Damian Wayne: Robin Appreciation 2020

**dietrich** · 02-17-2020, 01:16 PM

Originally Posted by Ansa

The family has gone through several extremely traumatic events and the persons that usually smoothed things over are gone. You might not find it appropriate, but it makes sense that the situation would escalate at Alfred's wake. And I don't understand the "It's something you don't do" statement, the family is hurt, of course they are saying things that they shouldn't say. That's often the case in an argument.
This isn't a fanfiction where everyone is unrealisticly considerate of the others thoughts and feelings.

If you think they behaved badly you should maybe take another look at the issue. Should someone go after Damian? Yes. But Barbara also said that no one thought Damian was to blame while Damian was still there with them. Just because it's not enough doesn't mean they did nothing. And considering the situation and Bruce's lack of reaction to the whole thing I can understand why Barbara got so agressive towards Bruce. She just wanted to see a reaction, to see if he still cares.

Tim wasn't awful. He offered help, but he's not a naive kid anymore, he needs Bruce to say he wants his help. Jason stays pretty fair and says they shouldn't blame Bruce, but he needs to use his brain to fix his dysfunctional family for once.
Barbara isn't Bruce's kid and considering that her own father got infected and the whole BWL mess is Bruce's fault, as is City of Bane when you get down to it, why wouldn't she be mad at Bruce. But even with all those reasons to be angry she tells Bruce that it's normal in a family to be in a bad spot and to make mistakes. But family means you have responsibility and Bruce, their leader and rold model, is doing nothing.
Ric admits that even he feels he would usually try to fix things if he was still himself, but he isn't. He stays pretty nice to Bruce for their entire conversation.
When you get down to it the only thing they really ask of Bruce is to be their father figure and act as a role model.
Dick and Alfred are not there anymore to smooth things over for him.

I don't think that's an unfair request because contrary to what some people online seem to think, this issue doesn't take place right after Alfred's death. Bruce is a fast builder, but this has to take place at least several weeks if not months after Alfred got killed. You don't build a new hospital in a week.
Bruce got his time to grieve and now he needs to be an adult and take responsibility. He let his family get fractured for too long.

Which honestly, is an important part of the entire issue.

And I wholeheartedly disagree about those confrontations being harmful. This isn't harmful, King pretending everything was fine in Batman #85 was harmful. He took a look at what his own Batman did and at what happened in the rest of the batfamily titles and went: This doesn't matter, I don't need to talk about it. Tynion and Tomasi looked at it and decided to come out and say: This was wrong and we need to adress it. You can't expect to see a story about reconciliation that makes sense if you don't admit that you have a problem first.
And you might hate it, but Bruce doing absolutely nothing is very in character for Rebirth Bruce. But it didn't get aknowledged by the writing before. For me it was important for them to call it out and they did. Bruce gets criticised for it the entire book. This is them making a comment about Rebirth Bruce.

Of course his behaviour is sometimes written to further the narrative of other characters. The same thing happens the other way around all the time too. It's part of sharing one universe across several titles. I've seen worse cases than this and honestly, portraying Bruce in a bad light will not stop people from seeing him as a hero and cool character. It's hard to damage the Batman brand.

And the cases of abusive behaviour from Bruce that get talked about when it comes to Rebirth Bruce isn't Tynion's and especially not Tomasi's doing. That's mainly King's Batman, Lobdell on Red Hood and Percy and Glass on Teen Titans.
Tynion and Tomasi simply chose to acknowledge some of this in a Batman book now. Mainly King's Batman really.

You might have wanted for the writers to ignore all of this and just write Bruce like a good father again, but to me that would have rung false to the situation the family has been in since mid 2018.

Alfred very rarely ever smooths things over but I'm not going to get into the reason why Alfred is the one at the root of all this.

As a professional based on what happened in the issue the recommended action would be to engage the family and come up with an intervention plan for the family and Damian.

Jason's comment is a huge nono and something you never do. It's such a common no no that's included in the steps re grievance counselling and helping young kids and Teens during a loss in the family.

Bruce's actions is emotional Abuse and deliberate scapegoating. There's no beating about the bush on that.

Tim seemly interrupted Babs who was about to correct Jason. He was correct in stepping in to calm tempers but he also was the mitigating factor in Damian walking away without knowing the truth.

Not to mention that at 16 he should know that he doesn't have the skills to help Bruce. He didn''t when he lost his son and he wouldn't now that he's lost his father. Not to mention that in Rebirth Tec we learnt that Tim becoming Robin wasn't because he wanted to help but because he wanted to impress Bruce nothing to do with helping.

Tim's words only makes it wore for Bruce and also makes Tim look arrogant and callous.

Babs shouldn't and Shouted and Jason coming down on Richard for no reason.
All of them were bad and makes therm look nasty, petty and cruel.

Yes and Tomasi wrote Bruce willing to force Jason through a traumatic event because he wants to bring his [blood] son back. That's not letting Damian take the fall fo Alfred but it's very very bad and abusive. It up there.

Just because it's hard to damage the Batman brand doesn't mean writers should be allowed to try. The increase in the number of fans whop hate the family that leeches of him is growing. Batman fans don't like it. I don't like it since it makes a serious matter not so serious.

Batman might be Teflon but his family isn't. Batman as a family man is just all negative now. The writers didn't have to go to the new low of Bruce and co being Arseholes and letting Damian take the fall. Jason's line didn't have to be assigning blame but they choose to and I'm not sure they follow up.

I'm sure I never said I wanted bruce to be any sort of dad in this good or bad. That's not what we are debating here we are talking about how they were all bad and I felt the issue was bad.

