#hes later found by league and raised to become canon damian)

[spider-jaysart]

Quick doodle of little Damian and his other bro Respawn + Momma Talia too

(Click for better quality)

May or may not clean and fully finish these up lol, but I really wanted to do some fluff with these three hehehehe, so I really like it anyways💖

Also, for anyone wondering why Respawn is here with Damian and Talia, and while so young too instead of as a teen, this is not my Young age au here lol, I just changed up Respawn's backstory for my version of the main DC universe, making it that instead of Ra's, it was actually Slade, for very selfish reasons, who had created Respawn himself, using his and Talia's DNA mix just like in canon to make it happen, and was the one who had him in his care ever since he was born. But then one day, Talia found out about Respawn's existence and also the fact that he's her Son, while unexpectedly stumbling upon both him and Slade during a mission of hers, so then she decided to take him away with her to raise instead, since despite Slade being the Father, she sees him as a danger that should never be near kids, especially after hearing everything he's done to his other older ones before, so she's definitely not gonna let her child keep being stuck with that. Once Talia successfully brings Respawn back to the League without Slade being able to follow her, he officially becomes apart of the Al Ghul family after that and stays living with them for a long good while before certain events in the future happen. There's way more details to this version of the backstory though and to the future parts of it too, but this is just to only quickly summarize things here, but anyways that is why he is here as a young kid with them both (and another thing that I wanna mention too, unlike canon, Ra's and Talia do not abuse him in this version of things! They care about him like how they care about Damian and treat him the same as him too)

Also, I am thinking that Talia would feel like it's also so wrong that Slade didn't give Respawn a real name, so she decides to name him "Abbas", which is an Arabic name that means "Lion", because it describes his strength as the fighter he was already trained to be and the internal one he also had while dealing with Slade for so long before she had finally met and rescued him. After that, Respawn begins to grow attached to it and understands the actual love and thoughtfulness behind it, unlike his original one, and it lets him see and feel like he's really cared for, so in result, this causes the name "Respawn" to later become one that belongs more to his sepereate identity instead in the future whenever the mask is on

And he leaves the Wilson name behind too, since he doesn't want to be associated with Slade anymore after going through a lot of abuse from him, so he just completely goes by "Abbas Al Ghul"

[ectonurites]

can anybody please explain the appeal of tim drake because ive been into the batfamily for a while now and tbh im really confused on why people like his character so much compared to the other robins. like they all have their own thing going on and he just... doesnt?

Have you read his Robin solo? Because if not and you want to try to like him but just don’t understand why people do, that’s what I’d recommend. That and like, Young Justice 1998. 

Because Tim definitely... does have his own thing going on. Maybe not in the same way as the others, but like, there’s a reason he has a 183 issue long solo comic that ran for like 16 years: he was fun to read about!

But I will give some more specific thoughts on the subject as a Tim Drake Appreciator™ (this got long im sorry)

The appeal of Tim (especially early on Tim) is kinda the fact that he’s this more normal kid. For a while that is his ‘thing’. He was basically designed to be a self-insert (he definitely became more than that along the way, but from the start he was meant to be relatable) in a different way than how Dick and Jason had been before him. 

Like the role of Robin from the start was this way to create a character young readers could identify with more, could see themselves in more. And Dick and Jason did that, but they still had this element to their lives and stories that was more... unattainable for the average reader. Dick was a circus prodigy, Jason was either also a circus prodigy if we remember pre-crisis or if we go with his post-crisis story he’s this street-wise orphaned kid who had a really tough life but still went on to be a hero anyways. Obviously those lives are relatable for some people, but those’re definitely not as broadly recognized as common upbringings especially not by DC trying to market to the ‘average’ kid/young teen.

But the creation of Tim changed the game a bit. Dick and Jason were these aspirations a kid could look to like ‘wow I want to be cool like that!’ but Tim was a Robin designed for kids to look at and go ‘wow, his problems and civilian life are just like mine AND he’s a hero, I want to be cool like that!’, ya know? Tim was... just a clever kid with an average life who managed to connect some dots and had enough drive to want to fix things he saw were a problem, he didn’t have the same kind of heightened drama backstory the others did. The Robins that came after Tim definitely didn’t have this idea of relatability in mind the same way either. Unfortunately Steph’s time as Robin was much more of a marketing ploy than an actual like... decision to make her Robin, so it’s hard to really fit her into this conversation. But Damian from the start was first of all initially created not to be Robin but just as the son of Talia and Bruce back in the 80’s, but when he was later reimagined into the character that would become Robin he had the whole ‘raised by and is the heir to the league of assassins and is the son of batman’ thing going on still. He just was not supposed to be relatable that same way, he was a character designed with different things in mind.

