[There was NEVER a rule that said my comments were off the table for a comment pull quote!]
When I reviewed Morrison's Batman this week I said I liked Batman's son. In the comments, James pointed out that I did not in Morrison's first arc. Here is what I told him.
James -- you are right. I did not love him. But as of this issue he has an interesting family romance conflict. His mom is a bad guy. His biological dad is a superhero. His grandfather -- who seems a little weirdly incestuous with his mother, as if they are his parents -- considers him property. If the grandfather gets his way, and takes over the kid's body, then the grandfather will be his daughter's child, and one of Batman's villain's will become Batman's son. And just to toss things up even more the kid is still wearing the Robin Uniform -- even though he is Batman's biological son, he knows how close Batman is to Batman's surrogate son Robin, whose place he wants. Morrison is building a lot of interesting conflict here with this character, who I suddenly have sympathy for because he is so overdetermined.
For the record, I still think Morrison's Batman has been mediocre. But this one thing was well done in the most recent issue.
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2 comments:
I read the first trade recently and thought that Damian was easily the highlight of the run. If I had to see him in real life, he'd be annoying, but as a character, he shakes things up and his total lack of morality is fun. The four issues or so with him were great, the rest of the stories in the trade, not so much.
A couple of weeks back, I did a pretty in-depth analysis of Morrison's run so far (through the "Club of Heroes" arc) and find the whole Damian plot quite interesting, especially as it relates to Morrison's current obsession with his heroes facing variations of themselves--which pops up quite a lot in his Batman and All-Star Superman runs. I've been enjoying the run quite a bit, but more for the various subtextual themes and tropes than the actual plots, which have been rather lacklustre.
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