I mean... okay. The concept is sound. Talia al'Ghul has a kid with Batman and just doesn't tell him for awhile, and now the kid is kind of fucked up because "raised by the League of Assassins" will do that to you, but because of his million and one psychological issues surrounding his family Batman has he's not capable of engaging productively with his son, who needs different things from him than his other kids ever needed. Especially because he suspects said son may not actually be a good person, although he's reluctant to judge someone so young.

That's a good concept! It ties heavily into the Bat-family side of the mythos, and it introduces a kid that lets you do "there but for the grace of god went Bruce" parallels.

Only... that's not what they're doing? I would say about half the writers who get their hands on him are convinced Damien is awesome, or at least that he's almost always right, which entirely justifies him being a colossal jerk. Because his dad is a colossal jerk too, right? It's a family thing!

(These people fundamentally misunderstand Batman, by the way. Batman isn't a jerk. Batman is merely emotionally unavailable about 75% of the time, and is entirely aware of this fact. But one of Batman's most defining characteristics is his enormous, boundless empathy. It's the thing he has most in common with Superman, in fact.)

It's like people thought what the Bat-mythos needed, REALLY needed, was a "good guy" character who has Frank Castle's basic approach to crime and punishment if he weren't being, barely, held in check by Batman. We already had that guy! We had TWO of that guy if you count Jean-Paul Valley!

And it didn't need that. It just... didn't. Damien isn't emotionally or morally equipped to be a masked vigilante, he just gets by because of who his dad is. Which would be fine, that's an okay thing to explore, but the narrative doesn't seem to realize that's how he comes off as.

-Merc
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