I really think it was more just DC’s 90′s era younger-audience comics in general that tried to push that relatability thing (like in YJ how Cissie even after quitting the team stays a major character as a civilian throughout, and the civilian aspect that’s super present in Bart’s 90s solo too, etc), but later in the 2000’s that idea was definitely pushed to the side in favor of... putting in even more dramatic superhero-y stuff.

And the other thing that’s... such a more normal thing but it actually made him unique here, was that Tim’s dad was still alive until like 2004 (so 15 years into Tim being around as a character). This gave Tim a lot more typical ‘family school girlfriends normal life etc’ problems on top of/in contrast with his superhero problems. These just manifested in very different ways than they could with the other Robins because of that unique situation with a living civilian parent who doesn’t know about hero stuff (until he did find out which lead to that whole Unmasked thing, but there was only the brief time around War Games & Identity Crisis where Jack knew Tim was actively Robin and he was... still alive) Tim also had his life at school expanded way more than most other Robins, like, he had such an extended supporting cast of civilian friends which is a really interesting thing to read about (and the fact that he hasn’t had that stuff since the New 52 I think really hurts his character)

And then related to that loss of his dad... Personally another thing about Tim that really interests me is how a lot of things were more... his choice. if that makes sense. A lot of characters in the Batfamily were struck with tragedy/extreme trauma before they became heroes and that’s what spurred them into this life of becoming heroes. Tim’s situation wasn’t like that at all! When he first got involved in everything during Lonely Place of Dying, the only tragedy he’d experienced was watching Dick’s tragedy happen. Which sure yes traumatic obviously, but that’s not the same as how pretty much all the other Bats had gone through these very personal losses or other sorts of very first-hand personal traumas that served as motivators. Tim didn’t start to experience those things until after he got involved in the hero life, and aside from his Mom’s death which was more of just an unrelated incident (that technically happened before he was officially Robin but it was during his time training to become Robin), pretty much all these other tragedies and things... would not have happened or been experienced by him had he not become Robin. 

That’s not me placing blame on him or anything like that, because god no that’s not how that works, but it’s very interesting because from his point of view he definitely feels that guilt because he knows him being Robin played a role in a lot of it (Thinking specifically about in Adventure Comics #3 when Kon even says “I know what guilt does to you” to him like it’s... it’s a thing with him!). His dad was murdered because he was Robin. He only met Steph and started dating her through being Robin, and thus he would not have experienced the loss of his girlfriend dying like that had he not been Robin. Tim met both Conner and Bart through being Robin, and would not have had a personal connection to them when they died otherwise. The whole Bruce’s death thing after Final Crisis, like. I could go on honestly, that was only talking about losses not even his own experiences nearly getting killed, but yeah, all these personal tragedies were experienced by him specifically because he chose to bring himself into this life, which I think in turn plays into how throughout his comics you see him go from having this really optimistic view on things and being really hopeful to seeing him at that low point he reaches by the time of Red Robin. (thinking about that one post that points out how Tim started out in the 90′s as an optimist and Steph a cynic and by the time they were Red Robin and Batgirl in 2009 they had switched outlooks...) 

I also think that him having had such a great team book with the original Young Justice can help contribute to people liking him. His friendships with the rest of the core four and that team in general are really compelling. (and that’s something like again when looking at the other Robins, while Dick had the Titans ofc, Jason never really found footing with a team outside of like one mission with the Titans and then We All Know How Damian’s Teen Titans Stuff Went. Steph also only ever really worked with a team outside the batfam on very brief occasions) and even though I’m not as big of a fan of the 2003 Teen Titans run that came after YJ, people who read Young Justice and also that could follow and be attached to those same characters over a pretty decently long period of time. 

