To be fair for Williamson, Damian IS arrogant and overconfident. I mean, Damian's current state before he was entrusted to Williamson's hand is him saying that Batman is a failure and his team is better, rejecting his teammate's help when he was facing Deathstroke and tried to solve Batman's unsolved case better and faster. Williamson already removed his murderous tendencies by making him hesitate to kill a man even when the said man placed a knife on Talia's throat although before Red Arrow had to be injured first by him before he stopped his murder chase over Deathstroke and KGBeast. But as next writer of Damian's continuity, he has to follow what was left behind and try to steer it to a better path. Personally, I like that he's arrogant, makes him interesting and makes me wonder what will he do next.
Last edited by Light of Justice; 05-02-2021 at 01:55 PM.
Kinda missing the point considering what this post was actually about. It's not about Williamson writing Damian as arrogant per se. It's the idea that Damian should learn humility through losing that I'm against.
The whole problem is that if Williamson truly wants to make Damian more humble by having him lose to a lot of other fighters then that's stupid, considering that if losing was something that had the ability to make him humble then Damian already should be the most humble person at the start of this book, since he did almost nothing but lose ever since Rebirth started.
He couldn't win against Deathstroke and solving the case from the black casebook turned out to be completely irrelevant to the story.
Williamson wants to make Damian more humble? Okay, go for it, I feel like we've been there a thousand times already, but fine. But please, not like this.
What I don't want to see is Williamson solving a problem with a solution that doesn't make sense based on Damian's previous books. I don't want to read bullshit like "Damian doesn't know what losing is so now he's going to lose tons of fight and the tournament to grow"
It's not true, it doesn't make sense, it's not what Damian needs right now. I want to see solutions to problems the character actually has, not some problems Williamson invented because it fits his plot. That's how you get terrible runs like Tom King's Batman.
Last edited by Astralabius; 05-02-2021 at 11:14 PM.
The idea that Damian lost as a way for him to learn humolity is just commenters making assumptions. No one even considered that the fact that he lost to type up the most promoted OC in this series.
Flatline has been hyped even before they revealed that this is going to be a Robin series so ofcourse she'll win against Damian to show how bad ass she is. Williamson's words when he talks about what drew him to Damian
From the moment he was introduced in Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert’s Batman run, I’ve loved him. His attitude drew me in. He sees what Batman is, and how cool it all is, and revels in it. He loves it. He’s that part of Batman that knows how cool he is, how skilled. That smile Batman gets every once in a while when he knows he’s going to win, given life. It’s like he gets how cool it is to be the Son of Batman.
I don't believe Williamson was trying to humble Damian. He gets that his arrogance is part of his charm.
I'm not so sure about that:
Williamson: Well, selfishly for me, I enjoy throwing Damian in different situations where he has to interact with people. And it might be situations where he isn't his normal situation, where he's such a competent person, but I think there are ways of throwing him into situations that might humble him or where he might clash with people.
Humbling Damian does seem to be one of his goals here. And if he's trying to achieve that in other ways than Damian losing all the time then I'm fine with that, even though I can't say I'm excited to see Williamson throw Damian into lots of situations where Damian is not competent since Damian has been shown to be pretty incompetent lots of times in the past few years.
But what actually made me feel like Williamson might be going for the "Damian doesn't know what losing is and needs to learn it" angle was the conversation Bruce has with Barbara at the start of Robin #1, when they act like Damian doesn't know the losses Bruce went through to become Batman. That point was emphasized in Damian's fight against Flatline when Damian talked about all the great people that trained him and Flatline responded by talking about the disadvantages of being taught by people who seemingly never tasted defeat and her winning so easily against him seems to prove her right.
I get hyping her up, but since I went into this book not feeling like Damian was all that great of a fighter in the first place I didn't think "omg, she's such a badass" when I finished the issue, no, I thought "okay, so why am I supposed to feel like Damian even has a chance in this tournament again?"
Jobbing only works as a way to hype up another character's abilities if the person they beat actually feels competent or powerful. And Damian does not. She won against a kid who has not achieved anything of importance in several years.
Last edited by Astralabius; 05-03-2021 at 01:03 AM.
I agree with Dietrich. This issue was probably just to hype up Flatline and the Tournament itself. Now she's painted as a real threat, who's competent enough to defeat the MC, who just defeated another competent fighter in King Snake (Jobbed or not, it happened.)
Can you imagine Williamson's mindset when they agreed this is how Issue #1 would play out? Whether it was to humble him or to hype up another character or whatever, killing the MC in the first book is sure to upset many people. Very risky, but effective (it worked for GoT).
You might not like it, but it'll definitely keep your attention until the next chapter. And that's all that matters. We've still got many issues to go through, and hopefully Damian will be allowed to keep his development at the end of his Character Arc this time around.
Last edited by Shen; 05-03-2021 at 01:41 AM.
"What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?" ~ Paarthurnax