Grant Morrison recalls life and death of Damian Wayne

Brian Truitt, USA TODAY | USATODAY

Grant Morrison first wanted him dead after four issues. Comic-book fans wanted him dead not too long after that.

Yet along the way over the past seven years, many fell in love with Damian Wayne, the 10-year-old assassin-turned-sidekick who donned the Robin gear with his dear ol' dad, Batman, in Morrison's epic run on DC Comics' Batman series, Batman and Robin and most recently Batman, Incorporated with artist Chris Burnham

Now, it's time to dab the crocodile tears. Damian was killed by the sword of an evil, masked aged clone of his; Bruce Wayne and the rest of the Bat-family are still grieving; and even Morrison — remember, the guy who planned to off him after four issues? — is emotional about the whole thing.

"It was horrible because I was always on his side. Damian, for me, he's the character I brought in at the very start of my Batman run and he's the character who's coming out with me at the very end of it," says the Scottish writer, who penned the little superhero's death scene in last month's Batman, Incorporated No. 8 and is planning his own exit with issue 12.

"I put a lot of myself into him even though I wasn't like that, but there was a lot of feelings about your parents and trying to deal with them that I put into the characcter. I was kind of heartbroken when he died. I'll never write that character again and it was quite weird to do that."

The latest chapter in comic shops, issue 9 features the Dark Knight vs. Heretic, "so it's Batman up against this grotesque, monstrous version of himself who just killed his son," Morrison says. "He does know what he's up against and the level of irony that involves."

It's also a mourning issue, and the writer likes exploring how superheroes deal with death in a very different way from conventional people.

"I wanted Batman to be a lot more withheld and a lot more repressed. I don't like the idea of Batman weeping because I think he's the sort of man who turns tragedy into action," Morrison admits.

Damian's mother, Talia al Ghul, the villainous head of Leviathan, sheds a tear after seeing her son die, although it's not long before she turns her attention again to taking out Batman and his international network of associates.

At its core, Morrison's story over these past years has been about what happens with kids in a divorce. And much of it was the writer drawing on his own life when his parents ended their relationship, "except for Batman it happens on a world stage and people kinda die," he says.

"It's about the way the kid gets overlooked and no matter what he says, the adults aren't listening. Really, the adults are playing out this big drama, and the tragedy of the drama is that Batman wants little of this woman and she wants little of him, and just like my mom and dad, and everybody else's mom and dad who ever split up, people can really grow to hate one another, and I wanted the drama to show that."

Ask him if he was like Damian growing up, and Morrison laughs. "Nah. Damian's this super-confident little assassin who went around the world. I was just a working-class boy. I never went around the world," he says.

"But certainly, I was aware of the fact that my mom and dad were always people I looked up to. When you're a kid, your parents are basically the king and queen, the god and goddess. And to see them falling apart was quite horrible and you couldn't stop it, and also you're always blaming yourself as a kid for anything like that."

Fans will tell him that Talia never hated Batman to the degree to cause this much tragedy. However, Morrison reminds that people change, things go wrong, and the older they get, the more two people can grow to despise one another.

In this case, Damian is the little kid trapped in the middle, trying to make sense of it and ultimately failing.

"It also had a good global resonance in the sense that we're constantly having to watch huge parents fight it out on the world's stage," Morrison adds, "and all of us are like little kids just saying, 'Oh, would you guys just get on for God's sake?' "

While hindsight tells him how he did the right thing by giving Damian a long story and character arc, Morrison recalls how he initially planned to kill him off at the end of a four-issue story line where Batman meets his son and then the youngster dies a hero.

He changed his mind, and fans really hated the character once he started sticking around. It took a few years but he started to grow on people — making his death a lot more meaningful and important in the long run. (Two pages of Burnham's original art, one featuring Robin's death and the other with Batman holding his fallen boy, sold for more than $2,550 each on eBay recently.)

"There's a Doctor Who episode where they introduce the Doctor's daughter and kill her off 40 minutes after and she's never mentioned again. I didn't want to do that," Morrison says.

There were moments, however, when Morrison reconsidered Damian's ultimate fate when he teamed up with Dick Grayson, a former Robin and current Nightwing who took the mantle of Batman for a time in the Batman and Robin series when Bruce Wayne had "died" during Final Crisis and was off the table for a while.

That period, pairing a serious little kid and a Batman who wasn't as tortured as the usual guy under the cowl, also made for some of Morrison's favorite stories during his Batman run, he says. "Dick Grayson is a little more giving and a little more understanding of the kid's problems, so he let him learn and gently guided him."

The dynamic was so strong that Morrison feels he could have written it for years. However, DC had other plans for Batman and wanted to go back to square one for 2011's "The New 52" relaunch, which put a halt to Morrison's work tying every era of the superhero together from the 1930s to present day.

"With those circumstances, the best thing for me was to finish off my story and wrap up that character and leave Batman pretty much the way I found him so the future writers can tell their own stories," Morrison says.

He still has three issues to go, though, and Morrison's not done shaking things up. Batman, Incorporated has been shut down and Gotham City's guardian is back to being a vigilante running from the law — "I like that image of Batman in a spotlight running away from police," the writer says.

"A lot of stuff happens that you've never seen before in a Batman comic. The death of Damian is quite a big thing so I wanted to make sure all of the issues after have equally huge ramifications for Batman in the future."

There will also be one final confrontation between Batman and Talia, where all the real drama lies, Morrison says. "It's not only what they've done to one another but what they've done to their son and what they've done to the world just over a misunderstanding, over a relationship gone wrong."

There has been quite a few Robins in Boy Wonder history since 1940, so it remains to be seen if Batman will recruit another one sooner than later. Internet speculation has wondered if writer Scott Snyder is prepping the young girl Harper Row to be the next Robin in recent issues of the flagship Batman series.

If it were up to Morrison, it'd be a better idea to give Batman some alone time.

"One of the reasons I did this was to take Batman back to the very beginning," Morrison explains, "so when I was finished, all the toys go back in the box and what you've got left is a Batman driven by vengeance, Alfred's a butler, there's a Batcave and that's it.

"I wanted to take him to what he was at the start, and it's probably a good idea to just let him run around on his own."

He'll miss penning the adventures of Damian, but it remains to be seen how much of a hole Batman himself will leave in Morrison once he finishes his run. There'll be something for sure, he says.

"Every day I wake up and kinda hear his voice in my head, telling his stories. It's going to be very strange."