Identity Crisis

[Arctic Cyclist]

I'd personally argue that it's because Tim -doesn't- succeed at being healthy batman, but is instead more of a fascist batman that makes him best for the role.

Tim takes Batman to its logical conclusion. Doesn't make it right. Doesn't make him a hero...but I'd argue that Tim, because of his methodologies and similarities to bruce, is a better batman narratively. If you want a happy ending go for Dick. If you want a gary stu ending, go for damian. But Tim, as batman, represents the tragedy that is inherent in the Batman character.

That's just my interpretation of who batman is though so ymmv.

One of the points of the Kingdom Come universe, Gotham City Garage, and the Old Lady Harley series was that Bruce's many descents into becoming a fascist were his ultimate failures and the failure of Batman. Becoming a fascist is always the worst case scenario, even Damian's many failed Batmans were vehemently opposed to that as embracing fascism is the equivalent of embracing the anti-life equation; it is choosing to become as evil as Darkseid. However, you have just answered what the whole point of this thread was: why would Dick consider Tim the dark one. He's the only Robin who would fully cross the line into becoming evil and embrace fascism.

You also seem to be using Gary Stu in the incorrect "I hate this character so I will call him a Gary Stu/Mary Sue" way as opposed tom what an actual Mary Stu/Gary Stu is. Damian's a Scrappy, yes, but he's definitely not a Sue as he never gets magically forgiven for being ass and people hold him to higher standards in various universes than they do others.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

Beyond that, you also seem to have missed that Dick being Batman is bad because Dick doesn't want to be Batman though he's good at it, better than Bruce. Damian being Batman is bad because one of the underlying themes of various writers, which Snyder and Morrison went into depth exploring is Gotham only challenges Batman with what he could potentially handle and Damian has already killed gods and fought planets. Jason being Batman is bad because...you know, I don't know exactly. He's the most like pre-Death in the Family Bruce when he's trying not to kill people, except he's better at not alienating people than Bruce was. He's not Miller Batman, but he's a bit like Loeb Batman, and he's definitely similar to every preCrisis Batman sans the killing part. And given that murder has the lowest recidivism rates of any crime, with most people struggling to commit the crime after 27, it's very likely that he, just like Damian, would find it harder and harder to kill or even contemplate killing people as he ages. The argument that he is the best choice, especially the current canon Jason who Talia picked out for potentially adopting and training because he's got a pure soul, would in time make the best Batman due to his background and growing belief that people can and will change and choose good if given a choice.

The belief that people can be redeemed is what makes most versions of Terry the most successfully Batman, along with his quest for redemption, the same is what made Damian in Multiversity a successful (mostly, he does have his parents bad taste in romantic partners) Batman, and would make Jason successful.

Batman and Robin, until Tim became Robin, weren't about tragedy. It was about rising above the tragedies to bring hope to others, and a promise that there was something in the dark that cared. Until Jason died, Batman wasn't that dark or paranoid. He wasn't defined by his parents deaths or fear of bats, he was defined by his ability to help others despite his limitations, and the effort to heal other damaged children.

Or to quote the great prophet Margaret Atwood, who admittedly hasn't read comics since the silver age and it would be interesting to have her sit down and analyze the current Batman:

In addition to his disguising "normal" alter-ego, the superhero of the 1940s was required to have a powerful enemy or two. Carl Jung made no secret of the fact that he based much of his mapping of the psyche on literature and art. A comic-book character leading a split life and engaged in a battle between Good and Evil might well be expected to show Jungian characteristics, and in fact Batman is an almost perfect case study.

Batman has three main enemies, who to a Jungian would obviously be projections of Bruce Wayne that Wayne himself has not come to terms with. (In Blakean terms, the two male enemies would be called his Spectres and the female one might be his Emanation.) For Bruce, the female element is conflicted - he's a confirmed bachelor, and has no nice-girl Lois Lane sentimental figure in his life. But the sinuous and desirable Catwoman with whom he frequently skirmishes the must be his Jungian "dark anima" figure: even a child could recognize that there was a lot of unresolved electricity going on between those two.

The sadistic card-playing Joker, with his sinister-clown appearance, is Batman's Jungian Shadow - his own interest in dress-up and jokes turned malicious. There's another Shadow villain - the Penguin - who wears an outfit reminiscent of period cartoons of capitalists, with spats, cigarette holder, and top hat. His civilian alias even has a three-barrelled, pretentious, old-plutocrat faux-English name: Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot. The Penguin is the "rich" side of playboy Bruce Wayne gone rancid.

Then there's Robin, the Boy Wonder, who is Bruce's ward. Is Bruce gay? Don't even think about it. From the point of view of we mythosophists, Robin as an elemental spirit, like Shakespeare's Puck and Ariel - note the bird name, which links him to the air. His function in the plot is to aid the benevolent master trickster, Batman, with his plans. From the point of view of we Jungians, however, Robin is a Peter Pan figure - he never grows up - and he represents the repressed child within Bruce Wayne, whose parents you'll recall, were murdered when he was very young, thus stunting Bruce's emotional growth.