Idk man, I don’t really have an ultimate point here i’m just rambling. I can definitely understand not seeing the appeal to him right away (honestly i’ve been into Batfam since like 2013/2014 and Tim did not become one of my faves until 2020) especially if like... idk when you say ‘into the batfamily’ that can mean a lot of different things. If you’re reading more like the bigger events with the batfam sure Tim can kinda fade into the bg a bit, if you’re more talking about fanon the fanon version of him is prettyyyyy uhhhhh not really the same as how he was in pre New 52 canon, if you’re mainly reading New 52 era Batfam stuff then that Tim I also don’t understand the appeal of bc thats Not My Boy, if you’re interested in a different member primarily and only familiar with Tim when he shows up in things focused on that other character then it’s easy to not really understand the appeal right away bc he’s more there to support that character rather than shine in his own right. 

I think it’s also worth mentioning he’s just not everybody’s cup of tea, and that’s totally fine. Like, these are fictional characters and sometimes you just will vibe with a character and sometimes you won’t! idk if this helped at all or even made sense. but yeah. I just think he’s neat 😌

[aj-artjunkyard]

Batman Au where the Al Ghul bloodline have a form of hereditary hydrokinesis, meaning they can manipulate the water of the Lazarus Pits

This is Damian Wayne-Al Ghul as he’s drawn in the later DCAMU movies, specifically Justice League Dark: Apokolips War. I’ve drawn him in his League of Assassins armour (but green bc it works with the colour of the Lazarus Water and bc I Love Green), with his kryptonite sword (again, not canon since he got his kryptonite sword AFTER he ditched his League of Assassins armour in the movie but green, guys. COLOUR CONSISTENCY,,). This AU doesn’t take place in the DCAMU despite me using their character design as a reference, bc I want the other robins and members of the BatClan in on this, and the DCAMU only has Dick and Damian at this point.

When he grows out of the Robin mantle he becomes Lazarus, pictured above.

Explanation of powers:

This hydrokinesis works like water bending in A:TLA. They can use Lazarus Water to heal others and themselves, they can freeze it, and they can manipulate it while it’s inside someone’s body. 

The more severe the injury that was healed by the pit, the more Lazarus Water is present in the person, making them easier to control. For example, someone who healed a minor stab wound in the Lazarus Pit have less Lazarus Water in their blood stream compared to someone who has been raised from the dead in the Pit. If there’s more water to control, the Al Ghul won’t need to concentrate so hard to find or manipulate it (This technically means that Damian could manipulate Jason Todd/Red Hood or Cassandra Cain/Black Bat).

The entire eye glows green when the power is used, though Damian hides this un-stealthy glow behind his domino mask.

The Al Ghuls keep this power well hidden, it’s only known by blood relatives. This is because they don’t want weaknesses well known, if they deem it a dire enough situation to use it, then their victim would be taken off guard and be clueless about how to defeat them. They’re so deadly with regular weapons that they very rarely deem it ‘a dire enough  situation’. Nor do they care about healing others, when they could just keep their power to themselves. When Damian was first sent to live with Batman, he was told to hide it from his father at all costs. If Batman found out that his son held their power, he could use Damian to learn the power’s weaknesses and how to defeat them. The rule was reinforced by Talia telling her child that Batman allowed no metas in Gotham, and upon learning of Damian’s powers, would undoubtedly kick him out and refuse to train him, resulting in the child’s failure. Damian even went the extra mile to establish a persona as someone who scoffs at and looks down on meta-humans to hide that he was one. 

[aspiecrow]

Earth-46: The Batfamily

In Earth-46, the Batfam is as follows (arranged by age, below the cut):

Alfred Pennyworth: Alfred has been the faithful servant of the Wayne Family for decades. However, ever since the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne, Alfred has become much more, stepping into the role of a surrogate father for Bruce. As such, he has been supporting Bruce’s mission as Batman from the very beginning. Alfred is the only member of the Batfamily that Bruce is comfortable with using firearms, and is most definitely the “grandfather” of the group.

Leslie Thompkins: Leslie was a friend of Thomas Wayne’s, and helped raise Bruce with Alfred after Thomas and Martha were murdered. As a pacifist, Leslie isn’t too keen on Bruce’s activities as Batman, but nonetheless helps out wherever she can, especially with her free clinic on Park Row.

