.

[JBatmanFan05]

It's something of a fluid situation in regards to Talia and Bruce, the original story from which Morrison drew his inspiration, there was no drugging, Talia and Bruce was completely consensual.
Morrison failed to recall certain details, such as that and admitted as such in interviews, so for a period of time there was a situation where Talia and Bruce involved some form of drugging involved. Though the situation seemed to evolve even over Morrison's run from Talia drugging Batman to her possibly taking some fertility drug to ensure she conceives, or at least went from Batman explicitly calling it rape to a far more ambiguous situation.

So yeah, it's a bit of a mess in regards to that one particular point.

I choose to see it as consensual, but Bruce is kinda of in stubborn denial of that and tries to attribute it to Talia's drugs/fertility stuff when that stuff was negligible in their consensual coupling. And deep down Bruce knows that.

[K. Jones]

Twas Rucka's Nyssa destroyed Talia, not Morrison. He just took it to the limits and wrapped it up. It's a very big picture thing, the last decade of Talia stories.

[JAG2045]

Twas Rucka's Nyssa destroyed Talia, not Morrison. He just took it to the limits and wrapped it up. It's a very big picture thing, the last decade of Talia stories.

Im not a fan of how Talia has been portrayed since "Maidens" but one could argue her being repeatedly killed & resurrected by Nyssa & the death of Ra's has affected her personality

[t hedge coke]

The Talia you see in Batman and Robin was an abomination.

Yes, the murdering, runs-a-worldwide-ring-of-crime, sits at the table with Luthor, Sivana, and Vandal Savage, career criminal arms deals, slavery-indulging, kidnappy, supervillain who looks cute and has a daddy, so can't be all bad was purely a Morrison creation and not something slowly built up from her very first appearances forward.

[cgh]

I think the Morrison Talia is the best ever. Wanders around in a scary skull mask, runs an assassins guild, is obviously a psychopath or at least has a serious personality disorder and yet Batman still has feelings for her. I can understand it - I'd probably feel the same way. There is no cold logic to be found in love.

[phantom1592]

Gotta say, I never saw Talia as some kind of 'innocent'. I always remember her as a villain in one form or another. Up to and including taking over Luthor's empire for some kind of nefarious scheme...

Batman is just a bit hypocritical when it comes to the hot ladies. Talia and Catwoman both seem to get away with a LOT more then the rest of his rogues do....