Damian Wayne

• 1. Introduction

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  Damian Wayne, a hero published by DC Comics, reached Batman's world through a lie. His mother, Talia, was engaged to Bruce Wayne. When she became pregnant, she broke off the engagement and told Bruce she had miscarried. He did not learn the truth until Batman #656, in 2006.

  The boy was never meant to be a hero. Talia's father, the villain Ra's al Ghul, wanted him to kill Batman and take his place. Ra's also planned to use the boy as a host body for himself, which would unite the Wayne and al Ghul factions.

  Instead, Damian became Bruce's youngest child and his only biological one. His adopted siblings are Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Cassandra Cain.

  This documentary asks how a child built to destroy Batman ended up wearing a Robin costume. It asks why a son trained as an assassin keeps colliding with a father who refuses to kill. And it asks what happens to a character like this when he is killed, and brought back.

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• 2. Echoes Before Damian

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  The 1987 story Batman: Son of the Demon contained an unnamed infant, and at the time that story was not considered canon. Writers kept the child around as a backup character. Alternate universe tales then gave him a string of different names.

  In The Brotherhood of the Bat, from 1995, he is called Tallant Wayne. The story imagines a future in which Ra's al Ghul finds the Batcave after Bruce Wayne dies. Ra's outfits the League of Assassins in variant Batman costumes based on designs Wayne had rejected. Tallant joins the group wearing his father's costume, hoping to destroy it from the inside.

  Kingdom Come, by Mark Waid and Alex Ross in 1996, offered a different version. Here the child of Batman and Talia is Ibn al Xu'ffasch, which is Arabic for Son of the Bat. He sits in Lex Luthor's inner circle while secretly working as a double agent for Batman. In Elliot S! Maggin's novelization, he tells Bruce that Talia is alive in Cairo, working as a Mother Superior and one of Mother Teresa's successors.

  Waid's 1999 sequel, The Kingdom, fills in his past through flashbacks. Ra's raised him to inherit an empire. He killed his grandfather by cutting off his head, so that Ra's could not regenerate yet again. He later sought therapy from a psychiatrist named Dr. Gibson. Rip Hunter eventually recruited him to stop a madman called Gog from altering history.

  Tallant returned in League of Batmen, in 2001, and learned something worse. His grandfather had murdered his father and then cloned him. Ra's had even sent that clone to murder his own daughter.

  The final issue of 52, in 2008, named the Kingdom Come world Earth-22, which placed Ibn al Xu'ffasch inside the DC Multiverse. Justice Society of America vol. 3 #22, in 2009, added that he marries Nightstar and has a daughter and a son. His family inherits the Wayne Estates after Batman's death.

  All of these were futures and alternatives. The version with the name Damian would arrive in 2006, in Batman #655, written by Grant Morrison with art by Andy Kubert.

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• 3. A Weapon Raised

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  Bruce Wayne knew nothing about where Damian came from. In Morrison's telling, the boy was genetically perfected and grown in an artificial womb, designed as the ideal warrior.

  Talia raised him among the League of Assassins. By the time he reached his teens, he was already a talented martial artist. Then Talia revealed his existence to Bruce and left Damian in his custody. Her aim was to disrupt Batman's work.

  The child who arrived at Wayne Manor was precocious, spoiled and violent. He wanted Tim Drake's place as Robin. When Tim stopped fighting to help him, Damian sucker punched him off the stuffed Tyrannosaurus in the Batcave. Damian then slipped away, put on a makeshift Robin costume, and fought and killed a villain named Spook.

  Under the cruelty was something simpler. Damian wanted his father's approval. But his upbringing had left him without any sense of social behavior. He believed Bruce would accept him only if he eliminated rivals, and that included Tim Drake.

  That belief clashed with Batman's vow never to kill. Still, Bruce felt some optimism about fatherhood.

  Damian's conception is told differently depending on the writer. In Batman and Son, Bruce claims he was drugged during a tryst with Talia at the Tropic of Cancer. Morrison later admitted that this claim was a canonical error. Yet in Morrison's own Batman Incorporated, the drugging is reaffirmed. Then Peter J. Tomasi's Batman and Robin showed the encounter as consensual.

