Talia’s transformations - inevitable?

[Micael]

Wouldn't Nyssa also be a continuation of the dragon lady stereotype? Talia gets used more because there's more drama to explore due to her personal connection with Batman. I can agree with there being more sensible ways to explore Talia's character without resorting to tropes but I still see her potential as one of the best female villains.

[godisawesome]

Wouldn't Nyssa also be a continuation of the dragon lady stereotype? Talia gets used more because there's more drama to explore due to her personal connection with Batman. I can agree with there being more sensible ways to explore Talia's character without resorting to tropes but I still see her potential as one of the best female villains.

Her potential as a top-tier villain so why I still want that… my issue is that if they don’t actually use some heartbreak and compelling characterization for her, then she also can’t really be a top-tier villain character, and will remain a purely functional antagonist without that much appeal beyond it.

This is always my issue with Morrison’s biggest villains. Their bad guys are always great concepts placed in wonderfully intricate plots… but they tend to lack interesting personalities, or much reason to revisit them afterwards, even in flashbacks. Having Magneto infiltrate the X-Men in a long-term con is a great idea; having him be a boringly banal version of himself is why Marvel could so quickly move past that. Morrison’s Crime Syndicate is a great play on meta-textual expectations… but Dwayne McDuffie made a far better CSA in every way for the Crisis on Two Earths movie.

And Talia’s problem is that there needs to be bigger dramatic tension, emotional complexity, and heartache to her conflict with Batman, even if it only comes from Bruce. But to do that, Bruce has to have a believable reason to have given his heart to her once, and Daddy’s Little Villain doesn’t cut it for that.

I feel she should have effectively replaced Ra’s in the rogues gallery by now on a permanent basis, but because her only motivation seemed to be “evil for evil’s sake” she just doesn’t stand out when removed from a meta-textual context - thus why the animated movies trying to adapt the Morrison stories kind of suck.

I think she should be the ultimate “traumatized and deprived anti-villain trying to control everything so she doesn’t get hurt again, and going waaaaaaay too far” character to separate her from her father more. Have the idea be she’s trying to o establish a shadow hegemony over the entire world rather than destroy it like her old man, with the implication that she’s doing it to one day give to her son, and even wants to do it so he’ll stop risking his life as Robin… and just doesn’t get how she’s become the danger herself. That’s tragic but terrifying enough to make her more interesting.

[Astralabius]

Talia's creator said Talia would ultimately choose evil over good.

When did he ever say that?

[HsssH]

Way I see it during the Batman Inc era it was Batman at his peak where he was overconfident and probably felt he was near unstoppable. Seeing Talia come in and humbling him was great specially since this was written by Morrison who a lot of people blame for being responsible for the batgod trope. And Talia being so ruthless and unwavering is a breath of fresh air in an era where female villains seemingly aren't allowed to remain evil or have to have some redeeming excuse.

Yes, to me it read a bit like a deliberate jab against Batgod/prep-time interpretation of the character.

[godisawesome]

Yes, to me it read a bit like a deliberate jab against Batgod/prep-time interpretation of the character.

Which is cool in a meta-textual context! But would undoubtedly be cooler if Talia were still written like a character instead of as a device for commentary.

[Timothy Hunter]

Those are over in Superman during the LexCorp years. Also known as the best Talia stories as she's full on anti-villain/antihero and pretty much over Bruce as both himself and Batman.

Talia's greatest sin as a character, which is why Morrison, Simone, et al decided she's evil (besides the fact that reading most DC comics for the last 15 years is a bit like reading Lovecraft, occasionally a good story and so much racism and misogyny) was she took off all of Bruce's masks, saw the real person beneath, and decided to move on.

She's not part of the "Faked their deaths to break up with Batman" club solely due to Talia doesn't believe in faking her death. She dies. But like Silver St Cloud and Sasha Bordeaux, Talia prior to Morrison was a woman who understood what Bruce was and moved on.

Making her obsessed with Bruce is just Morrison being Morrison.

...wait. I take it back. Talia has faked her death in canon. She and Ra's framed Batman for her murder once. It's a weird, yet enjoyable story even if she has no good lines.

People rag on Morrison for writing Talia out of character, which is understandable, but wasn't he just continuing the characterization of her from Gail Simone in Underworld in Villains United? If I recall correctly she did aid and abet the Society in nuking Bludhaven.

While it doesn't rectify Morrison's creative decisions, perhaps Simone is as much to blame for derailing the character.

[Micael]

And Talia’s problem is that there needs to be bigger dramatic tension, emotional complexity, and heartache to her conflict with Batman, even if it only comes from Bruce. But to do that, Bruce has to have a believable reason to have given his heart to her once, and Daddy’s Little Villain doesn’t cut it for that.

I think Morrison made it pretty clear that this new Talia wasn't the one that Bruce fell in love with, her new development was presented as it being caused by years of resentment and bitterness towards her father and Bruce. The complexity comes in with the realization that this person clearly changed and maybe there's no going back. She's causing all that chaos to feed her own ego and to hurt the people she felt mistreated her.

You could clearly see affecting Batman in a deeper level
bils2b.jpg

[Astralabius]

People rag on Morrison for writing Talia out of character, which is understandable, but wasn't he just continuing the characterization of her from Gail Simone in Underworld in Villains United? If I recall correctly she did aid and abet the Society in nuking Bludhaven.

While it doesn't rectify Morrison's creative decisions, perhaps Simone is as much to blame for derailing the character.

