Bruce Wayne is so dumb. Billionaire playboy bachelor is such a stupid cover when stressed single parent is not only the truth but also easier to explain to all these rich folks.
All this weird in depth knowledge? Had to help with school presentations
Tired? Sleepy? Looks a bit sick? Huh yeah the youngst has the flu right now
Literally always has “my child is sick/home alone” as an excuse to not be anywhere and leave suddenly
No need to flirt with people
Can talk about children for hours and bore people away from paying attention
“So my child’s first languge is actually X so of course I had to learn it”
“Oh yeah, I was in Spain last week. Lovely country.”
“Really??? Didn’t see any pictures from you.”
“I don’t want my children exposed to the media storm”
Buying weird stuff!!!!
“Oh yeah, Jason’s super into DIY right now, we’re at the hardware store every week basically”
Bottom line Single Dad is the bet cover he could have had and DC has to ruin it
Yeah, my second child jumped into my bed this morning. Feet first.
Black eye?
That would be the milk my oldest spilled on the floor which he forgot to clean up before I slipped on it and went head first into my wool carved cabinets.
You just disabled this bomb???
Yeah, my third kid build a working model and we didn’t have time to call the bomb squad so I made sure if he does something like that again, I know how to deal with it.
Your vast knowledge of rockets and space ships??
Also my third child. Timmy’s so smart, honestly, I have no idea where he gets all this stuff.
Why are you able to understand that strange magic person who’s only speaking in Old English?
Jason went through a phase.
Why is your youngest carrying swords around and shouting death threats?
I slept with a rich, Middle Eastern king’s daughter and I didn’t get custody until he was 10. Damian was raised very…traditionally.
You backflip??
Dick’s a circus acrobat and an Olympic class gymnast. He looked so happy when he said he could teach me, I didn’t have the heart to tell him no.
You have huge dark circles under your eyes, you okay?
I haven’t slept in three days, the kids are all down with some kind of sickness.
Why is that small child covered with bruises and why is his arm in a cast?
Dick thought it would be fun to swing from the chandelier in the main entrance, to the top of the banister of the stairs and to slide down to the bottom.
He missed.
Okay but consider: a Bruce Wayne who uses the dumb bachelor cover up until Dick’s first science project living with him and Bruce has the light bulb moment while Alfred is treating the burns
Given that his daughter’s biological father VERY publicly framed him for murder, he could also use it as an excuse for being good in a fight: “I learned it in prison”
I love the idea that many, many, many people don’t believe Bruce and start getting incredibly suspicious…until they meet his children.
Random person, who had just been talking about how weird it was that Bruce knew old English: Did anyone else feel a chill down their spine?
-
Random person, who had just seen Bruce put a pin back in a hand grenade: Tim, dear, did you really build a bomb once?
Tim: Who narc-ed?!?!? Was it Steph? I bet you it was Steph, Steph never could keep a secret, it was only three kilos of nitroglycerin, why was she so concerned!?!?
Tim: …uhhh…
Tim: I mean, what? That’s insane! You can’t prove anything!
-
Dick: …did you need something?
Dick: *Is 26 years old, 6’1, and 235 pounds*
Dick: *Is also hanging upside down from Wayne Manor’s chandelier*
Random person, who was formerly going to question why Bruce possessed the skills to jump out a window from three floors up and get back up without a scratch: …never mind.
Forthrowntotheair, who has a few questions about Talia. :) I’m grouping this under a few broad questions that should bleed into answering some of the others you mentioned.
Theprefaceof this, of course, is that all of my answers are based in the character of Talia al Ghul priorto Grant Morrison writing her. So the 30+ years of content and development we had beforehand. Grant largely ignored the fundamental pieces of her character that were recurring themes over the years, turned her into an infanticidal rapist and, generally speaking, made her as 2-dimensional as possible. His interpretation also gave Talia wildly inconsistent motives, so he is nota good measure for delving into her character.
What are her motives?
Talia has always been motivated by one thing: love. Love for her father, love for Bruce, love for Damian. Even love for the planet (though less so than Ra’s). Each step of her journey has love somewherein the why.The primary conflict for her, especially early on, was the tug-of-war between acting for good (because of her love for Bruce) or acting for evil (because of her love for her father).
The animated series stillgives one of the best summaries of Talia’s goals, too: she says that she believes in her father’s vision for the world, but not in his means (namely mass genocide).
