Damian Wayne is the son of Batman and the grandson of Ra’s al Ghul. Ever since his introduction, he has struggled to reconcile the legacies he will inherit. Eventually, Damian chose to align himself with his father and the good-natured legacy of Batman, but recently he’s been faced with a new branching path. Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s run on Batman and Robin has Damian learn more about Thomas Wayne’s history as a doctor. Now Damian’s standing at a crossroads where he questions if he wants to continue fighting for Gotham City as Robin, or find a way to help it in the daylight as only Damian Wayne can. Unfortunately for him, the villain Memento has arrived in Gotham to wreak havoc, and Robin. He only just managed to escape with the aid of some of Gotham’s lost youth, but now the killer has taken Batman and detective Katherine Lautrec captive. Damian is finally forced to make a choice.
Memento Is Here to Punish Gotham
Memento is a creature of nightmare and very real mystery. He is either a supernatural creature that possesses a host to torture humanity for their worst actions, or a madman who uses drugs to drive people insane and is obsessed with recreating cities’ crimes. He recreated several monstrous events in Gotham City, but it was all just build-up to his true purpose; recreating the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne using Batman and Lautrec as stand-ins for the parents, and Damian in his father’s role. Memento believes that Gotham fell to its darkest pit after the murder of the Waynes, the last good family in power who truly believed their home could change for the better. He has Batman and Lautrec tied to a pole in the drug-induced hallucination and possibly magical realm version of Crime Alley, and waits for Robin to arrive to murder them in front of him.
Damian, for his part, has been on a journey of self discovery this entire time. Being forcibly separated from Batman and saved by the young street urchins of Gotham has opened his eyes to the fact that the good work the Waynes do is essential to Gotham City, but so are Batman and Robin. People need to be healed by doctors, but they need heroes to save them from the villains to be healed. With renewed determination, Damian charged back to save his dad and new friend in a makeshift mask made of civilian clothes and a clothesline rope. With Robin fully determined to be a hero and distracting Memento, Batman managed to free himself and join the fight. Memento’s identity, or host, was revealed as Daniels, the student of master detective Blye, who studied alongside Lautrec and Bruce. In the end, Memento was shot by Blye, who made his way to Gotham to get revenge for all of Memento’s victims. Memento was shot and disappeared in a crowd of his victim’s spirits, and everyone was saved. His cycle had ended, and Damian started a new one.
The New Damian Wayne and Robin
Damian has finally put all of his demons to bed, and is ready to move on with full confidence of who he is. By day he will help Gotham in its hospitals and as a Wayne, and by night he will be Robin, bringing justice however he can. Instead of being forced to inherit something, he is choosing this destiny himself. Besides, this isn’t something he has to do on his own. Not only does he have Batman to stand beside him, but he also has a brand new partner in the form of the little monkey he adopted near the start of this run. In the drawing Damian made in the final part of the issue, he drew the little gal in her own Robin costume. Obviously this doesn’t imply that the monkey will become a brand new super-pet, but it’s definitely possible, and Damian has already adopted plenty of other super-pets, so there is a definite chance we’ll be seeing her sometime in the future.
To signify that he has finally rejoined his father emotionally and accepted his position as Robin, Damian also created a brand new Robin costume. It’s far more reminiscent of his classic Robin costume with a hood, and has the traditional green, red, and yellow that has been missing from his gray version these past few years. Damian has fully accepted every part of himself, and the criminals of Gotham better look out, because a fully realized Robin is a very powerful thing indeed.
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