This is the kind of hay, or perhaps hash, that can be made of such comic-book superheroes once you really get going. Both they and Jung himself can be viewed through Hoffmanesque* magic spectacles and seen to be part of the same mythology.

But from the point of view of we kids - the primary readers - Robin was simply ourselves - what we would be like if we, too, had masks and capes and could go running around in them under the delusion that nobody would know who we were, and - better still - stay up long after our bedtimes, allowed to participate in the doings of what we fondly hoped was the adult world.

(In Other Worlds, 2012, Random House)

From the Silver Ages, when Atwood is drawing all of her opinions, Robin has been allowed to grow up and go free in a nod to Shakespeare's Puck and Ariel. If you have read or seen The Tempest and/or A Midsummer Night's Dream, you would realize that Dick, Jason, Stephanie, Duke, Carrie, and Damian all fulfill the roles of Puck and Ariel. They are not the light to Batman's darkness, they are the children that he rescues and attempts to bring into the light. This is the role of Batman to Robin, and it fits neatly with what many cultures view view as the role of bats: the guides of spirits through the darkness of death and the underworld into being reborn as something new and better, a hero. Tim is the only Robin who mixed up the roles of Batman and Robin, he's the only one who thinks he is meant to be Batman's light. The rest needed him to save them in one way or another and bring them out of the darkness and into the light. Due to Tim's not understanding the role, he is the one Robin who keeps descending into the dark under the influence of Batman, into death, unlike the rest who we see actively growing and stepping into the roles of guides for other people lost in the dark.

This is why it's during Tim's tenure as Robin that we see Bruce going from someone who is abusive in the whole child endangerment way but not particularly emotionally, mentally, of physically with just a an occasional smattering of neglect thrown in when Catwoman shows up, to the man who has beaten both Dick and Jason until they needed hospitalization, regularly manipulates, emotionally abuses and neglects Tim, Damian, Stephanie, and Cassandra, and has shoved Duke away as soon as he realized Duke's the only one who can recognize that the way Bruce treats people is wrong and needs to stop.

Tim is the one Batkid who doesn't have anyone saying (besides Stephanie) that the way Bruce treats him and is training him to treat others is wrong. That allowing Bruce to embrace his darkness by embracing the erasure of free will and fascism is wrong, it's the opposite of what the character should be. Hence, Tim becoming the darkest Robin, and the darkest Batman to the point that in Super Sons of Tomorrow we have Conner admitting that his Jon's (and probably Damian's) death was due to his failure to save him. His Tim was allowed to continue down the wrong path, to think that Robin's job is to bring Batman out of the darkness and therefore Robin should be dark. He corrupted the role.

So, your milage will vary, but should you choose to do serious lit criticism of Batman and Robin, you too might find that it's obvious by Tim's embracing evil (fascism) in almost every future seen shows that not only is he the dark Robin, he's the worst choice for becoming Batman.

[CPSparkles]

I like to think that young Tim not understanding the full relationship between Batman and RobinJason noticed Batman darker behaviour and assumed that it was down to losing his sidekick[his light] not understanding that this was a grieving father who had lost his son.

Family, his kids are his light not his sidekick it's just a coincidence that Robin's happen to be his son's as well.

[CPSparkles]

One of the points of the Kingdom Come universe, Gotham City Garage, and the Old Lady Harley series was that Bruce's many descents into becoming a fascist were his ultimate failures and the failure of Batman. Becoming a fascist is always the worst case scenario, even Damian's many failed Batmans were vehemently opposed to that as embracing fascism is the equivalent of embracing the anti-life equation; it is choosing to become as evil as Darkseid. However, you have just answered what the whole point of this thread was: why would Dick consider Tim the dark one. He's the only Robin who would fully cross the line into becoming evil and embrace fascism.

You also seem to be using Gary Stu in the incorrect "I hate this character so I will call him a Gary Stu/Mary Sue" way as opposed tom what an actual Mary Stu/Gary Stu is. Damian's a Scrappy, yes, but he's definitely not a Sue as he never gets magically forgiven for being ass and people hold him to higher standards in various universes than they do others.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

Beyond that, you also seem to have missed that Dick being Batman is bad because Dick doesn't want to be Batman though he's good at it, better than Bruce. Damian being Batman is bad because one of the underlying themes of various writers, which Snyder and Morrison went into depth exploring is Gotham only challenges Batman with what he could potentially handle and Damian has already killed gods and fought planets. Jason being Batman is bad because...you know, I don't know exactly. He's the most like pre-Death in the Family Bruce when he's trying not to kill people, except he's better at not alienating people than Bruce was. He's not Miller Batman, but he's a bit like Loeb Batman, and he's definitely similar to every preCrisis Batman sans the killing part. And given that murder has the lowest recidivism rates of any crime, with most people struggling to commit the crime after 27, it's very likely that he, just like Damian, would find it harder and harder to kill or even contemplate killing people as he ages. The argument that he is the best choice, especially the current canon Jason who Talia picked out for potentially adopting and training because he's got a pure soul, would in time make the best Batman due to his background and growing belief that people can and will change and choose good if given a choice.