  Once Bruce confronted Talia to confirm who Damian was, both mother and son were caught in an explosion. They survived, but Damian's injuries demanded transplants of harvested organs. Talia had her physicians perform them, and he recovered fully.

  The next ordeal came in Batman Annual #26, titled "Head of the Demon." Talia took Damian to the Australian Outback and taught him the secret history of his grandfather. There they learned that a former servant of Ra's, called White Ghost, planned to resurrect Ra's using Damian, which would kill the boy.

  Damian rushed to Wayne Manor to warn Batman. He found Tim Drake, who refused to believe him, and the two fought until the League of Assassins arrived and captured them both.

  Ra's offered Batman a choice of bodies to inhabit. Batman refused both and proposed a third option, the "Fountain of Essence," which holds the qualities of a Lazarus Pit. While the two men searched for it, Damian abandoned his mother and Tim and ran to be near his father. Ra's captured him and nearly killed him before Batman and the others rescued him. Talia then fled with her son.

  A later conversation between Tim and Alfred hinted that Batman had run a DNA test. That was when Tim understood, and exclaimed, "The son of Satan is my brother?"

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• 4. Robin Under Dick

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  Batman #675 opened Grant Morrison's "Batman R.I.P." story arc, and Damian sensed that someone was out to get Batman. Talia began a plan involving Commissioner James Gordon. She and Damian rescued him from a booby-trapped Wayne Manor while searching for Batman, who had gone missing and was insane.

  Damian and Alfred then raced in a commandeered Batmobile to help Batman against the Black Glove. Damian drove. He knocked an ambulance off a bridge without a flicker of remorse. When Alfred scolded him, Damian answered with a backhanded threat. The ambulance's only occupant had been the Joker.

  By Nightwing #153, in 2009, Damian was in Alfred's care and being trained by Dick Grayson. In Batman: Battle for the Cowl, his father's apparent death made him more childlike. He took the Batmobile joy-riding with an older girl. Oracle intervened, and Killer Croc and Poison Ivy ambushed the car. Killer Croc later ate the girl.

  Nightwing rescued Damian, then found himself cornered by Black Mask's men. A murderous figure announced that he was Batman, and he was later revealed to be Jason Todd. Todd shot Damian, who recovered and saved Tim Drake from a fatal fall inside Jason's Batcave.

  When Grayson gave up Nightwing to become the new Batman, he chose Damian as his Robin. Damian was ten years old, and he was the fifth person to use the name.

  Damian made it clear that he cared little for his older brother and would not respect him as Batman until Dick earned it. In defiance, he tried to make the Robin role independent of Batman. He set out to stop Dr. Phosphorus from breaking into Project Cadmus, failed badly, and had to be saved by Dick. Dick then began teaching him how to be Robin properly, and the two developed a crime-fighting style of their own.

  Professor Pyg and his Dollotron army came next. Dick and Damian took down the entire army, and a brotherly bond started to form. Damian blamed himself for failing to save one Dollotron, a girl named Sasha. He did not know that Jason Todd, the man who had shot him, had taken her in.

  The Flamingo later shot Damian in the back and paralyzed him. Talia replaced his spine, but she also installed a monitor linked to his brain that let her control his movements. As Damian grew closer to Dick, she handed control of the monitor to Deathstroke, who tried to use it to kill Dick. Working together, Dick and Damian stopped him.

  Damian also meddled in the finances of Wayne Enterprises, and he impressed its board of directors. He filed a lawsuit against Tim Drake, who had been named heir, but not against Dick.

  Tim was a constant irritant. After Dick took the Robin role from Tim and gave it to Damian, Damian mocked him. In a later story, Damian hacked Tim's secret hit list and discovered a hidden layer of Bat-family allies whom Tim considered potential threats, Damian among them. During a stakeout, Damian cut Tim's line, and Tim fell from a great height but survived.

