WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Truth & Justice #16 by Andrew Aydin, Jun Ba, Nick Filardi, Aditya Bidikar, on sale now.
As the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, Damian Wayne has never been a typical kid, so any birthday he celebrates was bound to be something out of the ordinary. Still, it is highly doubtful that anyone expected literal gods to show up and abduct Damian in the middle of the celebration. What makes it even stranger, and somehow not surprising, is that Damian’s grandfather, Ra’s al Ghul, seems to have a hand in this divine intervention.
Considering the sliding timescale of the DCU there’s a good chance that this party happened in the not too distant past, perhaps being Damian’s eleventh or twelfth birthday. Damian first came into Batman’s life shortly after his tenth birth and he was recently seen celebrating his thirteenth birthday with only Alfred in attendance.
It wasn’t something he asked for or perhaps even wanted, but Nightwing insisted on trying to throw Damian a surprise party inside the Batcave. He enlisted the aid of Batgirl, Red Hood, Red Robin, Spoiler, and Orphan to get the job done. Fortunately for them, Alfred had enough foresight to realize that Damian would not react to a surprise in a nonviolent way. So he ruined the surprise moment, but Damian was nevertheless stunned by the efforts his family went through for him.
As Damian prepared to blow out his candles, the cave was attacked by two hulking, unnamed figures who claimed to be gods. They sought “the Son of Anatolia” referring to Damian and inadvertently giving him a new title. The others leapt to his defense, with the young Robin joining in the fight as well.
As he fought side by side with his family, Damian took the opportunity to vent about how he was actually looking forward to having a birthday party, having never had one thrown for him before. This is not a surprising fact when considering his upbringing, but it’s also heartbreaking to realize that once again his heritage interfered in his childhood.
Unfortunately, Damian was knocked out and taken by the intruders. Damian woke tied up above what could only be a Lazarus Pit within an ancient temple. He tried recounting the events that had happened prior to him waking up, understandably frustrated with the way his birthday was going thus far. But then things only got more complicated when Ra’s al Ghul came out of the shadows and offered his former heir immortality for his birthday.
It isn’t the most surprising turn of events for Damian. Ra’s has a bad habit of interfering with Damian’s life during his birthdays, usually to either try and kill him or make him rejoin the League of Assassins. But if this was Damian’s first birthday party then it might explain some of the reason why he decided to spent his latest one with just Alfred.
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