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  1. #16
    Astonishing Member Coal Tiger's Avatar
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    Before Morrison ever wrote her, she was complicit in her Father's attempts at genocide and instrumental in Bludhaven getting nuked.

    This "Morrison turned her evil" meme comes from people who haven't been paying attention to history.

  2. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by K. Jones View Post
    Twas Rucka's Nyssa destroyed Talia, not Morrison. He just took it to the limits and wrapped it up. It's a very big picture thing, the last decade of Talia stories.
    But the point is, Morrison ran with what happened to Talia in Death and the Maidens and turned it up to 11.

    After Maidens, Talia did appear to be somewhat colder in canon, but it's still not enough to justify turning her into the insanely jealous, demented villain who would eventually kill her son, and do so in a rather callous manner. And even then, saying the horrific abuse and treatment she was subjected too somehow justifies how she was written in B&R doesn't really fly, especially considering it contradicts other established characterizations of her.

    Post-Death and The Maidens, and prior to B&R, we saw a Talia al Ghul who was constantly worried for Bruce’s health and safety. She doesn’t want to see him harmed or killed, and is seen constantly putting his needs and wants above her own.

    In addition to this, she:

    • Fakes a miscarriage and breaks off their marriage to protect him.
    • Has Ra’s spare his life/begs for Bruce on numerous occasions.
    • Constantly betrays Ra’s.
    • Saves Selina Kyle’s life in Hush.
    • Brings Jason Todd back to life against her father’s wishes, originally for Bruce’s sake.

    Not only that, but she was fiercely protective of Damian as well:



    But what happened to her in B&R was Grant Morrison (who admittedly didn't even read Son of The Demon, which the story was based on, and therefore missed several key components of her characterization), turning her into a near cartoonish and one-dimensional villain.

    Morrison presented us with a Talia al Ghul who:

    • Is so obsessed with an heir in the way Ra’s was that she rapes Bruce. Their sexual encounter under his pen is not born out of love, but by Talia drugging Bruce.
    • Would put a bounty on her son’s head - the son that she’s been seen fighting tooth and nail for, and who is a testimony to the love between herself and Bruce Wayne.
    • Would replace the son that she loves and stopped Ra’s from killing (by possessing his body), with a clone.
    • Is so insanely jealous of Bruce’s other love interests that she keeps up with celebrity gossip concerning him over Damian’s health, and had one of them (Jezebel Jet) decapitated.
    • Cared so little for her son that she didn’t even meet him until he was eight, reducing him to a tool that he never was supposed to be

    That's a far cry from the complex Talia we've seen under the pen of other writers. While Talia did exhibit some of these traits, it was never to this degree, nor were they as over the top and presented in a way that singularly defined her. Nor did they alter the public's perception of her and have this negative effect on her image, quite in the same way B&R has.

    I'm convinced most of the people who are justifying Morrison's treatment of Talia don't really know much about Talia's character, or understand why it's bad do to do something like that to a character like her (especially considering that she's a woc, and most woc get the short end of the stick and aren't really written well in comics. And Morrison really dropped the ball in this regard, which is disappointing, considering how great some of his own poc characters have been in the past.)

    So the point is, what happened to Talia al Ghul in Death and The Maidens was horrible. But it's not enough to justify what Morrison did to her in B&R, nor is it a good enough excuse to explain later characterization of her (especially considering how Talia was written by other authors). Morrison stripped her of all of her complexities and what made her so incredibly nuanced, and presented her in a way that made her almost a caricature of her previous self. She wasn't really Talia anymore. She was nothing more than a metaphor for divorce in his storyline.

    P.S: It should be noted that I culled a lot of these points from onlytalia, who wrote a lot of brilliant refutations and dissected what Morrison did to Talia in a manner that is nothing short of laud worthy.
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  3. #18
    Pharah x Mercy
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    Quote Originally Posted by Coal Tiger View Post
    Before Morrison ever wrote her, she was complicit in her Father's attempts at genocide and instrumental in Bludhaven getting nuked.