The belief that people can be redeemed is what makes most versions of Terry the most successfully Batman, along with his quest for redemption, the same is what made Damian in Multiversity a successful (mostly, he does have his parents bad taste in romantic partners) Batman, and would make Jason successful.

Batman and Robin, until Tim became Robin, weren't about tragedy. It was about rising above the tragedies to bring hope to others, and a promise that there was something in the dark that cared. Until Jason died, Batman wasn't that dark or paranoid. He wasn't defined by his parents deaths or fear of bats, he was defined by his ability to help others despite his limitations, and the effort to heal other damaged children.

Or to quote the great prophet Margaret Atwood, who admittedly hasn't read comics since the silver age and it would be interesting to have her sit down and analyze the current Batman:

In addition to his disguising "normal" alter-ego, the superhero of the 1940s was required to have a powerful enemy or two. Carl Jung made no secret of the fact that he based much of his mapping of the psyche on literature and art. A comic-book character leading a split life and engaged in a battle between Good and Evil might well be expected to show Jungian characteristics, and in fact Batman is an almost perfect case study.

Batman has three main enemies, who to a Jungian would obviously be projections of Bruce Wayne that Wayne himself has not come to terms with. (In Blakean terms, the two male enemies would be called his Spectres and the female one might be his Emanation.) For Bruce, the female element is conflicted - he's a confirmed bachelor, and has no nice-girl Lois Lane sentimental figure in his life. But the sinuous and desirable Catwoman with whom he frequently skirmishes the must be his Jungian "dark anima" figure: even a child could recognize that there was a lot of unresolved electricity going on between those two.

The sadistic card-playing Joker, with his sinister-clown appearance, is Batman's Jungian Shadow - his own interest in dress-up and jokes turned malicious. There's another Shadow villain - the Penguin - who wears an outfit reminiscent of period cartoons of capitalists, with spats, cigarette holder, and top hat. His civilian alias even has a three-barrelled, pretentious, old-plutocrat faux-English name: Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot. The Penguin is the "rich" side of playboy Bruce Wayne gone rancid.

Then there's Robin, the Boy Wonder, who is Bruce's ward. Is Bruce gay? Don't even think about it. From the point of view of we mythosophists, Robin as an elemental spirit, like Shakespeare's Puck and Ariel - note the bird name, which links him to the air. His function in the plot is to aid the benevolent master trickster, Batman, with his plans. From the point of view of we Jungians, however, Robin is a Peter Pan figure - he never grows up - and he represents the repressed child within Bruce Wayne, whose parents you'll recall, were murdered when he was very young, thus stunting Bruce's emotional growth.

This is the kind of hay, or perhaps hash, that can be made of such comic-book superheroes once you really get going. Both they and Jung himself can be viewed through Hoffmanesque* magic spectacles and seen to be part of the same mythology.

But from the point of view of we kids - the primary readers - Robin was simply ourselves - what we would be like if we, too, had masks and capes and could go running around in them under the delusion that nobody would know who we were, and - better still - stay up long after our bedtimes, allowed to participate in the doings of what we fondly hoped was the adult world.

(In Other Worlds, 2012, Random House)

From the Silver Ages, when Atwood is drawing all of her opinions, Robin has been allowed to grow up and go free in a nod to Shakespeare's Puck and Ariel. If you have read or seen The Tempest and/or A Midsummer Night's Dream, you would realize that Dick, Jason, Stephanie, Duke, Carrie, and Damian all fulfill the roles of Puck and Ariel. They are not the light to Batman's darkness, they are the children that he rescues and attempts to bring into the light. This is the role of Batman to Robin, and it fits neatly with what many cultures view view as the role of bats: the guides of spirits through the darkness of death and the underworld into being reborn as something new and better, a hero. Tim is the only Robin who mixed up the roles of Batman and Robin, he's the only one who thinks he is meant to be Batman's light. The rest needed him to save them in one way or another and bring them out of the darkness and into the light. Due to Tim's not understanding the role, he is the one Robin who keeps descending into the dark under the influence of Batman, into death, unlike the rest who we see actively growing and stepping into the roles of guides for other people lost in the dark.

This is why it's during Tim's tenure as Robin that we see Bruce going from someone who is abusive in the whole child endangerment way but not particularly emotionally, mentally, of physically with just a an occasional smattering of neglect thrown in when Catwoman shows up, to the man who has beaten both Dick and Jason until they needed hospitalization, regularly manipulates, emotionally abuses and neglects Tim, Damian, Stephanie, and Cassandra, and has shoved Duke away as soon as he realized Duke's the only one who can recognize that the way Bruce treats people is wrong and needs to stop.

