Over the course of his more than eight decades of serving the people of Gotham, Bruce Wayne has adopted many young men into not only his battle against the villains of Gotham but also into his own family. While proteges like Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and Cassandra Cain were all eventually adopted into the Billionaire Bat's circle, Damian Wayne is the only one of his many, many proteges that were actually born into his family.
As the official heir to the bat, Damian has a lot to live up to. He had a bit of a rough start when it came to not only getting to know his father but also being able to understand his father’s methods. That said, Damian has grown a lot since his introduction as the brash, violent and abrasive young man that Bat-fans first met.
10 A Killer Start
Though Damian is the actual legitimate heir to the legacy that Bruce Wayne has laid out, when he first joined Bruce’s family, the two couldn’t have been more different. While Bruce has become iconic through his set of values which distinctly prohibit the use of lethal force, as a child raised by the League of Assassins, Damian was more or less bred and raised to become the perfect killing machine. His training as a master assassin was not something that was easily tossed aside when he began working with his father.
9 Rival Robins: Tim V Damian
Though Damian was already struggling to fit in with his father and the rest of the Bat-family, he couldn’t have had a more difficult time getting along with (then Robin) Tim Drake. The rivalry between Tim Drake and Damian is something that has bled through many Batman comics.
As the blood heir to Batman’s legacy, Damian believed that Tim was in no way fit to wear the mantle of Robin, something he believed rightfully belonged to him. Throughout the years, Tim and Damian have fought time and again, which has often led them into some truly dangerous situations.
8 New Batman New Robin
After Bruce Wayne’s apparent death, there is a time where nearly all of Batman’s proteges fight for the right to don the mantle. All of them except the only person worthy of wearing the cowl, Dick Grayson. However, after Jason Todd nearly kills Tim Drake, Dick steps in and ends the fight by picking up the cowl. While Tim is more than willing to return and don the mantle of Robin under his mentor, Dick decides to offer the position to Damian as he views Tim as more of an equal and colleague rather than an apprentice. This move deeply upset Tim.
7 He Has Excellent Hearing
While all of the young people that have been taken under Batman’s wing and trained to fight in the endless war against crime and villainy have been incredibly talented individuals, when he first takes on the mantle of Robin, Damian is perhaps the most trained individual to have worn the mask.
In fact, Damian is so skilled that he is the only Robin that was allowed to wear a hooded outfit. This is due to the fact that his hearing is so acute and he’s so skilled at fighting his opponents without the use of his eyes.
6 Killer Instinct
Damian may have learned to temper his will to kill his opponents, but that doesn’t mean his desire to kill those who oppose him has vanished completely. Though Damian has spent a lot of time training under Batman and his various proteges, he, much like Jason Todd, is aware that sometimes people just should not be allowed to live. Damian has come along way when it comes to abiding by his father’s moral code, but when he deems it a necessity, Damian is more than willing to kill an opponent.
5 His Back-Up Organs
One of the advantages of growing up the son of Talia al Ghul and the grandson of Ra’s al Ghul is that when it comes to life-threatening injuries, there’s always some sort of backup plan.
While Ra’s has used the Lazarus pits for centuries to heal himself and avoid death, for Damian, his backup plan comes in the form of duplicate organs which Talia has grown in order to save her son from any sort of catastrophic damage. These organs have been used time and again to spare Damian from a gruesome death.
4 He Killed Himself (Sorta)
Though being born into and raised by Talia and Ra’s al Ghul definitely had its advantages, it also came with many downsides. For starters, those backup organs that the League of Assassins had ready should Damian be terribly injured were sometimes attached to clones. And sometimes those clones were rapidly aged and sent to destroy Batman, Gotham, and the people he cared about. In the case of The Heretic, a fully grown clone of Damian, he was actually able to kill young Damian after Damian snuck out to handle the situation by himself.
3 He Came Back From The Dead
While Damian’s grandfather Ra’s had been prepared to resurrect Damian after stealing his body, the unpredictable Lazarus pit was ineffective. So, unlike Jason Todd, who was able to gain back his humanity after a dip in the Lazarus pit, resurrecting Damian would take Batman much further away from home.
Apokolips to be precise. After Damian’s body is taken to Darkseid’s hellish homeworld, Bruce, along with the rest of the Bat-family, use a chaos shard, which not only resurrects Damian but grants him temporary superpowers.
2 The Cheating Batman
Damian may still be too young and inexperienced to don the mantle of the Bat in the main DC universe, but in an alternate timeline shown in Batman #666, Damian does just that after the death of his father and Dick Grayson. While Damian is aware that he will likely never match the skill of his two great mentors, he admits that through cheating he can still keep Gotham relatively safe. Not only does this version of Batman kill, but it’s heavily implied that he made a deal with the devil in order to avoid death and serious injury.
1 Raising Terry
Much like his father in the Batman Beyond timeline, Damian, in the timeline where he’s taken up the mantle of Batman, eventually comes to rescue a young boy named Terry McGinnis from Two-Face Two. After this, Damian can be seen mentoring Terry McGinnis years later. Terry, much like in the Batman Beyond timeline, will eventually take on the mantle of Batman himself. Though, in this timeline, having been trained by a very different Batman, Terry will become a very different Batman with a very different relationship with the Superman of his time, Conner Kent.