Batman Loves Wonder Woman #30

You can tell this isn't the third series in the Lovers Trinity Series of comic books because the order of the characters is wrong. The book will be called Wonder Woman Loves Batman, even if she totally doesn't and finds it tough to be around him. She also wishes he'd stop asking her to wear the kitty hoodie.

Can you believe there are people out there that don't like Damian Wayne and don't want him to return? How can people be so wrongheaded and awful and despicable and unlikable? I may not have any intellectual reasons to prove that Damian Wayne is the best Robin ever, but I do have Damian Wayne expressing that he's the best Robin ever every time he talks to any of the past Robins. Haven't those people read those dialogues?! They're stated plainly and succinctly with lots of threatened violence so I don't know how anybody could have missed them. I do have one argument for why he's my favorite Robin ever (besides the argument that I've never, ever liked any other Robin before this). This is my argument:

This argument may not be the strongest defense of Robin. Or a very clear one. Or anything more than a picture, actually.

I missed out on comic books from September 2003-December 2011, so the covers of Batman and Robin #1-4 were my first experiences of Damian Wayne. This cover made me believe I might actually like a Robin. And even though he turned out to be a huge dick, I still liked him. He's something like an adopted dog whose previous life was one of abuse and betrayal. He's angry and mean and will occasionally bite for no apparent reason. But he desperately wants to be a good dog, if not for himself, for his master. He constantly fights with his master's previous dogs because any attention given to them is attention he's not getting. And if he's not currently getting any attention, Damian begins to immediately feel abandoned. He doesn't experience fear or sadness because he's never been in a safe enough place to understand those feelings. When Damian should feel those things, they only manifest as anger. He absolutely reminds me of Cujo. He doesn't want to be angry and dangerous at all. He wants to be loyal and loved and happy. But sometimes the dog can't be saved.

I don't see Damian as any more important than Batman's other wards simply because he has Bruce Wayne DNA inside of him. He's simply, currently, the child that needs Bruce the most at the moment. Well, not at this moment since he's dead and all. I think Dick Grayson is Bruce's most important child. Not his favorite. Not his best. But the one that shows Bruce that the people he allowed into his life weren't simply there because they needed Bruce; Bruce needed them as well. I love, especially in this comic and Snyder's Batman, Bruce and Dick's interactions with each other. They're peers now. In Dick, Bruce can see how his life could have turned out if he'd had somebody with which to share the feelings and the anger and the experience of his parents loss. In Jason, Bruce sees the other side where anger and sadness overwhelmed Jason until he lost control. Jason Todd probably suffered from being Bruce's second child. Perhaps Bruce thought he should be more like Dick and treated him as if he would make the same decisions as Dick did. Tim Drake, I can't speak to at all. I think I have some old issues when Tim first appeared but I never really liked any character in a Robin costume and I never followed Batman's books that closely. Especially if there was a Robin in one. And reading Lobdell's version of Tim Drake doesn't tell me anything about the character. I might as well forget everything I've ever read about Tim in The New 52 and just wait until he returns written by someone that can write.

Damian is a completely different beast from the other Robins. He is Robin first and Damian second while it was opposite for the other children. Batman needs to teach Damian to be a person and not a sidekick. The other Robins (and Alfred. I'm not trying to downplay Alfred in any of this. Without Alfred, Bruce would have been swinging from the rafters in the Batmansion years ago) grounded Bruce in his humanity and forced him to learn to care and nurture relationships. Now it was Batman's turn to teach Damian what the other Robins had taught him. You can't simply be a hunter and a predator and justice personified. The first major step was teaching Damian not to kill. You can't learn to be a person until you realize other people are also persons! I think getting Damian pets was a perfect way to begin the process of empathy. I think that may have been Alfred's doing, wasn't it? After he saw Damian killing bats or something? Anyway, I think raising kids with pets is far more valuable than teaching kids about competition. So pets before team sports, future parents! That's free advice from somebody who has never and will never breed! I think that means my advice is more valuable or something.

In summation and quid pro quotients and ex ergo sum laude, Damian Wayne is the best Robin although maybe not the best child of Bruce Wayne. That might be why he's the only Robin I've ever been able to stand when they've been a Robin. I always like the characters much better once they leave the horrible yellow, red, and green outfit behind and move on to high collared baby blue circus wear and leather fetish outfits with plain, red masks. Also whatever Tim Drake went on to wear. Speedos or something.

