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Damian Wayne is a fictional character in the DC Comics Universe. He is the son of Batman and Talia al Ghul,[1][2][3] and thus the maternal grandson of Batman villain Ra's al Ghul. The character originally appeared as an unnamed infant in the 1987 story Batman: Son of the Demon,[4][5] which was at that time not considered canon. Following this, various alternate universe stories dealt with the character's life, giving him various names. In 2006, the character was reinterpreted as Damian Wayne by Grant Morrison, and reintroduced into the main continuity in Batman #655, the first issue of the "Batman and Son" story arc.
Having spent his gestation in a laboratory, Damian as a pre-adolescent is left by his mother in the care of his father, who previously was not aware of his son's existence. Damian is violent and self-important, and was trained by the League of Assassins, learning to kill at a young age, which troubles the relationship with his father, who refuses to kill his opponents. However, the Dark Knight does care for his lost progeny.[6] After the events of Batman R.I.P. and Batman: Battle for the Cowl, Damian takes up the identity of Robin at ten years of age,[7] becoming the fifth person to use the Robin identity. He first worked with Dick Grayson—the original Robin—who temporarily took over as Batman, before going to work alongside his father, upon Bruce Wayne's return to the role of Batman. Damian continued to serve as Robin until the 2013 issue #8 of Batman, Inc., in which he is killed by the Heretic, an agent of his mother and his own artificially-aged clone.
In 2013, Damian Wayne placed 25th on IGN's Top 25 Heroes of DC Comics.
The child from Son of the Demon was utilized in various stories before appearing as Damian Wayne.
In the Elseworlds story, The Brotherhood of the Bat (1995), a version named Tallant Wayne appears who crusades against his grandfather Ra's al Ghul. Brotherhood of the Bat features a future in which Ra's al Ghul discovers the Batcave following Bruce Wayne's death, and outfits the League of Assassins in variant Batman costumes based on Wayne's rejected designs. Talia and Bruce's son join the Brotherhood in his father's costume, to destroy it from within.
In Kingdom Come (1996) by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, which functioned as a possible future to the canon of the time, the child of Batman and Talia has become Ibn al Xu'ffasch, literally "Son of the Bat", a member of Lex Luthor's inner circle. He falls in love with Nightstar, the daughter of Dick Grayson and Starfire. There is some suggestion that he is Batman's spy in Luthor's camp.[9] In the Elliot S! Maggin novelization of Kingdom Come, Al Xu'ffasch tells Bruce that his mother Talia is still alive and working as a Mother Superior in India, one of Mother Teresa's successors. Al Xu'ffasch reappears in Waid's 1999 sequel The Kingdom. In The Kingdom: Son of the Bat, flashbacks shed new insights into his history: that he was reared by Ra's al Ghul to be the heir to his empire, that he eventually murdered his grandfather (cutting off his head to prevent yet another regeneration), and that he sought therapy from psychiatrist Dr. Gibson. He was eventually recruited by Rip Hunter to try to stop a madman named Gog from altering his history. He works with several other heroes of his generation - Kid Flash, the daughter of the Flash; Nightstar (Nightwing and Starfire's child) and Offspring, the son of Plastic Man.
In League of Batmen (2001), the sequel to Brotherhood of the Bat, Tallant leads his own team of variant Batmen to combat the plague that was al Ghul's legacy. During the battle, Tallant discovers that his grandfather is the one who murdered his father and then cloned him. Ra's even sent the clone to murder his own daughter. Because the deaths of his parents at Ra's's hands, Tallant has completed following his father's tragic path as Batman. The new Dark Knight desires justice for his parents along trying to stop his grandfather, while having to battle his father's murderous double.
Grant Morrison's story titled Batman and Son (2006) expands upon the Son of the Demon storyline as part of a remodeling of Batman's personality after the events of Infinite Crisis. In Morrison's version, the child Damian Wayne is the result of a tryst between Batman and Talia, during which the Dark Knight claims he was drugged when they were at the Tropic of Cancer, though Morrison later admitted the claim of drugging was an error on his part.