Tim is the one Batkid who doesn't have anyone saying (besides Stephanie) that the way Bruce treats him and is training him to treat others is wrong. That allowing Bruce to embrace his darkness by embracing the erasure of free will and fascism is wrong, it's the opposite of what the character should be. Hence, Tim becoming the darkest Robin, and the darkest Batman to the point that in Super Sons of Tomorrow we have Conner admitting that his Jon's (and probably Damian's) death was due to his failure to save him. His Tim was allowed to continue down the wrong path, to think that Robin's job is to bring Batman out of the darkness and therefore Robin should be dark. He corrupted the role.

So, your milage will vary, but should you choose to do serious lit criticism of Batman and Robin, you too might find that it's obvious by Tim's embracing evil (fascism) in almost every future seen shows that not only is he the dark Robin, he's the worst choice for becoming Batman.

This is a great write up.

[nhienphan2808]

Tim doesn’t even understand Robin , how can he be a good Batman?

[josai21]

You also seem to be using Gary Stu in the incorrect "I hate this character so I will call him a Gary Stu/Mary Sue" way as opposed tom what an actual Mary Stu/Gary Stu is. Damian's a Scrappy, yes, but he's definitely not a Sue as he never gets magically forgiven for being ass and people hold him to higher standards in various universes than they do others.

Agree wit hmost of what you said, but would disagree here. I don't hate damian. I'm mostly apathetic towards him (though loved the relationship between him and Dick as batman and robin, which more than any other story fits with the dynamic of batman "saving/bringing robin into the light"). I agree that Damian does not fit the category of a Su in that he is instantly forgiven; however, that's not the only way a character can be a Su. The primary trait I define as being that of a Su is receiving that which is unearned at the expense of other characters by simply existing.

Damian receives that which is unearned simply by being Batman's biological son. He's gotten better in recent years, I won't deny that; but, at the end of the day, a biological son being treated like damian has renders all the other robins and sidekicks (aside from maybe Dick) irrelevant.

[Agent Z]

One of the points of the Kingdom Come universe, Gotham City Garage, and the Old Lady Harley series was that Bruce's many descents into becoming a fascist were his ultimate failures and the failure of Batman. Becoming a fascist is always the worst case scenario, even Damian's many failed Batmans were vehemently opposed to that as embracing fascism is the equivalent of embracing the anti-life equation; it is choosing to become as evil as Darkseid. However, you have just answered what the whole point of this thread was: why would Dick consider Tim the dark one. He's the only Robin who would fully cross the line into becoming evil and embrace fascism.

You also seem to be using Gary Stu in the incorrect "I hate this character so I will call him a Gary Stu/Mary Sue" way as opposed tom what an actual Mary Stu/Gary Stu is. Damian's a Scrappy, yes, but he's definitely not a Sue as he never gets magically forgiven for being ass and people hold him to higher standards in various universes than they do others.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

Beyond that, you also seem to have missed that Dick being Batman is bad because Dick doesn't want to be Batman though he's good at it, better than Bruce. Damian being Batman is bad because one of the underlying themes of various writers, which Snyder and Morrison went into depth exploring is Gotham only challenges Batman with what he could potentially handle and Damian has already killed gods and fought planets. Jason being Batman is bad because...you know, I don't know exactly. He's the most like pre-Death in the Family Bruce when he's trying not to kill people, except he's better at not alienating people than Bruce was. He's not Miller Batman, but he's a bit like Loeb Batman, and he's definitely similar to every preCrisis Batman sans the killing part. And given that murder has the lowest recidivism rates of any crime, with most people struggling to commit the crime after 27, it's very likely that he, just like Damian, would find it harder and harder to kill or even contemplate killing people as he ages. The argument that he is the best choice, especially the current canon Jason who Talia picked out for potentially adopting and training because he's got a pure soul, would in time make the best Batman due to his background and growing belief that people can and will change and choose good if given a choice.

The belief that people can be redeemed is what makes most versions of Terry the most successfully Batman, along with his quest for redemption, the same is what made Damian in Multiversity a successful (mostly, he does have his parents bad taste in romantic partners) Batman, and would make Jason successful.

Batman and Robin, until Tim became Robin, weren't about tragedy. It was about rising above the tragedies to bring hope to others, and a promise that there was something in the dark that cared. Until Jason died, Batman wasn't that dark or paranoid. He wasn't defined by his parents deaths or fear of bats, he was defined by his ability to help others despite his limitations, and the effort to heal other damaged children.

Or to quote the great prophet Margaret Atwood, who admittedly hasn't read comics since the silver age and it would be interesting to have her sit down and analyze the current Batman:

In addition to his disguising "normal" alter-ego, the superhero of the 1940s was required to have a powerful enemy or two. Carl Jung made no secret of the fact that he based much of his mapping of the psyche on literature and art. A comic-book character leading a split life and engaged in a battle between Good and Evil might well be expected to show Jungian characteristics, and in fact Batman is an almost perfect case study.

