A Funeral for a Bruce/Talia Shipper

[Mr. Holmes]

Ra's Al Ghul is going to be heading up the Secret Society of Super-Villains in JLoA, so this won't be the last of the Demon characters.

And frankly at this point that sounds infinitely more interesting than freaking Leviathan.

[The Duke]

Potentially stupid question but is a 'shipper a worshipper?

If so then I admit freely to being a Talia worshipper.

Hell, when the first time you see her is like this...



How can you not worship.

(Neal Adams may be almost singlehandedly responsible for the dire crapfest D.C. has become thanks to those court cases but he was a fine artist back in the day)

[CrazyOldHermit]

Potentially stupid question but is a 'shipper a worshipper?

If so then I admit freely to being a Talia worshipper.

Hell, when the first time you see her is like this...



How can you not worship.

(Neal Adams may be almost singlehandedly responsible for the dire crapfest D.C. has become thanks to those court cases but he was a fine artist back in the day)

A shipper is a fan that is obsessed with the relationships fictional characters have with each other, usually focusing on one specific pairing.

I support the guy who wants a mass funeral for shippers.

[darkseidpwns]

Ra's Al Ghul is going to be heading up the Secret Society of Super-Villains in JLoA, so this won't be the last of the Demon characters.

And frankly at this point that sounds infinitely more interesting than freaking Leviathan.

This hasn't been confirmed,the Wizard is also a likely candidate(Shadow Thief too).Also I find the concept rather generic and the villains in question I couldn't care less about personally(like Ivy and Grodd but that's it)

[white_wolf]

Ra's Al Ghul is going to be heading up the Secret Society of Super-Villains in JLoA, so this won't be the last of the Demon characters.

And frankly at this point that sounds infinitely more interesting than freaking Leviathan.

Really? I may have to pick up JLoA. I love Ra's, but I'm not a fan of Talia or at least the current interpretation of her. I actually liked her better in Morrison's run before the New 52. I don't know why, but she just seems more generically evil. Pre-Flashpoint, I felt like she cared for Bruce and Damian, but now, hell, it almost seems like Joker cares more about him.

[Mr. Holmes]

While Morrison is undoubtedly leagues ahead of Johns as far as writing goes, I trust Johns to write more compelling villains at this point.

[vampiric_cannibal]

While Morrison is undoubtedly leagues ahead of Johns as far as writing goes, I trust Johns to write more compelling villains at this point.

Johns writes his villains better than his hero. Morrison writes his villains as interesting bits of theme and conflict for his heroes, much like the foes of any classical epic poem aside from the Iliad. Batman = Herakles, Talia or whoever = some random beast or nasty king.

[T Hedge Coke]

Morrison gets right to his perspective on Talia, in the new Fatman on Batman, for any curious, and yeah, he calls it straight out: criminal empire! "This means human trafficking, all this serious shit. This isn't a joke."

And, it's that simple. She's not caught up in a world she can't understand. She's not a pickpocket or as novelty. She's a woman who signs off on murder when it benefits her. She's a woman who benefits, comfortably, from running drug trafficking, slavery, terrorism, and murder on a global scale.

[The Duke]

A shipper is a fan that is obsessed with the relationships fictional characters have with each other, usually focusing on one specific pairing.

I support the guy who wants a mass funeral for shippers.

I see. I admit freely I was a shipper for both Bruce Banner and Betty Ross and Bruce Wayne's many girls in my youth.

[stewart48]

Morrison gets right to his perspective on Talia, in the new Fatman on Batman, for any curious, and yeah, he calls it straight out: criminal empire! "This means human trafficking, all this serious shit. This isn't a joke."

And, it's that simple. She's not caught up in a world she can't understand. She's not a pickpocket or as novelty. She's a woman who signs off on murder when it benefits her. She's a woman who benefits, comfortably, from running drug trafficking, slavery, terrorism, and murder on a global scale.

It was never so simple until after death and the maidens. The conflict of potentially turning against your upbringing was what I liked about it, and Batman became that variable that made that character interesting. This is a character with a dark history that did turn away at times. Look at characters like Rhino and Sandman in Spider-man, they have been associated with gangs guilty of death, murder, human trafficking and people completely accept turning on their nature and circumstance, we know they will become villains again but in a good story you root for them to win if written well, but they eventually fall back into their criminal ways. Talia has to go against family nature and upbringing and at times she successfully did. I just enjoy that dynamic and that struggle against what your predestined to be. Batman wasn't drugged in their entire history, batman is a character that recognizes human complexity and in comics we do excuse these things. "The Wire" is a TV show where people did horrible things but at the same time you see where they come from, and you care, and you root for the characters that do get better. I've worked with people that get stuck in gang culture and they can never get out despite regrets because of loyalty and fear of change and Talia was that on a Global and an even bigger level

I think I make it pretty obvious that I can't cheer for this character now, because Morrison added to her history that she had been organizing this since before death of the maidens. I think there could be a retcon because originally it was said Damien was born to be a vessel for Ra's and not the future ruler of the world, and you just assume these pieces had been placed for years, but if this stuff was planned before DOTMs then it changes all previous stories and really why did Talia help superman if she had all this other stuff going in the background to run a future world empire.

I'm not a shipper on any relationship, I love Batman\Catwoman, Batman\Talia, and Batman and whatever is written great, but I just enjoy that classic dynamic because there is a hope for redemption and change. When I started writing this I was going to relate it to the lack of hope in comics which this story now has plenty of, but as I started writing it I was thinking of BTAS and other times I read the dynamic and that was just something I really liked. Just prior to death and the maidens this is a character that helped bring down Luther's company helping batman and superman.