That was after Death and the Maidens, a storyline in which Nyssa al Ghul tortured, killed and revived Talia over and over again until she was brainwashed to hate Bruce and be evil. The thing is, comic characters can come back from this. As dumb as it sounds, they can just "undo" the brainwashing with an arc and write the character like before if they decide they want them back to normal.

What Morrison did was act like Talia had always been evil, threw a 10 year old kid in there that messed up her whole history as a person and a love interest and gave a lot of the sympathetic elements that originally belonged to her character and arc to Damian and twisted her into Damian's Ra's.

And can we please stop acting like Morrison gave Talia agency she didn't have before? The Lex Corp arc did that. Talia was doing what she wanted, seperate from Bruce and Ra's. Nyssa brainwashing her to get her back to the ways of the league and everything that Morrison did afterwards put the character back where she started, under the influence of the league of assassins way of life.
Making Talia a badly written Ra's with **** that became evil and crazy because Bruce didn't want to be with her is not good writing for female characters.
Ruining her whole characterization and history so Bruce or Dick can have a troubled martial arts kid to "save" from his previous life is an extremely sexist and racist trope (that DC as a whole seems to love. Talia, Shiva, Cheshire, Shado)
What Morrison did messed Talia up so badly that with every later story with Talia in it you had no idea what you would get because she stopped being a character, she became a plot device to serve whatever arc Damian, Bruce, Dick, Selina etc. were going through at the moment, no matter if it made any sense for Talia to act this way. That's the opposite of agency.

[John Venus]

Wouldn't Nyssa also be a continuation of the dragon lady stereotype? Talia gets used more because there's more drama to explore due to her personal connection with Batman. I can agree with there being more sensible ways to explore Talia's character without resorting to tropes but I still see her potential as one of the best female villains.

Not with the way the Rucka wrote Nyssa.

But the main problem was dragging Talia back to her status quo via torture and brainwashing and not continuing her arc in Lex Corp. Then everything went downhill from there.

[godisawesome]

I think Morrison made it pretty clear that this new Talia wasn't the one that Bruce fell in love with, her new development was presented as it being caused by years of resentment and bitterness towards her father and Bruce. The complexity comes in with the realization that this person clearly changed and maybe there's no going back. She's causing all that chaos to feed her own ego and to hurt the people she felt mistreated her.

You could clearly see affecting Batman in a deeper level
bils2b.jpg

I appreciate that; I just had tuned out much of Morrison's stuff by then because the humanity of the characters only started appearing in their stuff at the back end of the epic, while the stuff that I thought was the actual "dramatic meat" of the time period was in the stuff by Dini, Miller, Snyder, and co. around Morrison's stuff, where the character's emotional reactions and ties to each other was the core of those stories, in contrast to the commentary and pseudo-mythic tale in Morrison's writing.

I was always cold on Morrison's initial stuff because the Batman and Son story was just lacking that kind of heart; it showed up at the end, but should have been the solid core of the story. Give me operatic emotions and human characters over broad archetypes and commentary any day of the week.

The reason Talia still has fans who reject Morrison's stuff isn't just because they liked being able to root for her; it's because it's a choice between a character and a plot device. It's kind of like how Damian was the same way until the post RIP stuff actually started making him a person.

[exile001]

The reason Talia still has fans who reject Morrison's stuff isn't just because they liked being able to root for her; it's because it's a choice between a character and a plot device.

It's more that Morrison actually regressed Talia from a more rounded character into a plot device. Morisson's Talia is a wafer thin, moustache-twirling villain whose motives are routed in wanting and being rejected by Bruce.

[marhawkman]

This is true, but peels off into different problems, issues, potential and fallibilities.

It's fine to decide "mass murder" =/= unsympathetic... but *if* you do that, then any romance option towards the mass murderer should be abandoned whole-heartedly. If Morrison ramped up Talia to a blunt, uncomplicated villain, than she really shouldn't be Bruce's ex, and Morrison themselves was skittish towards going completely "Batman got raped" and it would've screwed up the "divorce" allegory they wanted.

Yes, I know there are plenty of people shallow enough to want a mass murderer presented as a heroic figure, but that screws up the other character - see: Kylo Ren becoming the romantic lead to Rey in Star Wars, which immediately screwed her and the story over. Heroes shouldn't be mass murderer groupies, and usually, heroes should supersede the mass murderers and force them to upgrade rather than downgrade the hero.

At the same time, it *does* pay to make your fictional mass murderer more complex for dramatic purposes. Killmonger is maybe the best MCU villain because his complexity and depth actually flow well alongside his being an largely unrepentant force of destruction; Magneto at his best can do something similar, and people keep wanting to get something like that for Ra's (usually unsuccessfully) and Talia could theoretically get something similar.

I want Talia as an unrepentant villain in the present who only has a bit of a soft spot towards Damian... But I need her and Bruce having history to make sense so he's not just got a shallow taste in women that only applies to Talia.

I think the core problem here is the opposite of what writers keep doing with Livewire.

Livewire is a very petty villain. She has powers few can even comprehend, but in her first appearance she did nothing with them other than annoying Superman. since she doesn't have some deep evil, she generally ends up eventually becoming a good guy. Why? because "Incredibly powerful, minor annoyance" is a transient position for a villain.

In Talia's case the writers also decided she wasn't evil enough and... well... decided instead to find a new, more evil goal in life instead. Which took her from being moderately evil to... way too evil.,