Publication History
The child from Son of the Demon was utilized in various stories before appearing as Damian Wayne.
In the Elseworlds story, The Brotherhood of the Bat (1995), a version named Tallant Wayne appears who crusades against his grandfather, Ra's al Ghul. Brotherhood of the Bat features a future in which Ra's al Ghul discovers the Batcave following Bruce Wayne's death, and outfits the League of Assassins in variant Batman costumes based on Wayne's rejected designs. Talia and Bruce's son join the Brotherhood in his father's costume, to destroy it from within.
In Kingdom Come (1996) by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, which functioned as a possible future to the canon of the time, the child of Batman and Talia has become Ibn al Xu'ffasch, literally "Son of the Bat", a member of Lex Luthor's inner circle. He falls in love with Nightstar, the daughter of Dick Grayson and Starfire. There is some suggestion that he is Batman's spy in Luthor's camp. In the Elliot S! Maggin novelization of Kingdom Come, Al Xu'ffasch tells Bruce that his mother Talia is still alive and working as a Mother Superior in India, one of Mother Teresa's successors. Al Xu'ffasch reappears in Waid's The Kingdom. In The Kingdom: Son of the Bat, flashbacks shed new insights into his history: that he was reared by Ra's al Ghul to be the heir to his empire, that he eventually murdered his grandfather (cutting off his head to prevent yet another regeneration), and that he sought therapy from psychiatrist Dr. Gibson. He was eventually recruited by Rip Hunter to try to stop a madman named Gog from altering his history. He works with several other heroes of his generation - Kid Flash, the daughter of the Flash; Nightstar (Nightwing and Starfire's child) and Offspring, the son of Plastic Man.
In League of Batmen (2001), the sequel to Brotherhood of the Bat, Tallant leads his own team of variant Batmen to combat the plague that was al Ghul's legacy. During the battle, Tallant discovers that his grandfather is the one who murdered his father and then cloned him. Ra's even sent the clone to murder his own daughter. Because the deaths of his parents at Ra's's hands, Tallant has completed following his father's tragic path as Batman. The new Dark Knight desires justice for his parents along trying to stop his grandfather, while having to battle his father's murderous double.
Grant Morrison's story titled Batman & Son (2006) expands upon the Son of the Demon storyline as part of a remodeling of Batman's personality after the events of Infinite Crisis. In Morrison's version, the child, Damian Wayne, is the result of a tryst between Batman and Talia, during which the Dark Knight claims he was drugged when they were at the Tropic of Cancer. After the DC Universe was remade following Flashpoint the tryst was changed to be consensual.
The final issue of 52 (2008) designates the Kingdom Come alternate universe as Earth-22, thus making the Ibn al Xu'ffasch version part of the DC multiverse. Justice Society of America (vol. 3) #22 (2009) reveals that he would eventually marry Nightstar with whom he would have a daughter and son.
Read more about this topic: Damian Wayne
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