This is Just reply
I don't think it was DC's choice. Adam Glass could have used him but he didn't. Honestly it feels like Glass just had stories for his new characters and to make another failed Robin. Bruce's dialogue and handling of the situation will reveal his true aim.
I thought he wanted to challenge Damian but lately others have highlighted how that might not be the case and on going back and re reading this isn't a fallout from No Justice as was implied.
It definitely came off as malicious to me to highlight Damian's cultural heritage that way and then connect it to Damian going rogue.
It always bothers me when writers pretend Damian got all his bad traits from the al Ghuls and all the good ones from the Waynes. Ra's isn't the opposite of Bruce and as Bruce admitted in Batman and Robin himself, he and his son struggle with a lot of the same problems.
In a way it's even funny how similar Bruce and Damian actually are right now. Secret prisons they didn't tell team mates about, prisons designed to keep the worst criminals inside, lying to everyone, accusing Jason and fighting him for things he didn't do, a general frustration with criminals becoming worse and worse...but more on that at the end of my post.
It's not like Damian wouldn't have had reasons to start doubting Bruce, that's not my main issue with this run.
It's that Glass wrote Damian going rogue without really exploring the legitimate reasons Damian would have for doing so, he connected Damian acting this way to his blood from his mothers side, to an event that Damian didn't play a huge role in and to a man dying the audience had no reason to care about. Meanwhile things that should have had a big impact on Damian that readers would have cared about, like what happened to Dick, Jon and recently Alfred, get ignored in TT.
The overall feeling I got since the very beginning of this run is that Glass isn't interested at all in developing Damian, making him sympathetic to readers or letting him grow. I would even go as far as to say that he possible just wants to tear him down.
Thompson did a lot better than Glass did in Bat and Mouse. I still can't help but fear that we might get a pretty black and white confrontation in the annual and not Bruce and Damian facing their mistakes with honesty and trying to find a solution together though. It's not impossible, I just know from experience that Bruce gets away with being a hypocrite all the time.
I also wonder if "Damian making criminals pay the ultimate price" again is a reaction to DC realizing Bruce and Damian are actually at a pretty similar point right now and need Damian to commit something worse to make Bruce look justified should it really come to Bruce fighting Damian or firing him. That's just speculation though.
Last edited by Astralabius; 05-22-2020 at 02:12 AM.
That's something I've noticed too.
Sure, they touched the topic of Bruce and Damian being at odds here and there when Damian made an appearance in Detective Comics, but overall it's like Teen Titans is in its own little bubble.
TT Damian and Damian in every other book are like two different characters.
TT Damian is off the grid, doesn't talk to Batman and doesn't work with him.
Meanwhile every other book has Damian coming to help Bruce enact his plans or help him with cases, coming when Bruce calls for battle, worrying about Bruce's safety, refusing when villains ask him to betray his father...
It's like Glass wanted one direction for Damian and most other writers don't agree. But TT is Damian's main book, so it might have more weight than Damian's appearances outside his book for his overall direction.
Justice League of China v Teen Titans
Bernard Chang
"It's fun and it's cool, so that's all that matters. It's what comics are for, Duh."
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