Batman (Bruce Wayne): Bruce was eight years old when his parents were shot to death in a random mugging on their way out of a screening of The Mark of Zorro. Since then, Bruce has dedicated his life to fighting crime in an effort to do everything he could to make sure that no child would have to go through what he went through. Over the course of the last seventeen years, Bruce has operated as the vigilante Batman and has come a long way from his beginnings as an antisocial loner, having built up a large support network of fellow heroes, both within the city of Gotham in the form of the group jokingly referred to as the Batfamily, as well as the hero community at large. He has recently returned to Gotham after spending the better part of last year on a trek around the world with his sons Dick and Damian and daughter Cassandra, and has begun proceedings to adopt his fifth child, a young girl rescued from the government project known as Cadmus.

Batwoman (Kate Kane): Kate Kane was traumatized after being caught up in a terrorist attack in which she, her mother and her twin sister were kidnapped. Only Kate survived, and she spent the next few years in something of a daze, before enlisting in the Marines at age nineteen in an attempt to please her father. However, her time with the Marines only lasted three of her contracted five years, as she was dishonourably discharged under the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy when her commander caught wind that Kate and fellow Marine Sophie Moore were in a relationship. Bruce’s maternal cousin, he and Kate have a close relationship (helped by the fact that Kate doing her best to comfort Bruce at Thomas and Martha’s funeral is canon in Earth-46). She’s only recently become Batwoman, but she and Bruce know each other’s identities.

Catwoman (Selina Kyle): A cat burglar who stole from the corrupt wealth of Gotham City, Selina is also a “reverse-archaeologist” (credit to @unpretty), stealing artefacts from museums and private collections and returning them to where they belong (she considers the massive heist she spearheaded to steal the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum to be her crowning achievement). Over the years, she has moved away from stealing (for pure profit, anyway; she still plots out heists to return stolen relics) and has begun to focus more on protecting the East End of Gotham. Along with Robin and Spoiler, Catwoman protected Gotham during Batman’s year-long absence. She has also begun a relationship with the Caped Crusader, and has taken in a young girl named Holly Robinson.

Oracle (Barbara Gordon): Barbara lost her parents in a car accident when she was thirteen and was taken in and adopted by her uncle, James Gordon. Becoming the first Batgirl, Barbara spent almost five years as a vigilante, before retiring to focus on college. When she was 20, Barbara was permanently paralyzed after her cousin and adopted brother, James Gordon Jr, shot her (credit for this change goes to @littlemissonewhoisall). Rather than let it defeat her, though, Barbara was able to finish college with honors and has since re-established herself within the hero community under the name “Oracle”, established a massive world-wide communications and espionage network, as well as forming the superhero team The Birds of Prey. Recently, she and Dick Grayson have gotten engaged.

Nightwing (Dick Grayson): Dick grew up a circus kid, part of the Haly’s Circus family act “The Flying Graysons”. However, on June 27, 2002, crime boss Tony Zucco had Dick’s parents killed. Dick was taken in as a foster child by Bruce Wayne and, after discovering that Bruce was the crimefighter Batman, became the first person to wear the mantle of Robin. Since then, Dick has grown into his own hero, taking the name Nightwing, moving to the city of Blüdhaven and forming the superhero team The Teen Titans (now known as The Titans), and has also become the second person, after Superman, that the entire superhero community trusts. He was also more recently officially adopted by Bruce (as Bruce felt for a long time that it would be disrespectful to Dick’s parents). He has a child with fellow Titan Starfire, conceived before their relationship dissolved, and is now engaged to Barbara Gordon. Recently, Dick has returned to Blüdhaven, having joined Bruce on his year-long journey.

Red Hood (Jason Todd): The second Robin, having taken over the role when Dick Grayson became Nightwing. His time in the role was very short, however, as just over a year after becoming Robin, Jason was killed by The Joker while on a search for Jason’s biological mother. Talia al Ghūl resurrected Jason on October 31 the next year, the boy coming back with his anger even stronger than it had been before he was killed. Jason left the League of Assassins and spent the next three-and-a-half years moving from place to place before finally confronting Bruce as the Red Hood, furious that not only had he remained unavenged, but that he had also been replaced. Jason currently remains estranged from the Batfamily, and has taken on an equally damaged protégée in the young girl Sasha Volkova, who goes by the vigilante name “Scarlet”.