Bruce didn;t have to be a dad in this it should have just focused on Alfred.
I'm not saying that Bruce's action should be ignored but it should be dealt with as an arc not a single story which is setting up another story [Joker Wars]

The fact that I know that Joker Wars requires Bruce to be isolated.
The fact that both Tynion and Tomasi have written abusive Bruce
The fact that Tynions batman has no place for the family and is focused on Bruce rebuilding Gotham with Selina
All these and Dc's past record indicate that this is another hollow face off. They didn't address anything and Bruce isn't about the change in anyway.
That is my problem.

**dietrich** · 02-17-2020, 01:27 PM

Originally Posted by Yennefer

Hi!
If I remember correctly Bruce will be around 60 yo... Considering that now he is approx. in early-mid forties (38-45yo I think) and now Damian is 13... I would say he will be at early-mid 20s....
(Approx. 23-25)... There was an article about 5G in general....
You should search it up for more accurate information!

Edit: This is the answer for someone that asked about ages... I clicked "reply" on the post, but something went wrong...

That's not right since we don't have when Bruc e was born

Damian we have when he was born on the new time line. Damian this summer according to the new Time line is going to be 13 if 5g is 6years in the future then he'll be 19

It's important to remember with 5g that we don't have full info. Dc itself doesn't have full details but Damian is the character whose entire life cycle and age can be and has been mapped

**dietrich** · 02-17-2020, 01:55 PM

Originally Posted by Dazai_Osamu

It was bad Alfred was the one who soothed a lot of Batfamily's emotional issues between them and Bruce and he wasn't that retired superspy, that was only a little part of him and honestly the less important one. Barbara and Damian are what co-workers, they don't have a personnel , she pointed out at Bruce his responsabilities with him, she did more than enough.

Tomasi always tries to make look Damian better at the expense of other characters, this case at Jason's, anyway, did someone tell him Damian's actions were part of Bruce's 'fantastic' plan? If they had told him, he'd blame Bruce; however, Damian and him doesn't have a real relationship right now, after all Damian accused him of trying to kill the teen titans and of being Leviathan... Comfort will never come from him to Damian.

Tim and Damian have never got along and don't like each other, it's understandable, Damian has tried to kill him and Tim's reactions are normal. Damian isn't that physically violent with him but it's still a jerk and Tim isn't emotionally mature, in fact he's bitchildish in that aspect and thatÂ’s normal, he's 16 years old (until canon states otherwise), They have a bad and toxic relationship defined by negative things, they never do heart-to-heart. Moreover, it's unclear if they are brothers, I mean it's implied Tim was adopted by Bruce here, his original origin story is back, Jack Drake is dead, his home is Wayne Manor but it isn't confirmed, maybe he's only Bruce's ward so there is less of familial obligation to try to help Damian.

In fact, Damian only 'brother' is Dick, even if Dick is only Bruce's ward in Rebirth, and Dick has never had a good relationship with Jason, before his death it was less bad but not really close and Dick and Tim were good brothers, Dick was the supportive and reliable and Tim had a lot of admiration for him, but since New 52 they are friendly to each other and co-workers, I mean when Tim 'died' and Dick was like 'it was a good guy with a great future ahead'... Tim and Jason don't have a relationship save this weird pairing the spares in New 52 and in Rebirth they don't interact.

Current batbrothers aren't really brothers, and they are part of a dysfunctional family but the big difference with other families like them it's at the end of the day they fight but 'ohh look at them they love each other' but with the current batbrothers that doesn't happen, they are loyal to the mission and to each other (sometimes) but it's not due to love between them, in fact it's more due to their feelings towards Bruce than what they feel for each other save Damian and Dick.

What are you talking about?

No one needed to make Damian look better. He and Alfred are the victim's here. They were the victims since Batman 77

Jason did not have to blame anyone. Jason in a situation like this wouldn't be pointing fingers he would be grieving Alfred.

Damian and Jason have had worse and yet both have rushed in to risk their lives for each other. Tim and Damian have both tried to kill each other. Tim even tried to kill Damian after Damien had saved his life from Jason. In Rebirth Tim is all friendly towards Damian [was he lying] but the fact still remains that despite their antagonistic feelings these people aren't you. They are good people and heroes. No one and i mean no one who has any bit of kindness lets a 13yr old believe they are responsible for the death of the head of their family.

Damian didn't need to look good here since he was already looking spectacular. He went in to face up against 3 heavies who took down Batman. Alone, took down GG, engaged Thomas, managed to get captured as instructed, witnessed the traumatising moment of Alfred's death, yet was able to solider on face Thomas , get free and let the rest
if the family in as instructed.

Damian is a champion. He went into this looking good there was no need to make him look good [such a petty thought]

I'm not a Tim fan but even I have argue that Tim isn't the person you are presenting him as. Tim is bruce's Ward according to Rebirth Tec but that shouldn't/wouldn't matter. Hero's and good people save and care for people who aren't family. Damian has given his life twice for people he didn't know.

They fight to save people who try to kill them [Bruce once revived the Joker] They are supposed to be good people and heroes. The idea that Tim wouldn't help because he's not a Wayne or because Damian attacked him due to standard LOA ways which Tim himself was aware of leads me to believe that you need more reading on these characters.

family has nothing to do with having basic human compassion
Family has nothing to do with seeing an injustice and looking the other way. Even if they are bad people like you present they are still heroes and heroes set things straight.
heroes tell the truth so however you look at it they were wrong.

**adrikito** · 02-17-2020, 02:00 PM

Originally Posted by Blue22

From what I can tell, they're not gonna bring Djinn back and the team keeps going after Damian leaves. So with my two favorites gone, there's not really gonna be anything keeping me around once Glass is done.

No Damian and not Djinn? I am out after lose them.