Batman has three main enemies, who to a Jungian would obviously be projections of Bruce Wayne that Wayne himself has not come to terms with. (In Blakean terms, the two male enemies would be called his Spectres and the female one might be his Emanation.) For Bruce, the female element is conflicted - he's a confirmed bachelor, and has no nice-girl Lois Lane sentimental figure in his life. But the sinuous and desirable Catwoman with whom he frequently skirmishes the must be his Jungian "dark anima" figure: even a child could recognize that there was a lot of unresolved electricity going on between those two.

The sadistic card-playing Joker, with his sinister-clown appearance, is Batman's Jungian Shadow - his own interest in dress-up and jokes turned malicious. There's another Shadow villain - the Penguin - who wears an outfit reminiscent of period cartoons of capitalists, with spats, cigarette holder, and top hat. His civilian alias even has a three-barrelled, pretentious, old-plutocrat faux-English name: Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot. The Penguin is the "rich" side of playboy Bruce Wayne gone rancid.

Then there's Robin, the Boy Wonder, who is Bruce's ward. Is Bruce gay? Don't even think about it. From the point of view of we mythosophists, Robin as an elemental spirit, like Shakespeare's Puck and Ariel - note the bird name, which links him to the air. His function in the plot is to aid the benevolent master trickster, Batman, with his plans. From the point of view of we Jungians, however, Robin is a Peter Pan figure - he never grows up - and he represents the repressed child within Bruce Wayne, whose parents you'll recall, were murdered when he was very young, thus stunting Bruce's emotional growth.

This is the kind of hay, or perhaps hash, that can be made of such comic-book superheroes once you really get going. Both they and Jung himself can be viewed through Hoffmanesque* magic spectacles and seen to be part of the same mythology.

But from the point of view of we kids - the primary readers - Robin was simply ourselves - what we would be like if we, too, had masks and capes and could go running around in them under the delusion that nobody would know who we were, and - better still - stay up long after our bedtimes, allowed to participate in the doings of what we fondly hoped was the adult world.

(In Other Worlds, 2012, Random House)

From the Silver Ages, when Atwood is drawing all of her opinions, Robin has been allowed to grow up and go free in a nod to Shakespeare's Puck and Ariel. If you have read or seen The Tempest and/or A Midsummer Night's Dream, you would realize that Dick, Jason, Stephanie, Duke, Carrie, and Damian all fulfill the roles of Puck and Ariel. They are not the light to Batman's darkness, they are the children that he rescues and attempts to bring into the light. This is the role of Batman to Robin, and it fits neatly with what many cultures view view as the role of bats: the guides of spirits through the darkness of death and the underworld into being reborn as something new and better, a hero. Tim is the only Robin who mixed up the roles of Batman and Robin, he's the only one who thinks he is meant to be Batman's light. The rest needed him to save them in one way or another and bring them out of the darkness and into the light. Due to Tim's not understanding the role, he is the one Robin who keeps descending into the dark under the influence of Batman, into death, unlike the rest who we see actively growing and stepping into the roles of guides for other people lost in the dark.

This is why it's during Tim's tenure as Robin that we see Bruce going from someone who is abusive in the whole child endangerment way but not particularly emotionally, mentally, of physically with just a an occasional smattering of neglect thrown in when Catwoman shows up, to the man who has beaten both Dick and Jason until they needed hospitalization, regularly manipulates, emotionally abuses and neglects Tim, Damian, Stephanie, and Cassandra, and has shoved Duke away as soon as he realized Duke's the only one who can recognize that the way Bruce treats people is wrong and needs to stop.

Tim is the one Batkid who doesn't have anyone saying (besides Stephanie) that the way Bruce treats him and is training him to treat others is wrong. That allowing Bruce to embrace his darkness by embracing the erasure of free will and fascism is wrong, it's the opposite of what the character should be. Hence, Tim becoming the darkest Robin, and the darkest Batman to the point that in Super Sons of Tomorrow we have Conner admitting that his Jon's (and probably Damian's) death was due to his failure to save him. His Tim was allowed to continue down the wrong path, to think that Robin's job is to bring Batman out of the darkness and therefore Robin should be dark. He corrupted the role.

So, your milage will vary, but should you choose to do serious lit criticism of Batman and Robin, you too might find that it's obvious by Tim's embracing evil (fascism) in almost every future seen shows that not only is he the dark Robin, he's the worst choice for becoming Batman.

Bruce was hitting Dick long before Tim showed up.

[TheCape]

Bruce was hitting Dick long before Tim showed up.

To be honest, Batman didn't really go abusive until the 2000s, yes there were some bad moments between then, when emotions were hight and Bruce reacted badly to Dick blaming him for the death of Jason, but overall they still got along. Still i personally blame the BatDick to the fact that DC can't reconcile the loner and aloof Frank Miller Batman, with the relatively better adjusted Pre-Crisis version. After a while Bruce just became defined more for his flaws than his virtues.