Batgirl (Cassandra Cain-Wayne): Cassandra is a very unique young woman. Having been raised by her father, David Cain, with violence as her only language, Cassandra developed the ability to innately understand a person purely from body language. This was done in an effort to create the perfect assassin, but backfired as, when Cassandra first killed someone, she understood exactly what death was like, her ability showing her exactly how the man felt as he died. Cassandra escaped, living homeless for years until arriving in Gotham. There, she was taken in by both Barbara Gordon and Bruce Wayne, and became the second Batgirl, before being adopted by Bruce. Recently, Cassandra has returned to Gotham, having travelled with Bruce on his year-long journey.

Robin (Tim Drake): A young boy who managed to deduce the identities of Batman and Nightwing. After the death of Jason Todd, Tim saw that Batman was becoming more and more violent and so the boy approached Dick Grayson to ask him to become Robin again so as to help Bruce. While Dick did not, Tim became the third Robin and was the first person to wear the mantle who fully established that the title was not just “Batman’s sidekick”, but a hero in their own right. He helped to form the team Young Justice, and more recently, spent the better part of a year helping to protect Gotham City in Batman’s stead while the Caped Crusader was on his world trek.

Spoiler (Stephanie Brown): The daughter of Arthur Brown, the former criminal known as Cluemaster. When Arthur was released from Arkham cured of his obsession with leaving clues but still engaging in criminal activity, Stephanie became Spoiler to counteract this, leaving clues at his crimes in order to help stop him. This turned into her becoming a fully-fledged vigilante, one who was initially discouraged from vigilantism due to her inexperience, but after facing a threat that an incapacitated Batgirl could not, Stephanie gained the respect of the Batfamily and was welcomed into the fold with open arms, where she has become best friends with Batgirl and has started a romantic relationship with Robin. Recently, she helped Robin and Catwoman protect Gotham in Batman’s stead during the Dark Knight’s year-long journey. She has also recently discovered that her father seems to genuinely want to reform, and is unsure how to react to it, having elected to avoid him until she can figure it out.

Flamebird (Bette Kane): Bette is Kate Kane’s other cousin, who has only recently found out about Kate’s activities as Batwoman. Bette has joined the ranks of Gotham’s vigilantes as Flamebird, and is eager to help out in any way she can.

Holly Robinson: A young girl that Selina has taken in, Holly has lived on the streets for three years, having run away from her abusive family at age ten. She is the leader of a group of street kids known as the Alleytown Gang.

Ace (Alycia Wayne): Ace was born in the small Ohio town of Stones Throw. After the girl’s raw psychic power was unleashed, the town turned violent, massacring everyone apart from the child. The government project known as Cadmus took the girl and raised her in one of their facilities, hoping to harness her abilities for government use. Out of the numerous metahumans that Cadmus had captive, the girl (known to them as Patient A-011) was the strongest. However, last year, the supervillain known only as The Joker broke into the facility holding her and a handful of others, taking the girl and four other patients and using them in his latest scheme. Now under the name “Ace” and part of the “Royal Flush Gang”, the girl was manipulated by The Joker into a plot to broadcast and use her abilities to drive anyone watching the coverage of his plot insane. Batman was able to stop this, though Ace was taken back to Cadmus, in spite of the Dark Knight’s protests. Two months later, the Caped Crusader led a mission where he, along with a small group of heroes, broke into the Cadmus facility holding Ace and rescued her. Since then, Bruce has begun adoption proceedings in order to protect Ace (now legally named Alycia Wayne) from Cadmus.

Robin (Damian Wayne): The biological child of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghūl. Raised within the League of Assassins, Damian was left in the care of his father on the boy’s ninth birthday when his mother realized that she would be unable to protect him from Rā's al Ghūl’s plans for him. Initially taking the name “Redbird”, Damian slowly undid the brainwashing he had been subjected to his whole life and, after a year and a half (as well as a close call with Rā's trying to use Damian to restore his ability to use the Lazarus Pits), was able to completely break free of the hold that the League of Assassins had on him. After this, he took up the “Robin” moniker, which he now shares with Tim Drake (not that he’s particularly pleased about that; some things never change). He has become good friends with Dick Grayson’s daughter, Mar’i, and recently, Damian has returned to Gotham, having joined Bruce on his year-long journey.

Nightstar (Mar’i Grayson): The daughter of Dick Grayson and Princess Koriand’r. Though her parents are not together, they remain very good friends and are both 100% committed to raising their daughter together, even if they aren’t a couple. Mar’i is very good friends with all of the other children in the hero community, and has taken it upon herself to show Damian Wayne and most recently, Alycia Wayne what it’s like to be a kid.