  The two then fought in front of the theater where Bruce Wayne's parents were killed. Dick, as Batman, scolded them both for brawling at the place where Batman was born, and they agreed to a grudging truce. Dick suggested changing the list's password to Cousin Oliver, since Damian had no interest in pop culture and would never guess it.

  Damian had stranger companions too. He secretly played chess with the imprisoned Hush, Thomas Elliot, against Dick's orders. Elliot concluded that Damian visited because Elliot resembled Bruce, and he wanted to spend time with his old man.

  During Blackest Night, Damian and Dick moved the skeletons of Bruce and Damian's paternal grandparents to their base beneath Wayne Tower. Damian was shaken by the bones of his own family. Deadman possessed Dick, then Damian, and passed on what he knew about the Black Lanterns.

  Dick, Damian and Tim then fought the reanimated dead of Gotham. Dick froze himself and Tim with Mr. Freeze's gun so the Lanterns could detect no life. Deadman revived both former Boy Wonders afterward.

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• 5. Father and Son

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  Talia began cloning Damian once she realized he had fully sided with Dick Grayson and the Bat-Family. Damian told her that being Robin was the best thing he had ever done. She showed him a cloned version of himself, whom she called his younger brother.

  Talia admitted that she loved him but was too much of a perfectionist to admire a path that defied her so openly. She declared him an enemy of the House of al Ghul. Damian replied that he hoped to be a worthy one.

  As Damian, Dick and Alfred searched for Bruce Wayne, a returned minor villain called the Getaway Genius taught Damian something about his father. Damian was angry that Dick had failed to catch the man. Dick explained that Bruce had let the Genius go, because the man was stealing medicine he needed to live long enough to see his daughter grow up. Damian realized he had never known his father as a person.

  Then came Oberon Sexton, Dick's confidant, who turned out to be the Joker in disguise. Damian beat him with a crowbar to get information, calling it self-defense. The Joker's helplessness was another trick, and his hidden venom took Damian down.

  Help arrived in the form of the original Batman. After Bruce helped defeat the Black Glove and the Joker, he accepted Damian as his son and as Robin. He still chose to leave Damian working with Dick, whom he saw as a good role model, since Bruce had plans with Batman Inc.

  Damian also spent time on the Teen Titans. Dick wanted him to find friends and learn that he could trust others. His temper nearly ruined his first mission when he attacked an opponent right after Raven had calmed him. He grew close to Ravager, whose father was the assassin Deathstroke. When Tim Drake rejoined, Damian left, reasoning that the team did not need two Robins. He told Dick that he already had a friend, and it was Dick.

  A stakeout with Black Bat, the predecessor to Stephanie Brown, went differently. Damian mocked her for being sent to Hong Kong by his father. She still rescued him from the exploding Iceberg Lounge, and together they stopped a bomber who was obsessed with destroying Gotham landmarks.

  In 2011, the New 52 relaunch restored Bruce Wayne as the only Batman. Dick returned to being Nightwing, and Damian stayed on as Robin. A letter from an alternate timeline convinced Bruce to put his past behind him, and he tried to teach Damian the values his own parents had given him. Damian stayed distant, and Alfred worried.

  The gap seemed to widen when Damian apparently left Wayne Manor to join a villain called Nobody. It was a ruse to bring Nobody down. Damian eventually killed him in front of Bruce, and the two worked through it by trying to understand each other. Bruce hid the event from Dick and Tim, and Alfred remarked that he had become quite the overprotective parent.

  After the Joker returned in Batman #14, Damian became eager to fight his father's arch-foe. In Batman and Robin vol. 2, #15, he defied orders to stay in the Batcave and tracked Alfred's kidnapping to Gotham Zoo. The Joker captured him and claimed that Batman's family made Batman a lesser enemy for the Joker. He said that Damian and Batman each most feared being responsible for the other's death.

  The Joker then showed Damian a Batman in Joker makeup and told him to kill that man before he killed Damian. Damian chose to die rather than kill his father. The Joker killed the figure first, and Damian passed out from venom. The Batman turned out to be a fake, and trust inside the family was shattered.

