Damian: Son of Batman #s 2-4 (DC)

(via CBDB)

writer/artist: Andy Kubert

Andy Kubert was the original artist for Grant Morrison's Batman run.  This means he was there at the beginning of the Damian saga.  It also apparently means that he seems to have considered his role a fairly significant one, important enough to try his hand at extending the character's legacy past his death last year in the pages of Morrison's Batman Incorporated.

This mini-series is a what-if that returns to the world of Batman #666, a future that saw Damian become Batman.  As readers became more familiar with the character, it was easy to see how different Damian would be in the role compared to his father, Bruce Wayne, and yet more similar than anyone else who has worn the cowl over the years, whether Dick Grayson or Terry McGinnis from that other future, Batman Beyond (soon to finally achieve continuity in The New 52: Futures End).  

In fact, the second issue presents a stark contrast between Damian and McGinnis, both of whom start their careers succeeding Wayne with the aged crimefighter observing them.  Where McGinnis always had Wayne's begrudging sanction, Damian most certainly doesn't.  It leads to a short-lived fight that causes Wayne to suffer a heart attack, which sidelines him for the remainder of the series.  

We witness Damian's conflicted emotions (which he struggles to admit to himself) as he consults a priest in a confessional.  It's implied that the priest is really Jim Gordon, one of Batman's oldest allies.  By the end of the issue, Damian has donned his distinctive variation of the classic Batman costume.

The third issue features Kubert's most creative conceit, Alfred (whom Damian always calls simply "Pennyworth") dying but transferring his consciousness to a cat.  It's something Morrison might have done himself (and in fact is reminiscent of his Happy!), and works well in the warped but intelligent psychology of the new Batman.

Gordon, or least the priest who appears to be him, pulls a classic Batman disappearing act on Damian, and that's one of the nice touches to the issue.

The fourth and final issue is all about Damian's confrontation with the Joker, who is not actually the original Joker, but like Damian a self-styled successor.  It's an appropriate way to conclude the series.  The way this substitute Joker's story ends is appropriate, too (which I won't spoil), just as the way Damian's does.  It's the way some fans no doubt wish he would have ended up in regular continuity.

As a series, it's not overall very similar to Morrison's Batman, or other DC comics in general.  Kubert's style is as full-throttled as Damian's, and at first this can be a little disconcerting, but really, that's exactly the way a Damian-as-Batman story should be.  If he lived long enough to enter that future, this is what he would become.  In a lot of ways, Damian was always what Jason Todd would have been like if he'd been Bruce Wayne's son.  The similarities between Jason's revised fate and what would have become of Damian are no mistake.  The thing is, this story could only have happened with Damian.  

Kubert is less concerned with the doubts Morrison and Peter Tomasi have featured in the bond between father and son.  It drains some of the emotion from the story, but it also means that there's more of a classic vigilante adventure to be found here than is usual for Damian.

If this is the only adventure Kubert gets to tell about this Batman, then that's fine.  Although it would certainly be nice to have more.  This is not a classic, but it's a fine memory to have been given with a classic character.