    This "Morrison turned her evil" meme comes from people who haven't been paying attention to history.
    Or from people who did pay attention in class, and who have read a lot of books with Talia in it, and who didn't like the way he characterized her.

    The people who say this about those who have legitimate grievances about the way Morrison portrayed Talia al Ghul apparently, didn't pay attention to history themselves.

    I know it's not a popular opinion to have on CBR, but really, Grant Morrision isn't infallible.

    Also, the argument isn't that Morrison 'turned her evil'. The argument is that he stripped her of her complexities and turned her into a one-note villain in order to further his story about how painful divorce is.
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  4. #19
    Astonishing Member Coal Tiger's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by beetlebum View Post
    Or from people who did pay attention in class, and who have read a lot of books with Talia in it, and who didn't like the way he characterized her.

    The people who say this about those who have legitimate grievances about the way Morrison portrayed Talia al Ghul apparently, didn't pay attention to history themselves.

    I know it's not a popular opinion to have on CBR, but really, Grant Morrision isn't infallible.

    Also, the argument isn't that Morrison 'turned her evil'. The argument is that he stripped her of her complexities and turned her into a one-note villain in order to further his story about how painful divorce is.
    She nuked Bludhaven. Doesn't get much more one-note evil than that.

  5. #20
    Extraordinary Member t hedge coke's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by beetlebum View Post
    Also, the argument isn't that Morrison 'turned her evil'. The argument is that he stripped her of her complexities and turned her into a one-note villain in order to further his story about how painful divorce is.
    The argument of quite a few people is just that, though. The idea that Talia, pre-Morrison wasn't a villain at all, but a hapless victim of... et cetera, is kind of too common.

    And, while I agree that Morrison is far from infallible, I don't think he did strip her of complexities, he just didn't let her off the hook, or write characters who let her off because she did one or two self-serving but also nice things as well as being involved in murder, theft, and other crime. But, I can appreciate, certainly, why you and others do feel that way, given the evidence of how she was treated (as opposed to what she'd done) in the past.
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  6. #21
    Astonishing Member phantom1592's Avatar
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    I personally can't stand Morrison's writing... at all. Therefore any thoughts I have that Talia was pretty terrible before him, is in no way intended to be 'pro-morrison'.

    It's just a coincidence.

  7. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by SicariiDC View Post
    and i thought she drugged batman? i thought selina was the one he actually truly loved...idk
    No, that was Morrison screwing up, he has admitted as such: "For a long time, [DC] said [Son of the Demon] was out of continuity. Now it's just kind of out of continuity. I didn't actually read it before I started writing this. I messed up a lot of details, like Batman wasn't drugged when he was having sex with Talia and it didn't take place in the desert. I was relying on shaky memories. - Grant Morrison, Wizard #182 (p. 38).

    Also, the New 52 has already established that Talia and Batman had a consensual relationship (to quote Bruce: "Damian exists because I let my heart overrule my head" (Batman and Robin Vol. 1).

    That aside, I find it credible that Talia would have a personality shift, that she would eventually grow frustrated by Batman turning her down and being stuck between her loyalty to her father and her love for Batman. That kind of thing can make a person become obsessive and bitter.
    Last edited by DamianThomas; 04-27-2016 at 05:52 PM.

  8. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by cgh View Post
    I think the Morrison Talia is the best ever. Wanders around in a scary skull mask, runs an assassins guild, is obviously a psychopath or at least has a serious personality disorder and yet Batman still has feelings for her. I can understand it - I'd probably feel the same way. There is no cold logic to be found in love.
    No, but some people can recognize an abusive situation a whole lot faster than this. The whole "she's a mass murderer on a near-genocidal level but the hero has a soft spot for her" trope doesn't work very well for me - not with Bruce and Talia, and not with Roy Harper and Jade/Cheshire. I think it makes the hero look foolish in a way I do not find intriguing.