[CPSparkles]

Agree wit hmost of what you said, but would disagree here. I don't hate damian. I'm mostly apathetic towards him (though loved the relationship between him and Dick as batman and robin, which more than any other story fits with the dynamic of batman "saving/bringing robin into the light"). I agree that Damian does not fit the category of a Su in that he is instantly forgiven; however, that's not the only way a character can be a Su. The primary trait I define as being that of a Su is receiving that which is unearned at the expense of other characters by simply existing.

Damian receives that which is unearned simply by being Batman's biological son. He's gotten better in recent years, I won't deny that; but, at the end of the day, a biological son being treated like damian has renders all the other robins and sidekicks (aside from maybe Dick) irrelevant.

I must be missing something here. What exactly is it you claim Damian received unearned? Robin? He earned that before he got the role and got it because he needed it.

What else? A Family? Affection? All those are things that we all should have. They don't have to be earned. Redemption? He earned that. A roof over his head? What is it that Damian has that he hasn't earned? You just make wild claims without actually stating one actual grievance. What has Damian received without earning it simply by existing at the expense of other characters. he's not the 1st Replacement, not the 1st kid bruce took in, not the 1st person to be given a mantle simply because the owner felt they needed it.

Your claim is baseless.

Jason is still relevant [He is more relevant right now actually], Duke a new character introduced after Damian. Tim is in a book. So again not true saying that he renders other's irrelevant.

I feel you are just pissed off that he now shares the Robin role with Tim a character you favour and instead of Tim showing up in stuff reserved for Robin it's Damian.

You have less things with the character you like and that sucks but that doesn't make Damian a Stu it just means you have a case of Sour Grapes.

You need to get over it and move on. RobinJason fans got over it. Damian fans got over Duke. I'm sure Tim fans will get over it. Replacements.

[Godlike13]

Bruce was hitting Dick long before Tim showed up.

Probably since he was around 13 I’d say

[josai21]

I must be missing something here. What exactly is it you claim Damian received unearned? Robin? He earned that before he got the role and got it because he needed it.

What else? A Family? Affection? All those are things that we all should have. They don't have to be earned. Redemption? He earned that. A roof over his head? What is it that Damian has that he hasn't earned? You just make wild claims without actually stating one actual grievance. What has Damian received without earning it simply by existing at the expense of other characters. he's not the 1st Replacement, not the 1st kid bruce took in, not the 1st person to be given a mantle simply because the owner felt they needed it.

Your claim is baseless.

Jason is still relevant [He is more relevant right now actually], Duke a new character introduced after Damian. Tim is in a book. So again not true saying that he renders other's irrelevant.

I feel you are just pissed off that he now shares the Robin role with Tim a character you favour and instead of Tim showing up in stuff reserved for Robin it's Damian.

You have less things with the character you like and that sucks but that doesn't make Damian a Stu it just means you have a case of Sour Grapes.

You need to get over it and move on. RobinJason fans got over it. Damian fans got over Duke. I'm sure Tim fans will get over it. Replacements.

Damian’s skills are unearned. We were told he has all these abilities without being shown how he got them. A ten year old has no business fighting on par with the people he does. But people accept it bc he’s “son of Batman.”

His abilities are unearned

It’s not just Tim he replaces. How many times have we seen Dick team up with Bruce? Jason team up with Bruce? Since damianshowed up? Not as much.

Damian undermines the status of the other side kicks (as it relates to their role in the family) by simply existing.

When was the last time we saw the Batfamily truly be a family since Damian showed up? That camaderie has seriously decreased. I’m not saying he’s the primary cause but there is a correlation.

Everything about this is subjective anyways though. No ones right and no ones wrong. As long as comics lack definitive story telling and refuse to break the status quo people can interpret however they want to.

I interpret Damian as a character that is bad storytelling for the other characters in the Batfamily and his character should’ve never existed much less come back to life

[Jackalope89]

Damian’s skills are unearned. We were told he has all these abilities without being shown how he got them. A ten year old has no business fighting on par with the people he does. But people accept it bc he’s “son of Batman.”

His abilities are unearned

It’s not just Tim he replaces. How many times have we seen Dick team up with Bruce? Jason team up with Bruce? Since damianshowed up? Not as much.

Damian undermines the status of the other side kicks (as it relates to their role in the family) by simply existing.

When was the last time we saw the Batfamily truly be a family since Damian showed up? That camaderie has seriously decreased. I’m not saying he’s the primary cause but there is a correlation.

Everything about this is subjective anyways though. No ones right and no ones wrong. As long as comics lack definitive story telling and refuse to break the status quo people can interpret however they want to.

I interpret Damian as a character that is bad storytelling for the other characters in the Batfamily and his character should’ve never existed much less come back to life

Jason and Bruce... They don't need Damian to have them at odds with one another. They've had issues since before Jason was killed.

[Arsenal]

It benefits everybody that Bruce & Jason spend as little unsupervised time together as possible.

