#b:tbatb

[myplushheart]

they do this every time. i hate these gay motherfuckers they’re so annoying /j

og under cut

[this-is-fox-speaking]

tiktok made me discover him. i love him a normal amount

[kylorens]

Plastic Man didn't need to go this hard after them

[dynamic-duo-deposit]

Despite all of our differences, though, we have one very important thing in common.  

We were all trained by the best.  

(The All-New Batman: The Brave And The Bold #13)

[dcandmylife]

ok so batman: the brave and the bold may have been funny as fuck, but i will never forgive it for giving me a (temporary) knee fetish when i was 12

[rokhal]

The Firestorm character peaked in Batman: The Brave And The Bold with sensible high-school nerd Jason Rusch driving the body, while meathead chemistry teacher Ron Raymond rides shotgun and explains absolutely everything (including chemistry) in football metaphors.

[gothampeasant]

If you don't like Batman: the Brave and the Bold, you're wrong.

[daddywarbats]

What did you think of Batman: TBATB's take on Damian?

I feel it prudent to point out that we are talking about an episode that ultimately serves as an animated retelling of a speculative story within another world in the comics, this time framed in a speculative narrative of Alfred’s design, and that this “Damian” has no connection whatsoever to the Damian of the main continuity in anything other than name, Bruce being his father and having taken up the Robin/Batman mantle(s) at one point in their respective narratives.

They are effectively two very different people in underlying motivations and background, but it’s also much more than that.

Damian of B: TBATB is not just a character in a story-within-a-story: he is a literary and narrative device that better serves to shine a light on Alfred’s character.

In that context, I do appreciate him.  It speaks to the heroic cycle, of sons stepping into their father’s shoes, taking up their mantles.   The concept of enduring legacy is a beautiful narrative device and ultimately is something that I believe would fit into Alfred’s character to desire of his charge - to see that as time passes, the child he has cared for becomes a man and that all that he has worked for endures for ages to come.  Thus, the in-universe context of the fictional Damian being written in the manner he is, no doubt drawn from Alfred’s experiences with a younger Bruce, is understandable.

It is also doubly understandable, then, that this fictional Damian loses his heroic parents in a way that serves as parallel to the loss of Martha and Thomas Wayne and that, in their brief appearance in the story, Bruce and Selena so strongly resemble them.  They represent idealized versions of themselves, but also of Martha and Thomas, and Damian as an idealized version of Bruce (he is even framed much in the same way Bruce is normally framed for the Crime Alley fallout - a crying child kneeling in a circle of light). 

But, instead of Alfred in the absence of his parents, in the story, Damian has Dick Grayson to serve as mentor and surrogate parent - a mentor that is the representation of the ideals Bruce stands for, but also the close family/friend that stands for the compassion and humanity that tempers the desire for vengeance in a way that Alfred himself never could quite succeed in accomplishing with Bruce.  He mourns them too and his first priority is to stop Joker JR, taking the burden of personal vengeance from Damian’s shoulders.  One must wonder if that is something that Alfred wished he could do.

It is also interesting to note that unlike Bruce, the Damian of Alfred’s fictional world is more concerned with living up to his parents, specifically his father’s legacy, and less with taking revenge for their deaths in his grief.  Alfred’s narration puts specific emphasis on him rising above the tragedy to embrace the mantle of superheroism and Batman in turn and, in turn, pass that mantle on to his own child.  In this sense, Alfred is painting a picture of his hopes for Bruce as well, a concept starkly contrasted by his conversation with the Bruce that exists outside his fiction.

So yeah.  I appreciate this “Damian” for what he is, however I am careful to make the distinction between him and the Damian of the main comic continuity (and his counterparts, Xu’ffasch and Tallant).