Even in dealing with Damian (Morrison, again, notwithstanding), I think she meant everything for love (I’ll explain more in the ‘why did she raise him this way’ section).
When she throws Jason into the Lazarus Pit in Lost Days, her letter to him says that she has done this “for love.”
Despite her badassery, Talia is actually a very loving, empathic person (though sometimes she denies it). Either way, love is at the core of what she does. For her father, that love spills over into loyalty…most of the time.
Why the loyalty to Ra’s (Why has she never stood against him?)
Wellllll this is two parts. The first question: love and indoctrination. The second question: she has.
First we have to understand that Talia is pretty much a psychological trainwreck. In Batman Chronicles #8, we see one of the only stories that’s specificallyfrom Talia’s point-of-view. This and Lost Days are as close as we really get to such direct access to her thoughts.
Yeah. She’s messed up. We should note that Ra’s, despite his being just about Worst Dad Ever, does genuinely love Talia, in his own way.
Realize that Talia has been raised exclusively in Ra’s in environment (like Damian) and that the way she raised Damian was A LOT like she was raised. She’s in a place where he father is viewed as a deity, it’s this massive, powerful cult, and so there’s a level of indoctrination going on.
But that said…Even from the beginning, Talia was defying her father.
She thinks for herself and, growing through the years, she becomes increasingly agitated, worn down and plain ol’ fed up with her father. I would argue that in mostcases, she betrays him for Bruce (or Jason, or Damian) because she knows he’s wrong.
(Prior this panel, Batman asks why Talia is betraying Ra’s, and if it’s because she loves him:)
Doesn’t she seem to be lacking independence?
Here’s where I think there was a massive missed opportunity. Talia, after being shot for betraying her father in Tower of Babel, nopes out and goes off on her own. She’s fed up with both Bruce AND Ra’s.
Ra’s shows up and has Talia kidnapped to bring her back. She winds up rescuing Bruce one more time before leaving BOTH of them and heading off to Hong Kong, where she becomes a successful businesswoman in her own right.
At the time, Lex Luthor is about to run for president. He shows up at her door:
Talia becomes CEO of LexCorp. I wish so much that more happened in this era for her. She butts heads with Superman a few times (and even teamed up once and it was awesome), but it was so under-utilized. In the end, though, she runs the long con on Luthor, willfully bankrupts LexCorp and sells off the assets to Wayne Enterprises. Mostly just to spite him.
She hates Lexcorp mostly because she’s an environmentalist. And because Luthor.
So she’s this awesome independent businesswoman who manages to trick one of the smartest men in the DCU.
Unfortunately, her half-sister shows up during this era in Death and the Maidens. She kidnaps and tortures Talia by murdering her over and over and bringing her back with her Lazarus Pit. This goes on until Talia’s psyche shatters.
Nyssa brainwashes Talia, first with intent to kill Ra’s. Ra’s eventually kills Talia.
When Nyssa kills Ra’s, she and Talia both continue with Ra’s mission (with Nyssa as the Demon’s Head until her death). Then Talia, still brainwashed, becomes the Demon’s Head and leads into the modern area (as with Villains United which ran pretty close up to the New 52).
Why did she raise Damian in that environment?
To put it short: because it was how she was raised and because she knows it’s the only way for him to survive. When Talia was 18 (her first appearance) she was kidnapped by an enemy of her father. Her entire life has been violence, danger and bloodshed. Her father is a powerful, dangerous man in a dangerous world.
If Damian had not been trained, in her mind, he would not have survived. I think she believes it was the best way for him to be able to protect himself. Some indoctrination bleeds through (as her raising him would be post-brainwashing, though the timeline is a bit wonky).
The reason so many people refuse to acknowledge any version of Talia pre-Morrison is because they only want to use her as a prop to fuel Bruce and Damian’s angst and that just makes me so-
DC announcing that Tom King’s finally getting to write the Bruce/Selina wedding in (his out of continuity comic) Batman/Catwoman only to turn around and release the Bruce/Talia cover for Shadow War the very next day is super funny and immensely chaotic of them, actually
![onlytalia: [ Guess who you should go give your money to? NE0NIC0 THAT’S WHO ]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/23c54ff87ec25075e31e54585eeba8a9/tumblr_mf1cjejL8j1rquvavo1_640.jpg "onlytalia: [ Guess who you should go give your money to? NE0NIC0 THAT’S WHO ]")