[Arctic Cyclist]

Agree wit hmost of what you said, but would disagree here. I don't hate damian. I'm mostly apathetic towards him (though loved the relationship between him and Dick as batman and robin, which more than any other story fits with the dynamic of batman "saving/bringing robin into the light"). I agree that Damian does not fit the category of a Su in that he is instantly forgiven; however, that's not the only way a character can be a Su. The primary trait I define as being that of a Su is receiving that which is unearned at the expense of other characters by simply existing.

Damian receives that which is unearned simply by being Batman's biological son. He's gotten better in recent years, I won't deny that; but, at the end of the day, a biological son being treated like damian has renders all the other robins and sidekicks (aside from maybe Dick) irrelevant.

I know that you don't read anything with Damian in it, but Damian has been shown to have earned the role of Robin. All of his skills were shown being learned and hard earned as a child, and his accomplishments, when taken as a whole are unrealistic for his age, broken down individually fit into what child prodigies and Olympic gold medalists do in the same age range. He's consistently shown to have the same drive that is characteristic of prodigies and Olympians, notably the gymnasts, which Tim never has. Nothing Damian has is unearned.

Moreover, people had been waiting for Damian since before Tim was created. Son of the Demon, despite how quickly DC moved to strike it from continuity, was an immensely popular story. That's why both Ibn and Tallent were eagerly received in their books, and the boost in sales from Damian's introduction was shocking and resulted in his integration to the stories. Furthermore, a Sue/Stu stymies other canon characters and invalidates other stories. Damian doesn't, rather his introduction took stories such as Cass leading the League of Assassins which didn't make any sense whatsoever prior based on her skills and the long established rule that it had to be a male heir, and justified it by introducing Damian as the young male heir who could eventually be controlled by a future lover/wife like Margery and Tommen in Game of Thrones. It takes all the weirdness of the late Cass stories and cleans them up into logical character motivation, all the way to Cass getting out of Gotham to avoid the child she participated in grooming and then abandoned in order to allow Stephanie to grow. It even provides fantastic character development and motivation for Nyssa and Talia's relationships with each other and Cass.

Dick back in 2006 was almost killed off because he was no longer relevant as a character due to Tim. Damian's introduction took Dick from being stymied by Tim and reestablished Dick as an extraordinary leader, mentor, and detective.

Jason was full on villain struggling with the idea of redemption. Damian's presence with his past as an assassin allowed for us to see Jason decide to start taking on proteges and approach the character we see in Flashpoint, which is an inherently noble person who works hard to get people out of crime and into safe, new lives. Prior to that, Jason had to die in order for Tim to be created, and then he was always put down as a failure in order to prop Tim up.

Stephanie due to Tim going out of town and no longer being an issue in her life is shown growing and taking up the role of pseudo big sister to Damian, as does Kara in Super Girl. She ceases to be a love interest and grows into her own character, no longer a prop to show how wonderful and supportive Tim is.

With Bruce, we see him face down the prospect of being a parent by abdicating the role to Dick and running off to screw Selina. We see him on three separate occasions tell Damian he can't be Robin and can't live in Gotham. We see him finally start spending time with Damian because Talia says, "F&#%ing A. The kid had to fight me on his birthday every year since he was four in order to meet you, what does it take to get you to spend time with him? A half a billion dollar bounty? Let's try that. Then maybe kill him because screw it, this is messed up and we should not be parents."

We see Bruce and Dick constantly reminding Damian that he is replaceable, we see Bruce replacing Damian as Robin in everything but name first with Duke and now with Jarro. We saw in Damian: Son of Batman and Injustice: Gods Among Us that Bruce will kick Damian out of the house without hesitation. We also see Damian forcing Bruce to move on from his parents deaths...at least until Tom King took over the reins. There is nothing outside of Tim's narration to indicate that Damian destroyed Robin or invalidated by being Bruce's son, rather we see that Damian is held to a higher standard than other Robins while at the same time receiving less attention and affection from Bruce than other Robins.

At no point does Damian stymie any characters, like a Sue does, or outshine them in their own books. He doesn't really even outshine them in his own books, aside from Tim. War of the Robins shows Jason acting like an adult who understands that Damian's just an upset 10 year old looking for attention, as does Dick. Neither man comes off looking weaker because of Damian. Tim curb stomps Damian in Red Robin despite Damian's skills as a fighter being generally depicted as superior to Tim's. Tim is a stagnant character, and that has nothing to do with Damian as he has been used effectively to grow all the other characters he has been written with.

You are calling Damian a Stu simply because you don't like him, not because Damian meets any of the definitions of a Stu. When people say that Tim is a Stu, it's because Tim does meet many of the definitions of a Stu, including the blocking of other characters, outshining them in their own books, and having them go on and on about how wonderful and perfect he is, which is definitely not something that happens with Damian. Dick regularly says that Damian is an annoying little @#$ and Bruce warning people that Damian is a pain in the butt before they meet him is a running theme. Unlike Tim, Damian has never blocked a character's development or growth, had other characters sing his praises and downplay themselves in comparison to him, or was just handed the Robin role because he showed up and rang the doorbell. You have to have read Nightwing, Battle for the Cowl, and Azrael to know this, but Damian's becoming Robin was a result of negotiations between Dick and Talia along with the fact that Dick looked at Damian, saw himself at a similar age, and understood that Damian needed someone to save him from the darkness.

