Summary
- Damian Wayne's immaturity and lack of understanding about the value of life pose a challenge for his growth as Batman's successor.
- Batman tries to guide Damian by indicating that his joking in inappropriate, resembling a parent teaching a child not to swear.
- Damian's skills as an assassin do not equate to maturity, and he needs his father's guidance and some Christmas magic to improve his attitude.
Warning! Spoilers for Batman/Santa Claus: Silent Knight #1!Batman has growing pains and struggles with every member of his Bat-Family, but perhaps none more so than with Damian Wayne, his son and current Robin. This Christmas, while patrolling with Damian, Bruce realizes that he still needs to train the boy into being a silent knight. Upon arriving at a murder scene, Robin is making quips, something inexcusable for a future Batman.
In a preview for Batman/Santa Claus - Silent Knight #1 by Jeff Parker and Michele Bandini, someone or something has slaughtered a group of Gotham carolers in the street. Bruce is perplexed - all of their villains and major players are ed for, so this must be a new killer making a violent splash. Damian's looking to get on the naughty list, doing acrobatics around the crime scene and cracking jokes about the victims.
It's certainly a dour scene for a holiday comic that promises a crossover with Santa Claus.
Damian Wayne Has the Moves, But Lacks the Heart of His Father
Damian Wayne, by design, has the perfect background to someday take the reins from Batman. The child of Bruce and Talia al Ghul, Damian was trained by the League of Assassins to be stealthy and lethal. Unlike his father, he learned how to kill when he was still very young and has no qualms about taking a life. After Talia left Damian in Batman's care, Bruce has tried to use Damian's skills in a manner more aligned with his own views, tempering Damian's thirst for vengeance with a sense of justice.
Coming from a hive of scum and villainy, Damian strongly feels a sense of "kill or be killed" in his social interactions, struggling to trust and cooperate with the rest of the Bat-Family. He does seem to want the approval of his father, so Batman is constantly trying to steer him on the right path.
In this holiday preview, after Robin cracks wise about a mass murder in the street, Bruce knows just telling Damian, "Don't do that," wouldn't be well received. Instead, he tries to let him know it's inappropriate, so that it's okay to say it around him, but in the future he should only think such things silently. It's reminiscent of any normal parent dealing with a child who's just learned to swear.
Damian Wayne's Robin Needs to Grow Up
Despite his murderous nature, Damian is actually very childish. Maintaining a sense of justice and no-kill morality is harder than slaughtering all enemies, as Batman has shown time after time. Mocking a group of corpses at the holidays is for someone still too immature to see the value of a life, not realizing each of those people had a family and community. The struggle is that, because Damian has the skills of an adult assassin, he doesn't realize that this doesn't make him an adult. He needs his father to guide him, and maybe a little Christmas magic, to improve his attitude. Batman/Santa Claus: Silent Knight will hopefully give Damian Wayne both of those things on his journey to become the next Batman.
Batman/Santa Claus: Silent Knight #1 is available December 5 from DC Comics.