    I'm trying to think of cases where the trope works in the other direction - heroic woman with a soft spot for a brutal, murderous male villain - but I'm coming up blank.
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  9. #24
    Extraordinary Member t hedge coke's Avatar
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    Morrison split the difference, later, re drugging and had Bruce choosing to drink alcohol, which he rarely does, and then Talia adding something to spice up the night that's left nondescript. She, from her perspective, isn't doing anything out of the ordinary or abusive, but he's not used to drink or e or whatever she puts in it and he likes to reinvent his past more than a little, so years later, "you drugged me and took advantage."

    Quote Originally Posted by Doctor Bifrost View Post
    No, but some people can recognize an abusive situation a whole lot faster than this. The whole "she's a mass murderer on a near-genocidal level but the hero has a soft spot for her" trope doesn't work very well for me - not with Bruce and Talia, and not with Roy Harper and Jade/Cheshire. I think it makes the hero look foolish in a way I do not find intriguing.

    I'm trying to think of cases where the trope works in the other direction - heroic woman with a soft spot for a brutal, murderous male villain - but I'm coming up blank.
    Claremont liked to have all sorts of women go a bit weak in the knees for strong supervillains, particularly Storm, iirc.

    It works for me, but only in the sense that they, the character, can't see the picture clearly. When the authors seem complicit or even explicitly on Talia's "side," I check out.

    By the time of Batman Inc, Morrison was doing a lot with Batman's blindspots, the things that most normal people would catch onto, that he can't see, like Talia is a very bad person or "Maybe, that guy won't appreciate you showing up having discovered his secret identity, broken into his secret lair with a sometime-supervillain and offering to be his financial benefactor with your special American brand." By the end of that story, we've kind of scaled up high enough with Talia and Kathy and even with Gordon that we can see how myopic and almost childish Batman's world is, and then we either leave or we accept that it's a kid's world, kids comics, and dive back in full-hearted.

    But, when someone does a Talia story where Talia is just a good girl at heart and somehow just fell into crime-earned luxury she can't possibly stop indulging in and hurting people with... I'm blaming the authors not the characters.
    Last edited by t hedge coke; 04-27-2016 at 06:19 PM.
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  10. #25
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    I appreciate having Talia go full heel for the story, but I didn't appreciate the execution of the character's portrayal. The concept of her going full evil was great at the plotting stage for me, but I think that Morrsion kind of wrote her as more of a caricature of an evil woman than as a nuanced and unique villain. It was kind of a meta approach, but I sincerely feel that Talia could have been just as vile and evil, but written in a way where we see her viewpoint and it frightens us because we can see just a little of the "logic" behind her personality. Instead, she got a little bit too vaudeville in her evil and dialogue, and the overall effect made her seem less like a character to be feared and more like a badguy going for "cheap heat" to use the wrestling term.

    I kind of feel it would have worked better if she'd been written as a kind of Demona-esque Gargoyles villain as opposed to the early-Fah-lo-Sueh from Fu Manchu; I feel rather strongly that any character who's supposed to be complex and have a complicated relationship with the protagonist shouldn't be a caricature. Rather than just having Batman have a broadly described love for a clearly evil woman, I'd prefer to see elements of her character that could very conceivably make Batman see her as a potential love interest, but underneath them lurks the core character traits that make her evolve into a skull wearing supervillain.

    I'd love to see someone somewhere combine Talia's abilities and eventual rise to evil with The Phantasm from the old DCAU. Give us a Talia who starts out like Andrea Beaumont and clearly could pull Batman away from his quest, but years later has developed into someone who's got almost nothing in common with her former love.
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  11. #26
    Fantastic Member Kurtzberg's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    I appreciate having Talia go full heel for the story, but I didn't appreciate the execution of the character's portrayal. The concept of her going full evil was great at the plotting stage for me, but I think that Morrsion kind of wrote her as more of a caricature of an evil woman than as a nuanced and unique villain. It was kind of a meta approach, but I sincerely feel that Talia could have been just as vile and evil, but written in a way where we see her viewpoint and it frightens us because we can see just a little of the "logic" behind her personality. Instead, she got a little bit too vaudeville in her evil and dialogue, and the overall effect made her seem less like a character to be feared and more like a badguy going for "cheap heat" to use the wrestling term.