The final issue of 52 (2008) designates the Kingdom Come alternate universe as Earth-22, thus making the Ibn al Xu'ffasch version part of the DC multiverse. Justice Society of America vol. 3 #22 (2009) reveals that he would eventually marry Nightstar with whom he would have a daughter and son.
DC altered its continuity slightly as part of its 2011 relaunch, making Bruce and Talia's tryst during Damian's conception consensual.
Damian's origin is unknown to Batman. Genetically perfected and grown in an artificial womb, Damian was intended to be a formidable warrior. He is raised by Talia and the League of Assassins. He becomes a talented martial artist by the time he is a pre-teen, at which time Talia reveals Damian's existence to Bruce Wayne and leaves him in Batman's custody in an effort to disrupt Batman's work.
Precocious, spoiled, and violent, Damian battles Tim Drake, whom he wants to replace as Robin, and sucker punches Drake off the stuffed Tyrannosaurus in the Batcave when Tim stops fighting to help him. Damian then escapes, dons a variant Robin costume made of Jason Todd's old tunic and mask and assorted League of Assassin gear, and gets into a fight with and decapitates the villainous Spook. Although misguided and malicious, Damian seems to genuinely want to aid Wayne's war on crime as he sees himself as Wayne's son and wants Wayne's approval. Unfortunately, because of how he was raised, Damian lacks any sort of common sense in regards to social behavior, and believes that in order to be accepted by Batman, he must kill any rivals, which included Tim Drake.
Eventually, Batman confronts Talia to confirm Damian's true identity, but both Talia and Damian are soon caught in an explosion. They survive the explosion. But Damian's badly injured body requires transplants of harvested organs, which his mother orders her physicians to carry out. Damian makes a full recovery.
Damian was killed battling a brutal enemy, the Heretic (an adult Damian clone) in issue number 8 of the Batman, Inc. comic book, which went on sale February 27, 2013. According to the story's writer, Grant Morrison: "He saves the world. He does his job as Robin. He dies an absolute hero."[36][37]
In the comic, Damian is fighting hordes of Leviathan henchmen in the lobby of Wayne Tower when Nightwing comes to rescue him. Behind cover, the two briefly reminisce about their time together as Batman and Robin before resuming the defense. When the Heretic arrives and knocks Nightwing out, Damian bravely fights him. However, the Heretic eventually gains the upper hand and impales Damian through the chest, the sword piercing Damian's heart and resulting in Damian dying almost instantly. Minutes after Damian's death, Batman arrives and sees Damian's dead body. Angered, he and a revived Nightwing battle the Heretic, but are eventually forced to retreat with Red Robin and Damian's body. After holding a private funeral for the fallen Boy Wonder, Bruce vows to avenge his son's death.
The later storyline, Requiem, deals with the aftermath of Damian's death and Batman's thirst for revenge against Talia as well as his own increasingly unbalanced mental state resulted by this loss. He is buried next to Bruce Wayne's parents, Damian's paternal grandparents. Batman is also unwilling to accept his son's death, and begins seeking the means to resurrect Damian at the cost of his relationships with his friends and allies, and had not yet made the information of his death public.[38][39] Damian's absence has also been causing a conflict between his father and his acting instructor, Carrie Kelley, who is determined to find out what has happened to him, leading her to realize that the Waynes are harboring a secret.[40]
When Batman and Nightwing finally re-confront Heretic, they overpower him, and the clone suffers a brutal beating from both in retaliation for Damian's death. Batman, despite desiring to kill his son's murderer more than anything and Nightwing made no attempts of stopping his mentor, spares the villain's life after seeing his resemblance to Damian, realizing the clone is what is left of his son. Though later, Talia beheads the Heretic for his failure to kill Batman, and challenges Batman to a duel to the death in the Batcave.[41] However, Talia is killed following the duel by Kathy Webb, and it is later revealed that Damian's body was stolen from the Manor cemetery by the League of Assassins along with Talia's for plans against Batman in addition revealed later their resurrections. It has also been shown that Ra's al Ghul has begun to engineer clones of Damian for his own purposes.[42]
