#also nezha just doesn't like gotham

[aloraaki3]

y'know what, fuck it.

I AM GOING TO WRITE A FIC SO OBSCENELY NON CANON THAT NO ONE WOULD EVEN THINK TO READ IT AND I DON'T CARE

[wesavegotham]

I already covered the preview pages of Batman vs Robin #3 in a previous post so I'm going to jump straight to the new ones.

Waid continues bringing up drama that has already been resolved in previous stories. Talia has expressed her desire to have Damian back with her quite a lot in recent years. She also asked him to heal as a family in Robin #12:

To which Damian agreed.

Er...Talia honored Ra's deal after Shadow War. She made a deal with the D.E.O to work as their spy if they leave Damian alone. Angel Breaker is leading the Shadows (new name of the league of assassins) now.

Btw it turns out that the palace Talia is in is only a comfortable illusion Damian/Nezha put her in. In reality she is imprisoned:

We jump back to Bruce who is making his way through the jungle and gets attacked by a possessed Tim Drake wearing a cloak that can make him invisible, just as poor poor Timmy has already felt for years😒:

Cry me a river, Tim. There is so much factually wrong with this. Damian was introduced in 2006, but didn't join the batfamily and didn't become Robin until 2009. Bruce didn't like Damian at first and assured Tim several times that Damian showing up changed nothing about how Bruce felt about Tim. Bruce didn't look for Damian after the explosion on the boat. At first he only made a few phone calls when Talia asked him to protect Damian from Ra's. He only expressed mild sadness when Talia took Damian with her at the end of Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul and continued not looking for him. Then Bruce got lost in time. Which is why Alfred and Dick made Damian Robin to keep him on the heroic path without Bruce around. When Bruce returned he doubted that Damian could work as his Robin. It wasn't until 2011 that Bruce decided things couldn't continue like this and he needed to improve his relationship with Damian. And since Rebirth in 2016 DC has done their best to keep Damian far away from Bruce while Tim has since then basically returned as the Robin working at Bruce's side. He lead the Gotham Knights for him in Tec, he wears the robin colors, he goes by Robin again, he has the Robin ongoing and he's working with Bruce to defeat Failsafe in the main Batman book right now. Shut the fuck up, Tim.

Okay. Sorry. Tim rant over.

Oh, by the way, Tim and Dick are also the only ones Bruce will have anything nice to say about. But poor poor Tim always has it the worst, hasn't he?😢😒 Okay, now I'm done.

Damian doesn't interact with Bruce at all in this issue if you wondered. He is with Mother Soul and Nezha who interrogate a new prisoner:

On one hand it's good to get a bit more information on why Nezha does what he does, on the other hand I'm not happy to hear that there is an even more powerful devil waiting to strike. DC has an escalation problem. I miss Batman and Robin 2011 which had mostly small stakes and didn't shy away from making the villains the B-story and Bruce and Damian's relationship the A-story.

We jump back to Bruce who still has several Robins to go through:

Not sure why Bruce insults Stephs fighting skills here, I think she's doing better than Tim in this fight.

DC, acting like Jason was a violent child during his time as robin is a disservice to him and his old stories.

Joe Chill was a random mugger, how is that comparable to Jason's situation?

As predicted in an earlier post of mine it doesn't take Bruce long to defeat them and he moves on to the only one who is presented as a challenge, Dick.

But before that we go back to Damian who has some questions of his own for their new prisoner:

Bajie, he's only here to give Bruce personal stakes in this, this story has actually very little to do with Damian as a person so far.

This is probably the least epic scene of a possessed person fighting for control of their body and mind I have ever seen.

Also, maybe Bruce can talk Nezha and his son into joining him and Damian on a father-son-bonding trip. I would feel more excitement for that story than for another "epic fight for the future of the earth".

I'm still confused by the rules and the exact extend of Nezha's possession. It's hard to tell what is supposed to be Nezha and what is the normal character of the possessed person.

This might be the first original grievance of a robin Waid came up with. I will leave it to Dick fans to decide if they think it fits or not.

