How is Damian supposed to be portrayed? There's been a lot of OOC complaints lately.

[bdk91939]

Okay. Damian was created by Grant Morrison, and granted that Grant has written him for the last several years. However, about a year or so, Peter Tomasi has assumed the writing chores of Batman and Robin.

Recently, there has been some grumbling about Damian being written OOC by Peter Tomasi.

How do you as the reader feel, that Damian should be portrayed or written? I don't seem to understand the OOC complaints on Damian, and it seems to be increasing in numbers for some reason. Shouldn't the character be left up to the current writer to interpret the character as how he or she sees fit?

[Ginkasa]

I think the problem is that Damian's character kind of lays on a really fine line. He's mean to be overconfident, but also very capable. He needs to be egotistical and self-absorbed, but also likeable. He has to be willing to (and perhaps find it easier to) kill his enemies, but can't like it and must be willing to change.

I think its very easy for a writer to take a mis-step and portray Damian as unlikable or a sadistic killer.

[shark]

Not everybody can write him correctly, to be honest. Other than Morrison, I think Dini and BQM nail his personality down.

[TZDEKA]

I think a big part is the way he talks. Tomasi doesn't seem to really write him in the same snarky, refined way we were getting him pre-Flashpoint.

[Dr. Hurt]

Well you can put him in any kind of story you like. From adventurous books like Morrison's B&R and Stephgirl, to more serious like the current B&R which is a diatrebe on his issues.

The story and tone are irrelevant, the point is that Tomasi writes him out of character. Like how he disrespected that victim in Tomasi's pre52 B&R story. Or how he whines and whines and whines when he should be more of a self centered elitist than a whining baby. Or how he vents his anger on animals all of a sudden. Or how he openly talks about his issues (to the Talon).

I could think of more examples i'm tired of whining about it. You get the idea.

[MajorHoy]

I felt like Damian was annoying but becoming slightly more understanding and empathetic as time went on . . . some of the doubts and cracks in his armor occassionally showed, and he grew with Dick as his mentor. Still snarky, but also showing some respect from time to time.
And even though it didn't seem like Damian was really de-aged by the change to the DCnU, he definitely seems to have lost any of his growth as a character and kept little-to-none of his initial rough charm that Morrison at least showed early on.

[Quinnhop]

Damian is ridiculously competent but naturally arrogant because of it. Imagine if you'd spent your entire life training to be better than a combination of Ra's al Ghul and Batman and, because of your mother's limitless resources, you actually live up to it. Damian is a borderline Marty Stu but what keeps him from crossing the line is his endearing desire to emulate his father--to be better than his circumstances, if not physically, then mentally/spiritually. He's a kid but he doesn't have kid problems, or, if he does, they're on the scale of being the son of the goddamned Batman (his "coming out" as a hero to his mother and her scorning him for it = priceless). The problem is also that he's a genius and most writers are intimidated of writing extremely intelligent characters, especially if they're children (because they're forced to straddle the line between genius and immaturity without falling back on the "mad genius"/Miller Batman tropes). Damian should be the best there is at what he does--like Wolverine--but without the maturity or the refinement of a long life.

He's a little badass, so if you want to have him struggle, give him an even more competent enemy.

[Dr. Hurt]

Quinnhop Damian is skilled but he lacks experience. He got beaten up by pretty much everybody. Those triplets from the Circus of Strange, the Joker, getting captured by Hurt's fiends in the season ending story, getting beat up by Scarlett, i think Jason too, Flamingo shot him in the back, etc.

[Trallis]

I'm brand new to Damian. Like, this week I discovered him, so I don't know anything about his history. But I can comment that the character I was just intriduced to in Batman & Robin #9 was a total badass and I liked him very much. He was arrogant but never lost his patience with the General when he was slow to follow his lead.
He also had the quote of the week: “Because this kid read Clausewitz and Jomini at the age of six while you were still trying to figure out the buttons on a Q-Box, you imbecile”.
I don't know what a Q-Box is but it's certainly not Clausewitz and Jomini

[vampiric_cannibal]

Not everybody can write him correctly, to be honest. Other than Morrison, I think Dini and BQM nail his personality down.

Mostly it helps that these writers ultimately portray him as a child. Tomasi's Damian is a bit like a kid starting adoloscence and being an absolute hormonal, bipolar snot.