Tim becoming Batman is a bad thing. That is a fact. But Damian didn't block him as a character or destroy Tim's success, as we see other characters become more popular and successful because of Damian. Tim could have, should have grown. That he hasn't has less to do with Damian and more to do with the fact that he's a fundamentally flawed character who is rooted in Stu traits as a self insert for fans, and the fans won't accept him as anything but what Tim was in 1998.

1998 was a bad year, most of the wine from that vintage was corked.

[Godlike13]

Damian’s skills are unearned. We were told he has all these abilities without being shown how he got them. A ten year old has no business fighting on par with the people he does. But people accept it bc he’s “son of Batman.”

His abilities are unearned

It’s not just Tim he replaces. How many times have we seen Dick team up with Bruce? Jason team up with Bruce? Since damianshowed up? Not as much.

Damian undermines the status of the other side kicks (as it relates to their role in the family) by simply existing.

When was the last time we saw the Batfamily truly be a family since Damian showed up? That camaderie has seriously decreased. I’m not saying he’s the primary cause but there is a correlation.

Everything about this is subjective anyways though. No ones right and no ones wrong. As long as comics lack definitive story telling and refuse to break the status quo people can interpret however they want to.

I interpret Damian as a character that is bad storytelling for the other characters in the Batfamily and his character should’ve never existed much less come back to life

We have been shown Damian’s upbringing over and over. Damian “earned” his abilities at the cost of his innocence and humanity, and whats more Damian actually highlighted Dick’s status within the family. That’s not a matter of opinion or subjective either, it’s how Damian ultimately got over with Morrison’s Batman and Robin.

[Arctic Cyclist]

Damian’s skills are unearned. We were told he has all these abilities without being shown how he got them. A ten year old has no business fighting on par with the people he does. But people accept it bc he’s “son of Batman.”

His abilities are unearned

It’s not just Tim he replaces. How many times have we seen Dick team up with Bruce? Jason team up with Bruce? Since damianshowed up? Not as much.

Damian undermines the status of the other side kicks (as it relates to their role in the family) by simply existing.

When was the last time we saw the Batfamily truly be a family since Damian showed up? That camaderie has seriously decreased. I’m not saying he’s the primary cause but there is a correlation.

Everything about this is subjective anyways though. No ones right and no ones wrong. As long as comics lack definitive story telling and refuse to break the status quo people can interpret however they want to.

I interpret Damian as a character that is bad storytelling for the other characters in the Batfamily and his character should’ve never existed much less come back to life

In the twenty plus years that Tim was Robin, how many times do you see Dick or Jason team up with Bruce compared to the twelve years that Damian has existed?

Outside of Devin Grayson's writing, prior to Damian, how many times did you see the family get together like they do now? Did you regularly see them getting together for movie night, portrait paintings, the weekly brunch, or just hanging out like we do now? To be fair, if you only read things with Tim in them and avoid books with Damian in them, you may have missed all of this.

Damian's developing his abilities has been shown multiple times by multiple writers. All of his skills have been shown on page as hard earned, and even during his time as Robin we see Dick, Bruce, and Alfred actively teaching him as well as him doing research and training. When we see Damian solving crimes, we can look back and see him developing his skills under Dick's tutelage.

Again, Damian has not done anything you say he has. No character was hurt by Damian's introduction. No character was sidelined because of Damian. It's like Duke. Duke may have pushed Damian out as Bruce's sidekick, but Duke has not damaged Damian's character in popularity or growth. Neither has Jarro.

When you talk about Jason not teaming up with Bruce post Damian, it's a bit weird as prior to Damian's introduction, Jason didn't team up with Bruce. At all. After Damian's introduction, it has been normal for Jason and Bruce to team up and get along with each other until Selina and Bruce became serious and got engaged. The same with Dick. Those relationships did not suffer because of Damian, rather, they grew due to Damian's presence. I mean really, having read the comics from the 90s and 00s in the last couple of years, the family concept didn't gel until little Cousin Oliver showed up, pushed Tim off a dinosaur, and made Bruce say, "I changed my mind. I don't think having children is right for me. I want pets instead."

I really suspect that you haven't read anything except for books with Tim in them as everything you say is remarkably inaccurate, especially about Jason and Dick not teaming up with Bruce because Damian's in the way. Batman/Superman, Snyder's Batman, Batman & Robin, Batman Eternal, Batman & the Signal, and even a few issues of King's Batman all have more family scenes and Bruce/Jason, Bruce/Dick team ups than the entirety of 90s and 00s.

Oh, and you probably have never heard this before, but correlation is not causation.