I don't think that's the conclusion you should settle on, Bruce🤦‍♀️

I assume I was supposed to be shocked by Bruce using Alfred as a shield, but I called Bruce already knowing Alfred was Nezha's spy all along last issue. I mean Bruce would have to be an idiot not to suspect it. Alfred showing up alive because of magic being in disarray was too weird and the timing too convenient not to be connected to Nezha.

Er...he did blame Damian at first. That's canon. He stopped blaming him later on. And he already told Damian so two times. It wasn't perfect, but we really didn't need to do all of this to give Bruce a third attempt.

Sorry, but Tom King's Batman had been so damn full of himself for predicting everything Bane would do and coming up with a convoluted plan that included abandoning the city and for some reason leaving Alfred behind, plus apparently not even being close to Gotham when he gave Damian the signal to set the plan to take back the city in motion that I simply refuse not to at least partially blame Bruce for all of this.

I assume that means Alfred and the Waynes are in DC's version of a heaven. Which reminds me that Damian always seems destined to end up in hell, no matter what he does. To be fair that's not Waid's fault though. Just a thought I had.

Yeah, er, what to say about this issue? Guess the fans of the other robins know now how Damian fans felt because of the first issue?

Overall I predicted most of this. Bruce would deal with the robins rather quickly. The sword would play a role in making Bruce feel bad for how he treated them all. There would be the twist that Bruce was never fooled by the villains and only played along. Very little focus on Bruce and Damian. So far this entire book seemed more interested in Bruce and Alfred's bond than in actually exploring Bruce and Damian's relationship even though it's called Batman vs Robin. Which I had feared it would do even before the first issue came out.

This continues to be a story that I think most people can only enjoy if they are a Bruce Wayne fan and are fine with everyone else being written kinda badly so Bruce can have this underdog story against a powerful demon and deal with magical items along the way. It really doesn't feel like a Damian story so far, even though his name is in the title.

And as a Damian fan I find that disappointing.

[wesavegotham]

On one hand I'm kinda glad that Waid talks about giving both Bruce AND Damian agency in this, on the other hand I'm genuinly not sure how he plans to achieve this. I mean, Damian will be possessed by Nezha for at least three issues because without the possession they wouldn't even fight (they already settled that over the last few Batman vs Robin stories we didn't ask for). How can you have agency AND be under the complete control of a devil? And if Damian is not under Nezha's complete control that would mean he would be partially responsible for all the damage Nezha will do.

On top of that Waid also wants to focus on Alfred and all the magic characters of the DC universe. In my ears that sounds like Waid actually wanted to write an event about the magic side of DC and was told by editorial that he had to put Batman in the title somehow to make it sell, so now we are stuck with yet another Bruce vs Damian story. After Shadow War already settled things between them. Like...I can't say I really loved how Williamson dealt with it, but it was done. We could have finally moved on. But no. If Batman is in this we need emotional stakes for him. So we pull Damian into this too. As Nezha's main puppet. That's the opposite of agency.

Also, can we stop with the "Damian was brought up to believe that Batman was his birthright" crap? No, he wasn't. Depending on the story Ra's either wanted him as a replacement body or to take over the league of assassins as HIS heir. Not Batman's. Damian was sent to Gotham to train under Bruce, not to be Bruce's successor. Why would the league of assassin's limit themselves to Gotham? That doesn't make sense. Yes, for a long time Damian wanted to be Batman, but that's not what Ra's or Talia want for him. There is a difference.

It's also probably the most boring aspect of Bruce and Damian's estrangement to adress. Guess what! Nobody is going to replace Bruce as Batman permanently! Ever! They couldn't even let Dick be Batman for more than a year. I'm tired of this discussion. It's absolutely pointless. Focus on something else!

Lastly, yay, a worldwide disaster that will affect dozens of characters. In a story that Damian will be the catalyst for. Because people aren't blaming Damian for all kinds of stuff already. Seriously, we just got DC to stop blaming Damian for Alfred's death, I don't want this.

I really want Waid to prove me wrong, but so far it really doesn't sound like something Damian fans need or want.