Damian Wayne/Robin Appreciation 2023.

[dietrich]

It's even weirder because in Batman #701, so about over ten issues since Dick became Batman, Grant Morrison did bother to dedicate two issues to explaining how Bruce came back to the manor after Batman RIP, what he did when he arrived and how he got called away to Final Crisis.
It would have been fairly easy to have Alfred tell Bruce that Talia left Damian with them and Bruce agreeing to it because, well, the kid is already there and Bruce was too high on drugs to do much about it anyway.
But there is no mention of Damian anywhere in those two issues.

As his main writer you'd expect that but the reality is that Morrison has never really cared for Damian. He wanted to tell his Batman story, Damian was an after thought. Only coming to mind when the writer sat down to write DickBats or the Al Ghuls messing with Bruce

He rarely talked about the character in podcasts about his Batman run. He goes into detail about the characters he's passionate about but never with Damian.

The Batman epic he envisioned didn't include Damian but he had to use him and he did a great job. For that I'll always be grateful.


Hopefully one day we'll get the story of how Damian came to Gotham, met up with the Bats and became Robin. Hopefully.

[Morgoth]

I don't know, for a person, who doesn't care about Damian, they clearly made incredible work in writing him. I mean, only Tomasi, Gleason and Williamson wrote Damian that well. And Dick/Damian Dynamic Duo was amazing. Moreover, Morrison wanted to write them way longer. And don't forget, that they planned Arkham Asylum sequel, starring Damian.
But I guess Morrison thinks that Damian is too much of a hindrance to other writers (they were talking about that, about Snyder in particular) and they might be a little annoyed, because they were going to kill him to restore the status quo.

[dietrich]

I don't know, for a person, who doesn't care about Damian, they clearly made incredible work in writing him. I mean, only Tomasi, Gleason and Williamson wrote Damian that well. And Dick/Damian Dynamic Duo was amazing. Moreover, Morrison wanted to write them way longer. And don't forget, that they planned Arkham Asylum sequel, starring Damian.
But I guess Morrison thinks that Damian is too much of a hindrance to other writers (they were talking about that, about Snyder in particular) and they might be a little annoyed, because they were going to kill him to restore the status quo.

Morrison understood that others might not want to deal with fitting in OG characters from preceding runs[esp a minor]. That's why they planned to put the toys back in the box after their run was completed.

As an aside, it's refreshing to see a writer who values accommodating other writers over the egotistic need to leave their mark on an iconic mythos. Makes a change from recent Batman writers who seem obsessed with pushing their original characters or making a status quo changing to the Batman mythos.

Ironic that Morrison the writer who wasn't interested in any of that managed to both introduce a successful new character and change the Batman verse status quo in a big way. They were also willing to undo both by killing off his successful addition to the Batverse because DC was in favour of the status quo prior to Morrison's run.

Morrison acknowledged that Snyder likes Batman solo but that wasn't way they killed off Damian after his run. That decision predates Snyder getting the contract.

Morrison felt that Damian didn't fit. Stating that his existence fucked up DC's continuity.

I hope we eventually get that Arkham Asylum follow up. Like I said Morrison enjoys writing Dick Grayson and enjoys writing Batman.


They haven't mentioned if they enjoy writing Damian but they don't rate the character and is reluctant to even discuss him.

I'll admit that this reluctance to talk about the character might be due to the fact that to this day the writer is still getting hate tweets about they are racist and ruined Talia. This might be why every time he's asked about Damian these days they make a joke and change the topic.

A good writer should be able to write even characters they find lacklustre and characters they hate.

Tynion for example dislikes Damian and he still gave us some great Damian content.

[Morgoth]

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/batm...-chapter-nine/
Thank God 5G was canned. It sounds awful.

[adrikito]

Lazarus Planet preview:

https://comicbookdispatch.com/lazaru...ton-1-preview/

[dietrich]

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/batm...-chapter-nine/
Thank God 5G was canned. It sounds awful.

Aeems to me that their plans for damian didn't change all that much.

We still got Batman v Robin except much much because rather than Luke, Damian is back fighting his father. So we got a two for one ruination.
-Damian again fighting other heroes rather than saving the people who need it
-doubling down on driving Bruce and Damian apart to ensure they can't work together.

We didn't see Damian and Jon friendship end rather Jon's got a new bestie. Nightwing.

why can't DC just let Damian be a hero?