Also I wanted to make a point that there were things worse than death for some characters, because this character is now as bad as hitler, because she isn't psychotic she is deliberately evil. That is something on a character level that fundamentally changes everything. I just had a lot of ideas about things in comics and it came out in this character and then I got carried away with nostalgia and was like... "I'm really going to miss these adventure stories with this girl who you may or may not trust, and who you see that potential for both great evil and great good." Hate the way the comics now drift towards the," Well in real life they would naturally go evil so lets make her pure evil" I miss the hope that people have the potential to overcome evil, and this character didn't

The DC sucks was supposed to be tongue and cheek they don't suck, this story is a good story, but for me as a reader there is more than just the loss of robin but the loss of a character that could have done a turn away from the darkside and who for a while did turn from that darkside.

[Kiryu]

It was never so simple until after death and the maidens. The conflict of potentially turning against your upbringing was what I liked about it, and Batman became that variable that made that character interesting. This is a character with a dark history that did turn away at times. Look at characters like Rhino and Sandman in Spider-man, they have been associated with gangs guilty of death, murder, human trafficking and people completely accept turning on their nature and circumstance, we know they will become villains again but in a good story you root for them to win if written well, but they eventually fall back into their criminal ways. Talia has to go against family nature and upbringing and at times she successfully did. I just enjoy that dynamic and that struggle against what your predestined to be. Batman wasn't drugged in their entire history, batman is a character that recognizes human complexity and in comics we do excuse these things. "The Wire" is a TV show where people did horrible things but at the same time you see where they come from, and you care, and you root for the characters that do get better. I've worked with people that get stuck in gang culture and they can never get out despite regrets because of loyalty and fear of change and Talia was that on a Global and an even bigger level

I think I make it pretty obvious that I can't cheer for this character now, because Morrison added to her history that she had been organizing this since before death of the maidens. I think there could be a retcon because originally it was said Damien was born to be a vessel for Ra's and not the future ruler of the world, and you just assume these pieces had been placed for years, but if this stuff was planned before DOTMs then it changes all previous stories and really why did Talia help superman if she had all this other stuff going in the background to run a future world empire.

I'm not a shipper on any relationship, I love Batman\Catwoman, Batman\Talia, and Batman and whatever is written great, but I just enjoy that classic dynamic because there is a hope for redemption and change. When I started writing this I was going to relate it to the lack of hope in comics which this story now has plenty of, but as I started writing it I was thinking of BTAS and other times I read the dynamic and that was just something I really liked. Just prior to death and the maidens this is a character that helped bring down Luther's company helping batman and superman.

Also I wanted to make a point that there were things worse than death for some characters, because this character is now as bad as hitler, because she isn't psychotic she is deliberately evil. That is something on a character level that fundamentally changes everything. I just had a lot of ideas about things in comics and it came out in this character and then I got carried away with nostalgia and was like... "I'm really going to miss these adventure stories with this girl who you may or may not trust, and who you see that potential for both great evil and great good." Hate the way the comics now drift towards the," Well in real life they would naturally go evil so lets make her pure evil" I miss the hope that people have the potential to overcome evil, and this character didn't

The DC sucks was supposed to be tongue and cheek they don't suck, this story is a good story, but for me as a reader there is more than just the loss of robin but the loss of a character that could have done a turn away from the darkside and who for a while did turn from that darkside.

I believe that Retro brought it up, but Talia was perfectly fine with sentencing people to death in her very first appearance. While she may have bucked against the cause of her father from time to time, most of her existence she has been his loyal and dutiful daughter and has been an active participant in several genocidal plots against mankind long before Morrison ever came to write her. She has been raised, pampered and enjoyed all the benefits of Ra's committing the most depraved acts against humanity imaginably for her entire life.

To ignore those truths of the character to push forward your idealized version as a tragic figure is no better then what Morrison is doing because it's "nice" or "good" or "positive". I think that MOrrison's take on the character is very brave and I think more comics SHOULD confront the realities of the ultra dark scenarios they create rather then just play them for shock and sweep the consequences under the rug.

I mean how do you realistically keep throwing Batman and Talia in these wacky adventures in the desert where they flirt with the notion of being together and then there is an explosion that separates them and Talia goes off to running drug rings, slavery, and dealing death and narcotics on a daily basis until these star crossed lovers cross paths again and oh my hope blooms eternal?

I don't think so.

I think it's being completely true to the characters to look at them and accept the realities of the world we've created for them and what kind of people it would create. Talia has always been a monster. She is the devil's daughter. And she's finally fed up with being strung along trying to win Batman over to her side. She even offered to join him in his war against crime and he ran away from her. So now, she's paying him back 10 fold for all those years. For all those times she's tried to turn against her father to be with Batman, for all the times he's refused her, for an entire life being a pawn in a war between a Demon and a Detective.

You cite The Wire and while it is absolutely true there are characters who walk the line and fight back against the world they were born into. But for all those characters there are ones who are just evil. For every D'Angelo there is a Marlo, For every Wallace a Snoop.


I mean lets be 100% real here. Talia was never ever going to be Batman's wife. They will never ever get together. They can never ever have a happily ever after. Those are simply realities of the comic book world where status quo is king. I find this dark exploration of her character so much more interesting then say, her last outing in RoRAG where she and Batman are frolicing and flirting through the icey tundras for the nth time. Enough is enough.

[The Duke]

I mean lets be 100% real here. Talia was never ever going to be Batman's wife. They will never ever get together. They can never ever have a happily ever after. Those are simply realities of the comic book world where status quo is king. I find this dark exploration of her character so much more interesting then say, her last outing in RoRAG where she and Batman are frolicing and flirting through the icey tundras for the nth time. Enough is enough.

Good point. If people want to read that characterisation, there are years worth of comics with it.