LogFAQs > #944022899

Ehh, I'd happily take Damien over the Court of Owls.

A lot of it kind of depends on how he's presented. Damien's whole point is to contrast Batman's previous sidekicks - most of the time, writers portrayed the Robins and Batgirl as being deliberately lighter and more optimistic than Batman, and imply the main reason he keeps them around is to literally anchor himself and prevent himself from becoming too dark. They also tend to be presented as the family Bruce has effectively cultivated to replace the one he lost. As much as its emphasized that Bruce lost everything when his parents died, it's also pointed out quite often that all of the Robins and Batgirl are basically his surrogate children (while Alfred is his surrogate dad).

But Damien is the opposite of that. He's Bruce's literal family, but was raised like a stranger and barely has any real affection for his father (all he really has is sort of professional respect combined with fulfilling what he sees as filial duty). He's darker than Bruce, and most of their interaction is Bruce trying to redeem Damien and keep him from falling father rather than the other way around.

It also creates interesting dynamics - Damien's closest to Tim in age, so the two of them each tend to dislike the other (mainly because they're their own opposites), and there's a fair amount of jealousy in their interactions. But Dick's old enough (and mature enough) to rise above that sort of thing, and he deliberately tries to play the role of a wiser, calmer, helpful older brother to Damien (and Damien actually reciprocates - for a while in the comics, he actually liked and respected Dick more than he did Bruce). His relationship with Batgirl (Stephanie) was like a bratty younger brother and older sister, where they pretty clearly liked each other, but also mostly only communicated in insults and oneupsmanship (and was actually pretty fun at the time).

He's really only terrible when he's just treated as a one-note little shit. But that's just completely missing the entire point of his character anyway. It's a similar problem with Jason Todd (who Damien has a lot in common with) - when done right, Red Hood Jason is actually pretty cool/interesting as a concept. But when he's done poorly, he's a huge ball of suck.
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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family