This Would Be A Good Death: Batman Incorporated #8 Review

Editor’s Note: Holy Spoilers, Batman! …yeah, that’s all I got.

And with that, our long national nightmare is over. Maybe.

For the second time in my life, Robin has been murdered, only this time I didn’t get the perverse satisfaction of dialing a 900 number to strike one of the killing blows myself. Back in the late 80s, I called to kill Jason Todd because he had become a petulant, impulsive little snot who had slowly drifted into becoming a murderer. Conversely, Damian Wayne was introduced as a petulant, impulsive snot, who was a trained assassin before he even made an appearance on the page. Damian Wayne was hateful, an entitled, imperious little prince who, if you found yourself sitting in front of him on a crowded airplane, would make you willing to gladly do time in Guantanamo for attempting to rush the cockpit and crash the plane just to make the self-important yammering just fucking stop.

In the six and a half years since Damian was introduced (not counting his appearance as an infant in Mike W. Barr’s 1987 Son of The Demon, which also included the Batman / Talia al Ghul fuck scene I used in high school to stop the abuse I took claiming Batman was gay. It didn’t work.), Grant Morrison and other writers like Scott Snyder and Peter Tomasi have been somewhat successful in rehabilitating Damian, slowly edging him away from a kid you would happily pepper spray just to see the superior light in his eyes go out, and more toward a hero with a tragic upbringing that he is trying to overcome. Which is a long road to travel for a character who was designed to initially cause intense dislike toward him, but one that must be traveled to make his death, in Batman Incorporated #8, anything but a blessed, bloodthirsty relief.

Well, that road’s over, because the kid’s dead now – for the moment, anyway; after all, this is a comic book. So the immediate question is: does Morrison make Damian’s death poignant because it is the death of a hero? Or because you realize you’re reveling in the death of a 10-year-old boy?

Gotham is under siege by Leviathan worshippers, with Nightwing pinned down, Red Robin battling for his life in a museum, and Batman locked in a safe at the bottom of a pool, when Robin, defying Batman’s orders to stay in the Batcave, rockets to the rescue wearing a suit of Robin armor that I can picture Batman designing after watching Iron Man in a dark room with a bottle of Glenlivet. Anyway, Robin saves Nightwing and Red Robin, just in time to have the favor returned by Nightwing, allowing them to go into battle together like the old days, when Batman was dead, Nightwing was Robin and I was desperately confused. Then they are attacked and Nightwing incapacitated by Robin’s “twin”: a big dude in a white version of Damian’s Future Batman costume who proceeds to stomp the living shit out of Damian, all while goons take potshots at Damian from afar with arrows, weakening him… until the inevitable conclusion.

This is a difficult issue for me to be objective about, because I have never liked Damian – in fact, I have never liked the concept of Robin at all. I understand the storytelling urge to simultaneously lighten and humanize Batman by connecting him to something and someone other than his self-imposed mission, but I have never been able to reconcile that a man whose life was shattered by experiencing violence as a boy… would subject a boy to a life of violence. The fact that this incarnation of Robin is your worst Park Slope-raised, Montessori-schooled, Whole Foods-nourished little douchebag nightmare is simply icing on the cake.

And yet I have to admit that Morrison does solid work in making sure that we see at least a somewhat more relatable side to Damian, while not in any way abandoning the haughty scumbaggery that has been Damian’s stock-in-trade. Yes, Damian keeps saying shit like, “What would you do without me, Grayson?” and calling some of his opponents idiots… but taking a step back from those obvious character traits, we have here a kid who puts himself into danger because he thinks he can talk Talia down from her plan, all to save his dad. Compared to Damian’s early motivations, back when he was introduced, to constantly show himself off as the smartest and most dangerous person in any given room, this is downright altruistic.

The most effective sequence that helps to turn Damian sympathetic enough to warrant feeling some sorrow at his death occurs in his conversation with Nightwing, almost at the end. Whereas, while Grayson was Batman a couple of years ago, Damian gave him nothing but grief, here the conversation is one between brothers. Seeing Nightwing show obvious affection for Damian, and more importantly, seeing Damian clearly respect Nightwing, helps to demonstrate to the reader that Damian is not just another prick in a Robin suit getting iced; he is, at long last, a member of this extended family. Morrison, in just a few pages, clarifies exactly why we should give a shit this mouthy kid is getting the ick.

And then there’s the killing itself, which was far more effective than I expected because it is just so Goddamned unfair. The guy who does it is huge and implacable – Robin calls him “monster” – and he simply will not stop, no matter how many times he is stabbed or shot. Further, there are snipers in the balconies hitting Robin with arrows, rendering him less effective by the second. And finally, for all intents and purposes, the guy beating Damian his dressed as Batman – his father – and the entire time Robin is trying to convince the beast to take him to his mother to try to convince her to lay aside her plans. So what we have here is a little kid being beaten to death by a doppelganger for his father, all while yelling for his mother. What Morrison has done here is take a pretty straightforward, yet brutal, superhero fight, and underlaid hidden preadolescent pathos to almost subliminally push our buttons and make the attack emotional on a more primal level than one would normally expect.

With regards to the art, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Chris Burnham really wants to be Frank Quitely when he grows up. Burnham draws the same kind of rounded, weirdly-muscled bodies and almost wrinkly faces, particularly on his children: every kid in this story looks like they are mildly hydrocephalic. And in this issue, Burnham has decided it’s time to get tricky with his backgrounds and ephemeral effects – he has some explosions in the shape of the word, “Boom!” and smoke that billows in the shape of, “Ssssss.” Which is fine I guess, but I found it dragged me out of the story, just as things were about to turn dark. Further, Burnham uses an entire panel of nothing but billowing black smoke that contains the words, “Bif!” “Bam!” and “Pow!” which any Batman fan who had to live through pre-1989 Batman fandom are pretty much the kiss of death. However, the goofiness fades during Damian’s final battle, which is fast-paced due to tiny panels, with fairly brutal and well-choreographed violence. All in all, the art here is a mixed bag, with far too much kitschy self-aware cuteness cutting the brutality of what this story is really about.

I’m reading back through this review and realizing that there is a truly schizo quality about it. It is true that I’ve never liked Damian Wayne, and that I am not sorry to see him dead (as though the child of an al Ghul is really gonna stay dead for any period of time). However, I have to admit that Morrison did a pretty admirable job, both in humanizing Damian enough to suck most of the glee in seeing a disliked character die, and in burying enough well-thought and tricky signals to turn the well-deserved smiting of a snotty kid into the brutal beating and murder of a little kid who wants his Mom and Dad. While I will not miss Damian, Morrison made sure he went out well.