WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for "The Lesson Plan" by Tim Seeley, Tom King, Mikel Janin, Jeromy Cox & Tom Napolitano, from Robin 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular #1, on sale now.

Whether as Robin or as Nightwing, Dick Grayson has always had a prominent role with one superhero team: the Teen Titans. Throughout the years, he’s led the team against iconic villains such as Deathstroke, Trigon, and Brother Blood, as well as more esoteric evildoers like Mister Twister, Mad Mod, and Ding Dong Daddy.

The Robin 80th Anniversary Spectacular tells a story from the end of the Titans’ Post-Crisis glory years, in doing so bringing back one of their more minor villains: Damien Darhk. But even though he's only had a negligible role in the comic book DC Universe, Dahrk has gone on to become one of the biggest bad guys in the CW’s Arrowverse.

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The Titans centered story, written by longtime Nightwing and Titans scribe Devin Grayson, is based around the team’s roster and adventures in the late 1990s. The tale involves Nightwing, Troia, Arsenal, Tempest, and the Flash taking down Darhk’s bumbling H.I.V.E. minions with relative ease. Darhk, who was viewing the fight’s footage to go over with H.I.V.E., remarks at his lackeys’ ineptitude, all while they blame their failure on the bureaucratic red tape that Darhk typically employs.

Angered, Darhk still allows them to live, as their walloping at the hands of the Titans allowed him to steal an ancient mystical artifact. One H.I.V.E. member inspects the object before revealing himself as Nightwing. Taking off with the artifact without so much as any opposition from H.I.V.E., Nightwing remarks that Darhk should be a better team motivator, perhaps by including a team pizza night into H.I.V.E.’s itinerary.

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Damien Darhk in the DC Universe

DC Universe Damien Dahrk

Damien Darhk was introduced in Devin Grayson and Mark Buckingham's The Titans #1. Comprised mainly of the now-adult members from the Silver Age team roster, the team thematically was meant to bridge the gap between the old guard of the Justice League and the up and coming generation of Young Justice. Thus, it made sense that their first new villain was Damien Darhk. Darhk, who was leading the Titans’ old foes of H.I.V.E., was an intentionally meta, post-modern supervillain. Sporting business clothes, a phone and what was possibly a pager in lieu of a costume, the villain was more of a tacky tech geek than the typical DC Universe bad guy.

His main attributes were his intellect, technological prowess and his vast criminal resources, but those didn’t allow him to become much a factor in either Titans or the broader DC Universe. His followers initially believed him to have magical powers, but these were revealed to simply be scientific trickery on his part. He did eventually develop immortality, however. Needless to say, the guy never quite made it to Deathstroke level, and he had more in common with career losers like Andre LeBlanc.

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The Darhk Knight Rises

Neal McDonough as Damien Darhk in Arrow

Darhk’s biggest claim to fame is easily the Arrowverse, where the show Arrow drastically reimagined him as one of its most important villains. Darhk was one of a trio of Titans villains who were rewritten to fight Green Arrow, along with Deathstroke and Brother Blood. He was still a sort of businessman supervillain, and obvious contrast to Ra’s al Ghul, Deathstroke, and even Merlyn, but that’s where the similarities with the source material start to end. He was far older than the comics’ version, and his magical powers were legit. This is also the way in which he derives his immortality in this version. He still leads a version of H.I.V.E., but he also has ties to the League of Assassins. This gives him a depth of intense martial arts knowledge that the original didn’t have. After being first mentioned in Season 3, he went on to become Arrow’s main villain in Season 4, even killing Black Canary. Darhk met his own end during the season finale but would be resurrected to continually vex the Legends of Tomorrow on their show.

Even with this push, he hasn’t made much of a recent splash in Titans or Green Arrow comics. The plans of the version in the Robin 80th Anniversary Spectacular do subtly reference the CW version, however. This includes his lust for mystical artifacts and his goal of decimating an entire city. Thus, it’s possible that DC could begin using the villain in a much bigger capacity in future comics, though hopefully for H.I.V.E., he becomes a more effective leader by then.

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