I think a big part is the way he talks. Tomasi doesn't seem to really write him in the same snarky, refined way we were getting him pre-Flashpoint.

And the speech is different, too.

Current Damian is all too dark and serious. Old Damian took things too seriously as a child does, which makes it a bit silly to lighten the mood. Old Damian tried to brood and failed.

[thwhtGuardian]

I don't really see much of a difference to be honest. Rather than it being a case of a character being written out of character it seems more like people just preferred the stories he was in that were written by Morrison to the ones currently being written.

That's really the only logical way I can view it as on a characterization level the differences between how he was written before Flashpoint and how he's written now fall well within the realm of slight stylistic differences that always exist when more than one person writes a character. It's like the way Bruce is portrayed in the Justice League, Batman, Detective, and The Dark Knight; they're all slightly different but none are out of character in the stories they're in as they are all in their own ways internally cohesive, and that's all that matters. You may prefer the way some writers write Damian over others but I don't see how that makes the way others write him out of character, that claim just seems more like a handwave explanation to me.

[Froggy]

some of the people in this thread nailed it IMO

he's really...precocious I guess is the word and it's funny with how serious and grim he tried to be?

[Desaad]

What I'm finding most of all is that people are having a difficult time nailing down his cadence, the rhythm of his voice and his diction.

Damian, aside from all the character stuff, Damian should always, always have an aristocratic sneer. That means no contractions, no slang. A large vocabulary is a must, a sharp wit is essential but without a real sense of humor.

It is, again, tough to do.

As a character I think he's a little more malleable, but I would play up the fact that he's been isolated all his life - despite being coddled by his mother, he was emotionally isolated - and that deep down he's desperately looking to connect to others, not to live up to their love but to just have it. What makes that difficult is that Damian by nature isn't going to show it, so one has to do the between the line characterizations. He'll never say how much Grayson means to him, but I see him totally losing it if anything ever happened to Grayson. That sort of thing.

[LoneNecromancer]

I'm brand new to Damian. Like, this week I discovered him, so I don't know anything about his history. But I can comment that the character I was just intriduced to in Batman & Robin #9 was a total badass and I liked him very much. He was arrogant but never lost his patience with the General when he was slow to follow his lead.
He also had the quote of the week: “Because this kid read Clausewitz and Jomini at the age of six while you were still trying to figure out the buttons on a Q-Box, you imbecile”.
I don't know what a Q-Box is but it's certainly not Clausewitz and Jomini

I suspect it's the DC universe version of an XBox.

[Dr. Hurt]

some of the people in this thread nailed it IMO

he's really...precocious I guess is the word and it's funny with how serious and grim he tried to be?

I think that's been the selling point of the character. That we have this little 90ies grimdark batman kid, who doesnt know how to be a kid, who acts all tought and sophisticated when in reality all he wants is his father's acceptance and love. (And with Morrison making Inc a battle between Bruce and Talia with Damian caught in the middle, this is probably going to be a metaphoric story for real parents that fight over their kids.)

But the thing is that all this was actually funny. Damian in all his seriousness felt like kid Batman in the JL episode "Kid Stuff" (it's on youtube if you havent seen it). While Damian had issues, they were addressed in a subtle way, while as part of the dynamic duo he and Dick were having adventures fighting Pyg, Toad and Flamingo. Dini and Miller did the same thing in Streets and Batgirl respectively.

Tomasi is disregarding all that and focusing only on Damian's issues like people want to read a comic book version of "Kids out of controoool!" "OMG Damian is so screwed up you guys, how do we give therapy to this kid?" It's like i'm watching Oprah or something.

So now Damian actually becomes Jason 2.0. The troubled Robin that is no fun and is irritating the hell out of us. And it's even worse because he's even lost his elitist speaking pattern and he's parterned with his father who he cant afford to mock or make fun of like he did with Dick.


To clarify this doesnt have to do with whether Tomasi writes Damian ooc. I'm just explaining how the current B&R book misses out on the best parts of the character. Like using your Porsche to carry bricks.

I wish they could find a way to have Damian frequently pop up in Nightwing. I'm also hoping that he'll end up being friends with Stephanie and Kara somewhere down the line. When Kara settles down and Steph comes out of limbo.