Now is the part where everybody tells me I'm wrong. Well, I don't want to hear it! My arguments are objective and yours are subjective, so I'm always more correctorer than you are. I should also reread my previous objective statements to make sure they make sense but fuck that! Who do you think I am? Some Writer that has all the time in the world? I'm a Writer, not an Editor!

Anyway, enough of defending that idiot Damian Wayne. If he really wanted people to like him, maybe he shouldn't be such a little asshole. He can defend himself! No wait! He can't! He's dead!

Oh, um, sorry, Batman. But it's not like you didn't already know that! Sheesh.

Batman is currently visiting Paradise Island with Wonder Woman because Paradise Island has a Lazarus Pit or something. There's got to be some reason Ra's has brought Talia and Damian to this bastion of female empowerment and longest running slumber party ever. Chaperone Aleka is pissed that Wonder Woman has tried to sneak a man into the party. Or maybe she just has a problem with his pajamas.

I wish I could say the same about my pajamas! But I don't think "fear" is what one thinks of when they see a guy in a football jersey with a "1" and "Popular" stenciled across the back, Man of Steel pajama bottoms, and fuzzy pink booties.

I wonder how many artists I'd offend at the San Diego Comicon if I just went through Artist's Alley asking them each to draw me a scene from Paradise Island where the Amazons are in lingerie and pillow fighting?

What the fuck am I saying? I bet most of the artists working in comics have already drawn that!

Last issue I thought Bruce would just have to be careful not to be bitten by snakes, but it looks like this issue takes place after Wonder Woman's sisters were given their bodies back by Hera. Although it looks like Hera is still as petty as she's always been when it comes to the matter of her husband's dick.

It's hard to watch your title of "World's Greatest Detective" mean less and less after every comic book discovery that you live in an irrational world. You'd think Batman would have simply given up rationality altogether after he visited Heaven during the Trinity War.

Batman and Wonder Woman are allowed one night to find Damian's body before the Amazons decide to play "7 Eternities in the Monster Dungeon of Myth" with Batman. Bruce and Diana speak with the Oracle in a nice scene that makes me like the Oracle although I've never seen this character in the DC Universe before. Or, which is more likely, I simply don't remember the character. The Oracle tells them where the Lazarus Pit is located on Paradise Island so that Ra's al Ghul can be stopped from resurrecting Talia and Damian at the last second. For some reason. Has Bruce finally come to his senses and realized being a father was a fucking time sink?!

When did this comic book become Wolverine Loves Wonder Woman?

Ra's believes this Lazarus Pit can be utilized just like the others. He doesn't take into account that there might be a Godly reason for the pit being sealed and hidden away from history. Also, why is the pit shaped like a body?

Oh! That's why. Giant-Sized Shit Thing! This Lazarus Pit was merely clogged.

During the chaos of the fight, Ra's escapes with his Man-Bats and the bodies of his daughter and grandson. Wonder Woman subdues the Giant-Sized Shit Thing with her Lasso of Truth and finds out that Neekta, Master of Darkness, is afraid of the dark. I think that means that children's night lights actually bring more Boogeymen to closets and under beds! Dumb kids. Pure darkness is far safer. Anyway, Wonder Woman brings Neekta out of the cavern and into the light.

Yay! Frankenstein!

Batman and Wonder Woman #30 Rating: No change. I can totally understand why people don't like Damian Wayne. First off, he's a Robin. Fuck Robins. They just get in the way of Batman doing adult things without any consequences. They're annoying and distracting and children that generally know too much for their years and can accomplish far more than my aging suspension of disbelief can deal with. I'm not a fan of Batman having a child sidekick. And to top it off, Damian is a disrespectful, arrogant piece of shit sass factory. It's surprising Batman's not constantly teaching him the Bat-Slap-That-Disrespectful-Mouth-Right-Off-Your-Head move. I get it. But, for me, I'm just weirdly happy that I actually do finally enjoy a Robin. I like how he fits into Batman's life. I like that Batman is the more caring and more human person in the relationship. That never fucking happens and I think it makes for some really nice moments in which we get to see aspects of Bruce's personality that we rarely get to see. I already liked Damian a lot before Morrison's New 52 half of the Batman Incorporated saga began. To me, Damian was wholly Tomasi's character. He was treating him right and creating some stellar story beats around him. I was not privy to Morrison's preboot stories or plans for the kid, and so when Morrison killed him, it felt wrong. Even if it were planned from the beginning, sometimes you've got to accept that plans need to change. Batman had more to learn from a living Damian than from the death of the poor kid by the time Morrison killed him. So I was disappointed and I'll be happy to have Damian back so Tomasi can pick up where he was forced to leave off because of Morrison's old, crotchety plans.