The worst part of the 5G plans is that DC were planing on tearing down Samian Wayne to Prop up/promote Jon kent and Luke Fox!

They were planning on tearing down a successful more established character to promote two less successful characters.

What type of business logic does that make? I get that it's difficult introducing new comic characters that capture the audiences' attention but the way to do that isn't by destroying other characters and certainly not by throwing your last success story under the bus.

Not only Damian but DC was also willing to fracture the super sons [ another recent success story] to push the new SuperBat. I'm starting to feel like the comics industry doesn't work like regular industry where profit is the goal.

These plan make no sense to me. I don't understand how anyone could have thought these ideas were good.

[Jackalope89]

Aeems to me that their plans for damian didn't change all that much.

We still got Batman v Robin except much much because rather than Luke, Damian is back fighting his father. So we got a two for one ruination.
-Damian again fighting other heroes rather than saving the people who need it
-doubling down on driving Bruce and Damian apart to ensure they can't work together.

We didn't see Damian and Jon friendship end rather Jon's got a new bestie. Nightwing.

why can't DC just let Damian be a hero?

The worst part of the 5G plans is that DC were planing on tearing down Samian Wayne to Prop up/promote Jon kent and Luke Fox!

They were planning on tearing down a successful more established character to promote two less successful characters.

What type of business logic does that make? I get that it's difficult introducing new comic characters that capture the audiences' attention but the way to do that isn't by destroying other characters and certainly not by throwing your last success story under the bus.

Not only Damian but DC was also willing to fracture the super sons [ another recent success story] to push the new SuperBat. I'm starting to feel like the comics industry doesn't work like regular industry where profit is the goal.

These plan make no sense to me. I don't understand how anyone could have thought these ideas were good.

With you on that. You have to wonder what goes through their minds. They want profit, right? And the Super Sons was pretty popular. So, do more stuff with that. Push it. Expand on it. But don't forget their own respective corners either. But, nope.
And Damian isn't the only character to get hit, Jon's was too. Got shipped off to space with space terrorist grandpa, and then "got aged up" (erased for a blank character whose sole trait is being bisexual, after several years of constant publication). Damian, gets villainized, again. And after such a promising start with his own title in Robin. Which got canceled for a BAD fanfic writer's version of Tim, whom still has nothing without being Robin, apparently.

[Astralabius]

Aeems to me that their plans for damian didn't change all that much.

We still got Batman v Robin except much much because rather than Luke, Damian is back fighting his father. So we got a two for one ruination.
-Damian again fighting other heroes rather than saving the people who need it
-doubling down on driving Bruce and Damian apart to ensure they can't work together.

We didn't see Damian and Jon friendship end rather Jon's got a new bestie. Nightwing.

why can't DC just let Damian be a hero?

The worst part of the 5G plans is that DC were planing on tearing down Samian Wayne to Prop up/promote Jon kent and Luke Fox!

They were planning on tearing down a successful more established character to promote two less successful characters.

What type of business logic does that make? I get that it's difficult introducing new comic characters that capture the audiences' attention but the way to do that isn't by destroying other characters and certainly not by throwing your last success story under the bus.

Not only Damian but DC was also willing to fracture the super sons [ another recent success story] to push the new SuperBat. I'm starting to feel like the comics industry doesn't work like regular industry where profit is the goal.

These plan make no sense to me. I don't understand how anyone could have thought these ideas were good.

According to some people on reddit a few DC writers have stated that sometimes DC makes bad pitches on purpose to pressure a writer they actually want to take on a project to make their own pitch to stop DC from going forward with the bad pitch.
That's how they got Gail Simone to write the new 52 batgirl book apparently.
Not sure if I really believe it, but it would explain some odd decisions.

[Astralabius]

Of course this might also simply be the fault of bleedingcool's lack of information or just poor wording, but:

"In 2022, it was planned as part of the 5G promotion, for Damian Wayne to feel betrayed and abandoned by his father, Bruce Wayne's retirement from Gotham to move to England. So instead, Damian Wayne, aged 16 after 5G, would choose a path to follow that of his grandfather Ra's Al Ghul and lead the Assassins Guild and be head of Leviathan."

Sounds like a pretty lame reason to become a supervillain. If that truly was supposed to be the reason then why did they torture me with this awful Teen Titans book for two years?

