MYTHCOMICS: BORN TO KILL (BATMAN AND ROBIN 1-8, 2011-12)

 

Not long after Grant Morrison finished his run on various Bat-titles with DEMON STAR, writer Peter J. Tomasi and artist Patrick Gleason launched a new BATMAN AND ROBIN title. The first eight issues continued Morrison's narrative regarding the Caped Crusader's relationship to his ten-year-old son, whom Batman agrees to train as the New Robin. And just as Morrison rewrote some elements of the 1987 SON OF THE DEMON story for his narrative, Tomasi did the same for Morrison. In SON, Batman has a consensual love affair with Talia Al Ghul and departed without knowing he'd left a bun in her oven, after which Talia put up the child for adoption. Morrison revised this scenario, in which Talia drugged Batman into having sex with her and thus knocking her up, and then kept the child Damien, but raised him as one of her assassins, capable of killing without remorse. Tomasi alludes to the copulation but implies that it was once more consensual. Tomasi may have done this because he wanted to de-emphasize Talia's role in the molding of Damien in order to better focus on the main conflict of the BORN TO KILL arc: how does a crimefighter dedicated to fighting evil without killing evildoers get through to a young boy who's been taught to "destroy your enemies before they destroy you?"                       

                           

A short prelude introduces the reader to a new Bat-enemy: a professional assassin named Nobody. He targets one of the various "international Batmen" whom Bruce Wayne funded during the Morrison run, and the killer later comments that the appearance of a particular European Batman provoked Nobody to journey to Gotham for a confrontation with the original. This event takes place around the same time as Batman's annual pilgrimage to Crime Alley, to venerate the memory of his slain parents. He encourages Damien to go along for the first time ever, and the boy does so, though he complains of his father's "sentimental nonsense." In truth, Damien desperately wants his father's approval, this being the reason he set himself to become the New Robin. However, the apple has not fallen far from the tree, for like his father Damien also does not like to admit needing anyone but himself. For Batman's part, his new role as a parent may have moved him to break with tradition for the sake of the future. He tells Damien that he will no longer honor the date of his parents' hideous deaths, but rather the date of their wedding, as a means of celebrating life. Batman concludes his last vigil in Crime Alley by taking a memento of that fateful night-- a ticket or brochure from the movie Bruce Wayne and his parents before the latter two perished. He makes the keepsake into a paper boat and watches it sail off into the sewer-river beneath Crime Alley.                                                                                                                                                                

Shortly thereafter, Batman and Robin contend with a gang of gunrunners. The criminals appear to get away but in truth they're caught and killed by the newly arrived Nobody. The villain makes a telling reference to his earlier slaying of the Euro-Batman, whom he regards as part of the crusader's "new global circus act." (Was the "circus act" metaphor a Dick Grayson reference?) Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne frets about Damien's barely repressed tendencies toward homicidal violence. The hero wonders if he's as perverse as Talia, for though Batman was born to prevent other children from meeting terrible fates, he shows an uncanny penchant for attracting younger people to serve in his crusade. But soon Batman has bigger problems, as he encounters, for the first time in many years, Morgan Ducard, grown son of Henri Ducard, one of the men who tutored Bruce Wayne in certain crimefighting skills. As a result of this new encounter with an old enemy, Batman grounds Robin from going on patrol.                                                                                                                                   

Not surprisingly, the volatile son of Batman takes the restriction as a personal affront, refusing to stay under cover from a threat his sire will not identify. Robin duly takes down some thugs harassing a couple of victims, with a very timely scene in which one thug tries to take phone-photos of Robin's death and the young crusader punches both the creep and his phone. However, his being out and about gives Nobody the chance to play mind games on the boy. Nobody correctly notes that one of Robin's opponents, while alive, is now all but brain-dead from the beating, and the assassin finishes the man off. He also paralyzes Robin, moments before Batman arrives. The older hero contends with Nobody, instantly realizing it's Morgan Ducard despite the concealing costume.                                                           

   Batman loses the fight, but Nobody, like many an earlier Bat-foe, wants the chance to gloat. He binds both heroes and makes them watch a homemade movie on an otherwise deserted drive-in movie screen, showing "Batman's Greatest Failures"-- that is, all the chaos made inevitable because Batman would not simply execute the villains he battled. Alfred comes to the rescue with Bat-tech, and Nobody is forced to flee. However, the fact that Batman didn't bare all regarding the origins of Nobody leads to new friction between the two crimefighters. Robin once more escapes Wayne Manor, though this time he plans to fake allying himself to Nobody in order to bring the villain down. While searching for Robin, Batman records, for his son's potential benefit, the full story of Bruce Wayne's experiences with Henri and Morgan Ducard. I won't elaborate that backstory here, except to say that Wayne's training under Father Henri resulted in creating Morgan's jealousy of the new student, thus leading to this current jeremiad.                                                         

    

Refreshingly, though, Tomasi reveals that Nobody never really intended to make Robin his new apprentice just to screw with Batman's head. Rather, because Morgan Ducard tried to kill Bruce Wayne, who retaliated by beating Morgan bloody and dumping Morgan in Henri's lap, Nobody intends to visit the same violence upon Damien, just to one-up Batman in symbolic terms. "You stole my father, so I'm stealing your son! Quid pro quo!" The two foes battle, and Batman wins, predictably sparing Nobody's life despite Batman's earlier "and you expect to live?" rhetoric.                                                                         

               

                                                                                                                                                                  However, because Nobody knows the heroes' civilian identities, and thus can strike at them again and again, Damien does what his mentor won't do: using the same paralysis technique Nobody taught him, in order to terminate the villain's life. Yet Batman does not upbraid his son this time. He only tells him that he will have to live with his act for the rest of his life-- even as Bruce Wayne lives with having come close to killing Morgan earlier-- but that he can still "be the best Damien Wayne you can be." And so, going back once more to my distinction between problems and conundrums, the "dramatic problem" of what to do about Nobody's menace is solved, but the "mythopoeic conundrum"-- as to whether killing is ever justified-- always remains partly open.