WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Teen Titans #40 by Adam Glass, Robbie Thompson, Eduardo Pansica, Julio Ferreira, Marcelo Mailol, & Rob Leigh, on sale now.
The DC Universe is a dangerous place to live. It's full of perils like body-swapping and mind-control, which has given characters like Batman a justification for bringing down the people he calls friends and teammates in the Justice League and beyond.
And as Teen Titans #40 just revealed, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Damian Wayne just told his team that he secretly has plans to take all of them out, which gave DC's current Robin his own "Tower of Babel" moment.
Djinn and the rest of the DC Universe genies have been captured and subjugated by their brother, Elias. With his intention to attack the Gates of Heaven, the Teen Titans need to find a way to catch up to him if they want any chance to stop him and free their teammate. To that end, Robin ends up suggesting that they put themselves into a state of near-death, which could allow them to make their way into the afterlife. Thanks to his extensive knowledge of the Book of the Damned -- as well as his own time spent in hell following his death at the hands of the Heretic -- Damian has come to the conclusion that by making their way through Hell to reach purgatory, the team could potentially catch up to Elias.
When the team understandably asks how Robin intends to get them into that kind of physical state, he casually unlocks a secret safe and pulls out a number of vials. Damian reveals that each of the serums is designed to specifically kill each member of the Teen Titans. It puts them into a state of paralysis for an hour, but unless the antidote is administered in that time their lungs will fill with internal fluids and they will die. When the rest of the team reacts in shock and horror, a genuinely confused Robin reveals that he assumed they already had similar plans to deal with him if he ever went bad. While the team takes the solutions willingly to save their friend (and seemingly don't get the antidotes in time -- if the final pages of the issue are to be believed -- it's a nice reminder of just how much like his father Damian really is.
The idea is very similar to something Batman infamously did in the Mark Waid and Howard Porter JLA storyline, "Tower of Babel." As part of a scheme to take over the world, Ra's al Ghul utilized plans that Batman had devised to bring down his allies on the Justice League if necessary. Ra's just amplified their effectiveness so he could kill them instead of just incapacitating them. Batman's plans overwhelmed and almost killed several members of the Justice League. Although Batman scrambled to save their lives and undo the damage his plans had wrought, this also led to Batman briefly leaving the team, since many members of the group lost faith in him after they discovered what he'd done.
Both that JLA story and this Teen Titans one take Batman and his son's tendencies to prepare for everything to their dark final conclusion. It's a dark idea to apply to DC's greatest heroes, but recent events in Teen Titans have proven that it's a worthwhile line of thought. Just in the last year, Crush was turned into a mass murderer against her will thanks to the machinations of Lex Luthor and Lobo, and Roundhouse betrayed the team in an attempt to get revenge on Robin. Having those serums more readily available might have given Robin the chance to counter his allies before they could do any real damage.
However, the fact that they're nominally lethal -- unlike Batman's plans for the Justice League -- speaks to the dark place Damian is in right now. Even if he has Batman's preparedness skills, this Robin might have too much of his grandfather's killer instinct for his own good.