Gates of Gotham #3

[zechs80]

Four scans under the cut.



If you're all wanting a well written event then look no further to Gates of Gotham. It's a shame it's dropped so lowly but come on people! BUY THE BOOK! I mean look at the wondrous things it has plus Cass. Anyway the issue is a slow burn with some great moments again sprinkled throughout:



So the four split up.

Damian/Tim:



Cass/Dick:

Comments

[red_menace]

"She's just one more person your father picked over you."

Tim Drake, ladies and gentlemen.

[euthanatos]

wow. that was uncalled for.

[rordulum]

Yeah, Tim really knows where to stick the knife in, doesn't he?

You've got to love him for that.

It's nice to see Dick and Cass getting on after that terrible Batgirl mini from a couple of years ago. The one where they were both almost unrecognisable.

[18lemons]

Tim, I used to like you, love you even, you were my favourite Robin. The Robin I had when I was growing up but now you really are written to be as much of a jerk as you can. Damian has issues, he's also 10. You're anywhere between 17 and 19, you don't have to remind him that he's not daddy's favourite whenever you get the chance.

[pyrotwilight]

That and because she's the older sister who could kick his ass. :D

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

I dunno, the way Damien snaps at everyone, I think *everyone* should take time out of their day to correct him. Not like he's learned his lesson yet.

[blake_reitz]

To be fair, when Damian first showed up, he killed a dude, bragged about it to Tim, then beat him up and tossed him into the Robin display cases. Damian may have made progress since then, but I can see how he would still rub Tim the wrong way.

[18lemons]

I'm well aware of that, but Damian has made leaps and bounds of progress by working with Dick and Steph. Yeah, he's still sharp tongued and sarcastic, but he's no way near the devil child Tim insists him to be.
When I see Tim and Damian interact, especially after the events of Red Robin 14, where Damian discovers that Tim has a plan of action to take him out and doesn't take it well, and Dick has to talk Tim down, I just see Tim as the bad guy in these situations. To me it looks that Tim is acting more childish than Damian, like he's still jealous and upset that Dick chose Damian to be his Robin rather than Tim.

[anothermoviegeek]

Perhaps if Damien would maybe even attempt to meet him halfway, Tim might ease up on the little snot a bit.

From earlier in this same issue:

Damien: "And look--Drake may have been useful for once"

So when the little snot ever gives perchance an ounce of non sarcastic respect to Tim, then maybe you would have a point. But until that day...Damien can suck it.

[brilliantnova]

Tim needs to be the mature one and get over it. Damien was in a way a mentally abused child. You would think someone of Tim's intelligence and intuition would have gotten past all that at this point in time. They really keep digging the hole with his immature jabs.

[biod]

In my canon Damian totally has a thing for Cass, but is afraid of the cooties and of admitting she can kick his ass six wasys to sunday.

[red_menace]

Correcting bad behavior is fine, but all Tim is doing is adding to Damian's insecurities. Telling an emotionally abused child that his father doesn't want him is flat-out awful.

[anothermoviegeek]

He may have made leaps and bounds with Dick and Steph, but he has yet to ONCE make any amends with Tim.

[espanolbot]

At this point I think that so many people think that that it must be more than a little canon to an extent.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

I'd hardly call Damien abused, not in the way say, Cassandra was. The kid was spoiled rotten, raised to be leader of the League and told that he's superior in every way because of who his parents are.

Knocking him back down to earth is long overdue. Especially in a profession where overconfidence is lethal.

[18lemons]

Yeah, but Damian is 10. Tim is an adult. He's constantly said to be the smart member of the Batfamily, the intuitive one. Tim is bullying and emotionally abusing the kid. When Damian makes mistakes, he gets called out on it. Tim doesn't and he needs to be.

[espanolbot]

I suppose the fact that Damian had something of a similar background to Cass yet does see what was wrong with it might be another thing that rubs Tim the wrong way about how he reacts to Cass.