  During the "Leviathan" arc, Talia put a price on Damian's head. Bruce faked his death and hid him in the Batcave. Damian escaped anyway, in a new costume under the name Redbird. With the Bat-family and a figure called Wingman, he helped rescue his father and beat most of the League of Shadows.

  Batman then reached a painful decision. He decided that Damian must return to his mother, and Damian reacted more emotionally than ever before.

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• 6. Death and Return

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  Issue 8 of the second volume of Batman, Inc. went on sale on the 27th of February 2013. It killed Damian. Grant Morrison said of the death: "He saves the world. He does his job as Robin. He dies an absolute hero."

  Damian was fighting hordes of Leviathan henchmen in the lobby of Wayne Tower when Nightwing came to help. They took cover and briefly reminisced about their time as Batman and Robin. Then Heretic, an adult clone of Damian, arrived and knocked Nightwing out. Damian fought bravely, but Heretic gained the upper hand and drove a sword through his chest and heart. Damian died almost instantly.

  Batman arrived minutes later and saw the body. He and a revived Nightwing fought Heretic, but they had to retreat with Red Robin and Damian's body. After a private funeral, Bruce vowed revenge.

  The storyline Requiem follows the aftermath. Damian was buried next to Bruce's parents, his own paternal grandparents. Batman could not accept the loss and began hunting for a way to bring Damian back. This cost him his friendships. He also hid the death from the public, in case the resurrection worked.

  Damian's acting instructor, Carrie Kelley, was determined to learn what had happened to him. Her suspicion led to conflict with Bruce, and she realized that the Waynes were keeping a secret.

  When Batman and Nightwing finally cornered Heretic, they beat him badly. Batman wanted to kill his son's murderer more than anything. He spared the clone after seeing the resemblance to Damian, realizing the clone was what remained of his son.

  Talia then killed Heretic for failing to kill Batman and challenged Bruce to a duel to the death in the Batcave. Kathy Webb killed Talia after the duel. The League of Assassins stole Damian's body from the Manor cemetery along with Talia's, planning to resurrect them. Ra's al Ghul had begun engineering more clones of Damian.

  Batman set out to reclaim the body. Ra's claimed he only wanted to resurrect his daughter and grandson, but Bruce distrusted him. After defeating the half-aquatic clones of Damian with Aquaman, Batman asked Wonder Woman for help chasing Ra's to Themyscira.

  Ra's put Damian and Talia in what he took to be a Lazarus Pit on the island. In fact it had become a portal to a netherworld, and Wonder Woman and Batman already knew it. Ra's fled with the bodies.

  Batman and Frankenstein tracked Ra's down, but the bodies were already in a Lazarus Pit. The resurrections failed. Ra's was forced to see his own arrogance in letting Heretic kill his grandson and in allowing Talia to clone Damian. Batman beat Ra's, took back the body, and warned that he would kill Ra's if he ever stole it again.

  Then Glorious Godfrey, an elite servant of Darkseid, appeared. He wanted the Chaos Shard, a crystal that once belonged to Darkseid. Ra's revealed that it was hidden inside the sarcophagus he made for Damian. Godfrey detected the shard in Damian's body and fled with the corpse to Apokolips, despite the Justice League's efforts.

  Batman used the Justice League Watchtower and the unstable Hellbat exosuit he had designed with Justice League members. He activated the Boom Tube to Apokolips, retrieved the corpse, and escaped Darkseid and his Parademons back to the Batcave.

  Batman applied the Chaos Shard, which had been infused with Darkseid's Omega Sanction. He had to decide whether to resurrect Damian or his own parents. He chose his son, and Damian truly came back. Batman collapsed from exhaustion in the embrace.

  The Boom Tube had been left open, and Darkseid's son Kalibak came through and nearly beat the team to death. Damian knocked him out with a powerful uppercut and learned the shard had given him superhuman abilities. Batman then crashed the remotely piloted Batwing into Kalibak and sent him back through the portal.