    I kind of feel it would have worked better if she'd been written as a kind of Demona-esque Gargoyles villain as opposed to the early-Fah-lo-Sueh from Fu Manchu; I feel rather strongly that any character who's supposed to be complex and have a complicated relationship with the protagonist shouldn't be a caricature. Rather than just having Batman have a broadly described love for a clearly evil woman, I'd prefer to see elements of her character that could very conceivably make Batman see her as a potential love interest, but underneath them lurks the core character traits that make her evolve into a skull wearing supervillain.

    I'd love to see someone somewhere combine Talia's abilities and eventual rise to evil with The Phantasm from the old DCAU. Give us a Talia who starts out like Andrea Beaumont and clearly could pull Batman away from his quest, but years later has developed into someone who's got almost nothing in common with her former love.
    Part of it is that it's suppose to come off as something of a caricature, it's suppose to be slightly ridiculous. Talia concocts this plan that is suppose to play towards Bruce's need to indulge in the ridiculous: matching "wits" with mental patients, evil scientists with doomsday devices, elaborate death traps, the whole shebang.
    She herself sees it all as ridiculous, she's crafted this unbeatable nemesis for Bruce in her spare time, she already "controls the world" by trading in guns and drugs, etc. The whole Leviathan thing with the skull mask, it's stage dressing to attract Bruce's attention, because he's a ridiculous child in a halloween costume who needs a cartoonish villain so he can play his silly game.
    She has to be over the top, because that's the only way Bruce will notice, it's the only thing he understands from her perspective.
    Morrison could have executed some of it a little better, but I understand why it was the way it was.

  12. #27
    Incredible Member cgh's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Doctor Bifrost View Post
    No, but some people can recognize an abusive situation a whole lot faster than this. The whole "she's a mass murderer on a near-genocidal level but the hero has a soft spot for her" trope doesn't work very well for me - not with Bruce and Talia, and not with Roy Harper and Jade/Cheshire. I think it makes the hero look foolish in a way I do not find intriguing.

    I'm trying to think of cases where the trope works in the other direction - heroic woman with a soft spot for a brutal, murderous male villain - but I'm coming up blank.
    Sure, I agree with everything you say. It's ridiculous, but there it is, right on the printed page. Ah, love.

  13. #28
    Not a Newbie Member JBatmanFan05's Avatar
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    I laugh when people try to blame Death and the Maidens for Talia's "too evil/too one note" path. Nope, that's not where it really started, it didn't start in any one story, but some really evil scenes before Death and the Maidens are ignored. See Bane of the Demon from 1998 by Chuck Dixon. In it, Talia and League assassins steal a text and to lighten the load going home: she orders all the assassins to commit suicide (which they do).

    Complicated and conflicted characters can reach emotional moments that change them significantly, for better or worse. Batman long refusing the love/family & Damian choosing daddy over Talia and her family's way of life was an understandable last straw. Many a divorced/separating spouse have endured terrible mental trauma due to a child choosing sides.
    Last edited by JBatmanFan05; 05-02-2016 at 11:38 AM.
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  14. #29
    Incredible Member SicariiDC's Avatar
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    Wow, it's so much deeper than I thought

  15. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by JBatmanFan05 View Post
    I laugh when people try to blame Death and the Maidens for Talia's "too evil/too one note" path. Nope, that's not where it really started, it didn't start in any one story, but some really evil scenes before Death and the Maidens are ignored. See Bane of the Demon from 1998 by Chuck Dixon. In it, Talia and a League assassins steal a text and to lighten the load going home: she orders all the assassins to commit suicide (which they do).

    Complicated and conflicted characters can reach emotional moments that change them significantly, for better or worse. Batman long refusing the love/family & Damian choosing daddy over Talia and her family's way of life was an understandable last straw. Many a divorced/separating spouse have endured terrible mental trauma due to a child choosing sides.
    Yeah she ordered them to die simply because there was no room for them all in the chopper, even Bane was flabbergasted.

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