[Konja7]

With you on that. You have to wonder what goes through their minds. They want profit, right? And the Super Sons was pretty popular. So, do more stuff with that. Push it. Expand on it. But don't forget their own respective corners either. But, nope.
And Damian isn't the only character to get hit, Jon's was too. Got shipped off to space with space terrorist grandpa, and then "got aged up" (erased for a blank character whose sole trait is being bisexual, after several years of constant publication). Damian, gets villainized, again. And after such a promising start with his own title in Robin. Which got canceled for a BAD fanfic writer's version of Tim, whom still has nothing without being Robin, apparently.

I suspect it's because SuperSons was popular but it was not extraordinarily popular. The sales were good, but not really extraordinary.

DC doesn't have problem to throw relatively popular characters under the bus in the hope of making more profits with new characters. In 5G, they want to profit with "Black" Batman.


Another thing, I don't think they cancelled Damian's solo due to Tim's solo (they know Tim isn't so popular anymore). We have confirmation Damian's solo was always planned to be temporal.

[ZuLuLu]

I suspect it's because SuperSons was popular but it was not extraordinarily popular. The sales were good, but not really extraordinary.

DC doesn't have problem to throw relatively popular characters under the bus in the hope of making more profits with new characters. In 5G, they want to profit with "Black" Batman.


Another thing, I don't think they cancelled Damian's solo due to Tim's solo (they know Tim isn't so popular anymore). We have confirmation Damian's solo was always planned to be temporal.

The first run of Super Sons did okay, its follow-up Adventures of the Super Sons sales were pretty low AOSS issue #1 had 36,794 unit orders (not a good start) by issue #5 it was at 20,965 units. (note issue orders are usually higher than actual sales)

Its next follow-up Challenge of the Super Sons was a digital-first series, which is usually a sign that digital sales and trades were okay but monthly floppy sales were poor.

This shows that DC did try to make Super Son's work but like a lot of things, its social media popularity never resulted in sales.

To put this in perspective both Damian and Jon's recent solo books were estimated to be still selling around 30,000 units before they were canceled. Both books also had really good digital sales and both books first trade volumes sold well.

[Jackalope89]

I suspect it's because SuperSons was popular but it was not extraordinarily popular. The sales were good, but not really extraordinary.

DC doesn't have problem to throw relatively popular characters under the bus in the hope of making more profits with new characters. In 5G, they want to profit with "Black" Batman.


Another thing, I don't think they cancelled Damian's solo due to Tim's solo (they know Tim isn't so popular anymore). We have confirmation Damian's solo was always planned to be temporal.

The problem is that every step forward with his solo, went backwards afterwards. And then to replace the actual good story content in that book, we got Tim's "underwhelming" solo.

[Fergus]

The problem is that every step forward with his solo, went backwards afterwards. And then to replace the actual good story content in that book, we got Tim's "underwhelming" solo.

Lets see what happens with Tim's book. I've always considered DC to be biased towards certain characters. I suppose we'll find out with how long they let the title run. It's already in the 30k and still in single number issues.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, that's all I could find too. It's so weird that DC never bothered to write that story.
Both Damian starting to live at Wayne Manor and also how exactly he became Robin is kept so vague.
It's Alfred who gives him the costume to wear in all versions I know of, but I don't think they ever showed Alfred and Dick truly talking about making Damian Robin before it happens.

What's the mystery? With Bruce missing, believed dead, Dick takes over as Batman. He feels that Tim can stand on his own, so he decides to make Damian his Robin instead. When Bruce comes back, he keeps Damian in the role, Tim at this point having left Gotham and formed a new Teen Titans team (the New 52 version, though the exact circumstances of him doing that won't be as originally published now due to the fact he and Cassie wouldn't now be strangers).

[Astralabius]

What's the mystery? With Bruce missing, believed dead, Dick takes over as Batman. He feels that Tim can stand on his own, so he decides to make Damian his Robin instead. When Bruce comes back, he keeps Damian in the role, Tim at this point having left Gotham and formed a new Teen Titans team (the New 52 version, though the exact circumstances of him doing that won't be as originally published now due to the fact he and Cassie wouldn't now be strangers).

The mystery is that we never saw how Damian came to live with them in the first place. What was the reasoning? How did everyone feel about it? Was it supposed to be temporary or permanent? It's kinda an important foundation for Damian's relationship with his family.

None of this "Dick feels Tim can stand on his own so he makes Damian Robin instead" is actually present in the two stories that are about Damian becoming Robin. In both cases it's just Alfred handing Damian the Robin costume with no input from Dick.