Grant Emerson for the character bingo 💖
I fell in love with this kid when I first read Titans (1999). Devin Grayson took the strong foundations he was built on from his previous appearances to tell a truly powerful story. After the arc where Roy takes him camping in the desert, I decided to do something I’d never done for a comics character up to that point and read through every single one of Grant’s appearances starting with his debut in Damage (1994)
At first glance, Grant’s solo book might seem like just an attempt to follow the early-mid 90s teen boy superhero trend. But what makes it special in my eyes is how it doesn’t shy away from putting its protagonist through the ringer. It creates thought-provoking dilemmas about bodily autonomy and personal responsibility and puts a pretty ordinary kid with powers that seem to bring him nothing but trouble at the center of its story. It’s a rare thing, but this kid got consistently good writing three books in a row. I even love his appearances in The New Titans and I wish his interactions with Bart and Kyle had gotten more follow-up besides that one crossover for Sins of Youth. As @miadeardn has pointed out before, Grant was always a bit out of place age-wise among the Titans (don’t get me wrong, I love his time with the team, but I do see that as more of a transitional period in his life) and having him join Young Justice would’ve allowed him to be among heroes that were also going through the unique struggles of being a teenage superhero. Thinking about how he could’ve come into his own on a team like that keeps me up at night
Unfortunately, editorial seemed to decide at some point after his departure from the main cast of Titans (1999) that Damage going to become more and more associated with the JSA because of his connection to the group through his birth parents. I say this is unfortunate mainly because this set him in the direct path of one Geoff Johns who, on account of Justice Society of America (2007), is now my mortal enemy. And I think we all know what happens to comic book characters after they get the Geoff Johns treatment
I was cautiously hopeful when I saw that Grant was being reintroduced to current canon, but the way he’s been written so far in Infinite Frontier and DC vs. Vampires: All Out War makes me skeptical that he’ll ever get his pre-Johns characterization back or have his disability from the events of Infinite Crisis be written in a respectful way. Tom Joyner and Bill Marimon put so much into crafting this character and then it all went so wrong. One book with poor characterization is all it really takes sometimes. My only consolations are the stories I make up for him in my head where nothing after Infinite Crisis ever happened and the small but vocal community of fans on this site that have a lot of love for this kid from Georgia that can’t just help but blow up. Damage lives on in our hearts 🔥