I took Tim's reaction to be more than a pinch of "You don't know what she's been through. Her childhood, her struggles as Batgirl, her ONLY friend getting supposedly tortured to death, and then all of her new friends and her possible lover getting murdered by Deathstroke, only to get brainwashed by him into murdering people for nearly two years without anyone thinking of coming to her rescue. She suffered through all of that and came out the other side smelling of roses. So shut up, you ignorant ass."

[anothermoviegeek]

Lets see:
1. Damien comes into the cave. Tim tries to be nice and Damien kicks his ass almost killing him.
2. Bruce dies (leaving a huge weight on Tim's shoulders) Dick steps up and chooses the little devil boy over Tim to assist him (and no amount of "you are my equal, not a sidekick" crap can ever work)
3. Damien has corrected things with Dick and Steph but still rags on Tim and Cass.

Tim himself is still just a teenager (and all the baggage that entails) so I give his attitude towards the little brat a lot of leeway. (and don't get me wrong, I love Damien as a character)

My main hope out of this reboot with Bruce and Damien working together be that Bruce straight up tells him "if you ever grow into half the man Drake is, I will be proud of you" to shut his little superior mug up.

[18lemons]

However as a result of that upbringing, Damian is emotionally challenged. He has difficulty showing affection and any other positive emotion, whereas he feels comfortable killing people and covering his hands in blood. I'd still call that emotional abuse.

Tim Drake isn't bringing Damian back down to Earth, he's telling a little boy who desperately wants his father to approve of him, that his father doesn't love him or even want him. He's bullying the kid and adding to that emotional abuse.

[espanolbot]

Hey, Damian was the one who told Cassandra that the reason why Bruce put her in charge of the "East Asian Office", as it were, was because he thought that she was a failure and this was his idea of exile.

He might only be ten, but still he's smart enough to know when he's hurting people's feelings, which he did in Cass' case, though with her it was kind of subtle.

[red_menace]

Not physically abused, no, but you can't tell me a decade of manipulation by a distant, conniving mother who replaced him at the first sign of defiance just bounces off.

And again, not disagreeing that the boy needs a steady stream of reality checks, but Tim is just being petty and childish and kinda cruel. Telling a child who was raised to believe that violence is the only solution to a problem is more likely to provoke another murder attempt than it is to get Damian to grow up.

[espanolbot]

Damian is smart enough to know when he's being deliberately hurtful, rather than accidentally as other kids his age might be.

Him getting a little blunt honesty back is still better than him going around calling Stephanie "Fatgirl" or telling Cass that Bruce put her in charge of Batman Inc's East Asian branch because he thought that she was a failure and that sending her to Hong Kong was a form of exile.

[red_menace]

And I somehow lost a chunk of that last sentence. what I meant to say was

"Telling a child who was raised to believe that violence is the only solution to a problem that his father wants anyone but him is more likely to provoke another murder attempt than it is to get Damian to grow up."

That'll teach me to not read thoroughly before I hit "post."

[18lemons]

1. But back then Damian had much closer ties to the League of Assassins. The way he was raised to assert his dominance over other people, as a result, he tried to do that in the vain hope that his father would see some worth in him.
2. Yeah, Bruce died. Damian had just come into Gotham and wanted to get approval from his father, and then he lost his father. He doesn't know how to cope with that.
3. Damian's interactions with Tim and especially Cass have been a lot more limited. He's not had nearly as long to develop those relationships.

My main hope for this reboot is that somebody will make Tim lighten up. He used to have a very close bond with Steph, in Red Robin so far he's attacked her, refused to show her any kindness or help her when she's down, he's belittled her, telling her that she's not good enough to be Spoiler or Batgirl.

It's not just Damian who he treats badly, I think that Tim Drake's world needs to crumble so he can get a chance to rebuild those relationships because as I see it, he's on a downward spiral.

[q99]

I like how Cassandra's body language reading is used here to find stuff Dick might've missed.

In both this and Red Robin, it's pretty clear she doesn't have near the technical skills of the others, but she makes up for it in her own way. That sort of lopsidedness is part of her charm.