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• 7. Leader and Runaway

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  After the events of Batman: Endgame, Bruce Wayne disappeared, and Damian set out on a globe-spanning journey in his own series, Robin: Son of Batman. He wanted to forge his own destiny and make amends for past wrongs. He met Ra's and Talia, Deathstroke, and a new character called Maya Ducard, daughter of the late Nobody.

  In Batman and Robin Eternal, the Bat-Family faced a woman called Mother, who believed she could strengthen her "children" through intense trauma. After she crushed Dick, Jason and Tim, Damian helped restore their confidence. He recalled a talk in which Bruce said he was proud that each Robin had different strengths, and wanted his partners to find their own paths.

  In the Robin War event, Damian, Agent 37 (Dick Grayson), Red Hood and Red Robin organized a street gang called the Robins. They were opposing the Court of Owls, with reluctant help from Jim Gordon, who was now Batman. The Court manipulated Damian into joining them, hoping to recruit Agent 37. Dick joined to save Damian and end the war. Afterward, Damian formed an unlikely partnership with his mother.

  DC's 2016 relaunch, DC Rebirth, put him in three titles: Teen Titans, Super Sons and Nightwing. In Teen Titans, he led the team. On his 13th birthday, his grandfather Ra's sent him a package containing a dead robin. Talia explained that it was a warning from his cousin Mara al Ghul, who had chosen him as prey in an initiation ritual.

  Mara led a group called the Demon's Fist, a role first intended for Damian before he left the League. Damian collected the targets of the other members, including Starfire, Beast Boy, Raven and Kid Flash, and made them into a new Teen Titans.

  After Justice League: No Justice, the Titans disbanded, and Damian built another team. It had Kid Flash, the kid genius Roundhouse, Red Arrow, Lobo's daughter Crush, and a spirit creature called Djinn. When Gizmo nearly detonated a nuclear device, Damian used the ring that binds Djinn to free her full powers. Then he gave the ring back and refused to claim mastery over her. That earned her trust, and a mutual romantic attraction slowly grew.

  He kept secrets, though. A deep cellar under the Titans' headquarters, a former juvenile detention facility, was his secret dungeon. He held Deathstroke, Gizmo, Brother Blood, Black Mask and Atomic Skull there. He also worked with Jason Todd, who called himself Outlaw, until a misjudgment ended their trust.

  When Kid Flash found the prison, Crush kissed Djinn and showed her the warmth that Damian's grimness never offered. Red Arrow killed Deathstroke, and the team split apart until Lobo crashed in, searching for Crush. Djinn defeated Lobo by altering his memory. She then did the same to the criminals in the dungeon, giving them new and harmless identities.

  Super Sons paired Damian with Superman's 10-year-old son, Jonathan Kent. They began as a team against Kid Amazo, a child affected by a virus that gives ordinary people powers. Damian decided to train Jon, but Jon's wish to join the Teen Titans created ongoing conflict. Batman and Superman built them an underwater base, which Jon called the "Fortress of Attitude," to Damian's dismay.

  In The Adventures of the Super-Sons, they spent a summer facing Rex Luthor, an alien child imitating Lex Luthor. The book was cancelled, but the characters have appeared together elsewhere.

  In the story "No More Teen Titans," Alfred Pennyworth died, and KGBeast cost Dick his memories. Damian decided his father's idea of justice and fear was not enough, and he began killing criminals to make enemies afraid. He tried to kill KGBeast, but only cut off his left arm before the Titans stopped him.

  Batman arrived and declared the Teen Titans finished. Damian pursued the revived Deathstroke and again tried to kill him, and the Titans again stopped him. When Batman begged him to come home, Damian attacked him. He called Wayne Manor a coffin and tore the Robin insignia off his chest. Then he gave it to Batman and left for parts unknown.

  In the Robin series that followed, written by Joshua Williamson, Damian entered the Lazarus tournament to uncover the League of Lazarus. He fought alongside Ravager, Connor Hawke and Flatline, an apprentice of one of his father's enemies. He developed a romantic relationship with Flatline. He learned that the tournament's host was his maternal great-grandmother, Ruh al Ghul, whom Ra's had imprisoned on the island.

  In "Shadow War," the reformed Ra's decided to surrender and reveal his centuries of secrets. A sniper in a Deathstroke-like costume shot him at his own press conference and threw a bomb that reduced his body to ash, leaving nothing for the Lazarus Pit.

  Talia put a hit on Deathstroke and all his associates. Damian teamed with Bruce to investigate. The war ended with Talia killing Slade in a duel, and the imposter was Geo-Force. Damian talked his mother out of killing him, because his grandfather had believed their family could be better.

  In Dawn of DC, Damian moved back in with Bruce and they rebuilt the Dynamic Duo. Bruce sent him to school, where classmates bullied him. He skipped class to chase a new villain called Shush. He later returned willingly, suspecting his principal was Shush and had been one of his instructors in the League.

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• 8. Costumes and Screens

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  Damian's first Robin costume was assembled from stolen parts. He took Jason Todd's tunic and mask from a memorial case and wore them over his black and white League of Assassins bodysuit. A grayish hood and cape completed it, along with brass knuckles and a sword.

  After Dick sanctioned his role, the bodysuit became a black survival suit. The grayish cape was replaced by a yellow para-cape that lets him glide, and the mask became green. He gained a bulkier utility belt, a black hood, and green gloves and flexible boots.

  DC Rebirth added more armored gauntlets and boots, knee pads, and a black cape with yellow trim. In his solo series, the suit changed again. It is black and gray with red trim, and the Robin logo is red with a black R. He keeps his black and yellow cape and green domino mask.

  His skills match the long list of mentors he has had, from the League of Assassins to Batman and Dick Grayson. He is an expert martial artist and assassin. He also has detective training in forensics, criminology, escapology and disguise, and gymnast-level athleticism. He is considered a genius, and he can work magic with the help of arcane objects.

  Because the al Ghuls idealized Bruce Wayne as the best person to lead the League, Damian is drawn to strongly resemble his father. At 13 he was small for his age and showed few signs of puberty. In Super Sons, it was a running joke that people mistook him for someone younger than 10-year-old Jon Kent.

  The character has many other versions. Possible future versions appear in Batman #666 in 2007, Batman #700 in 2010, and Superman/Batman #75. In DC Rebirth's Batman Beyond, he succeeds his grandfather as Ra's al Ghul. A meeting with his estranged father and Terry McGinnis leads him to reform and begin to reconcile with Bruce.

  There is also Robzarro, a Bizarro counterpart who appears in "Boyzarro Re-Death." Alternate versions appear in Dark Nights: Metal and DCeased.

  On television, Batman: The Brave and the Bold gives him a very different life. In the episode "The Knights of Tomorrow!" he is the son of Batman and Selina Kyle, voiced by Patrick Cavanaugh and, as Batman, Diedrich Bader. The Joker kills his parents, and he later succeeds Dick Grayson as Batman. In Harley Quinn, Jacob Tremblay voices a version raised by Batman after Talia left him as a baby. That Damian is less capable at fighting and is not taken seriously.

  Stuart Allan voices him in the DC Animated Movie Universe, where he is a Teen Titan in a relationship with Raven. Scott Menville voices him in several Lego films. Batman Ninja has a Feudal Japan-inspired version, voiced by Yuki Kaji in Japanese and Yuri Lowenthal in English. Zach Callison voices him in Injustice.

  In the video game Injustice: Gods Among Us, voiced by Neal McDonough, a variant of Damian accidentally kills Dick Grayson, takes the Nightwing name and joins Superman's Regime. In Injustice vs. Masters of the Universe, a later version has become Batman and realized his errors. Wonder Woman kills him for it. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes made him playable, with Charlie Schlatter as his voice. A new Batman game at WB Games Montreal that was meant to feature him was cancelled.

  The 2023 Christmas-themed animated film Merry Little Batman starred Yonas Kibreab as Damian. Kibreab returned in the series Bat-Fam. Damian's live-action debut is still ahead, in The Brave and the Bold, produced by DC Studios.

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