I've seen a number of people, on this forum and elsewhere, in the course of criticizing or commenting on Damian's character refer to him as a "Mary Sue" or some sort of male equivalent.
Now, I actually hated Damian in Batman and Son, and though he's grown on me in B&R, he's still far from my favorite character, or even my favorite Robin. I have no qualms with people who dislike him.
But what I do havequalms with people either entirely misunderstanding a term, or blatantly ignoring the actual traits of a character when criticizing characterization. Describing Damian as a Mary Sue is to misunderstand the term, or to ignore the way Damian has been portrayed.
Simply put, the defining characteristic of Mary Sues are that they are "perfect" (at least as the term is most commonly used today--it can also be used to refer to blatant author self-insertion, but I don't think even the most rabid critic is contending that Damian is a Morrison self-insert). They are better at everything than all the other characters, they take over every plot so that they end up the real hero in most situations regardess of whether they are actually the protagonist, everyone falls in love with them, the narrative constantly goes out of its way to highlight how awesome and wonderful they are, etc. This generally goes hand in hand with overall terrible characterization. See: Uchiha, Sasuke, or Starlin Thanos or something.
But even if you feel that Damian's characterization has been awful (something I'd argue with, but which isn't the point of this post), he simply does not meet the first criteria in any way shape or form. Damian is not perfect, or even close to it, and the story never pretends that he is.
Far from being good at everything, Damian is pretty much only good at one thing: fighting. Granted, he is really, really good at that. He's by far the most capable any Robin has been in hand-to-hand combat at this early stage of their sidekick careers. But he also has a better rational for excellence in combat: he's been trained since birth, unlike the acrobat, street punk, and whiz-kid bat-fan that have preceded him in the role, so it stands to reason that he'd be much farther along than they were. But even at this one thing at which he is truly exceptional at, he's not the best or anything: Bruce was obviously far superior to him, and even if he is better at fighting than Dick and Tim were at his age, at this stage of the game both Dick and Tim are more skilled combatants as well.
But thats really it, as far as Damian's exceptional abilities go. Consider:
He's nowhere near as smart as Tim, and probably not even as smart as Dick. He's a mediocre detective whose idea of investigation can generally be summed up as "hit people until they tell me things", and he's an abysmal strategist who rushes headlong into every threat and relies on his skills to bail him out--which, you'll notice, often results in him needing to be saved by Batman. This doesn't mean he can't improve, but it would be a real stretch to say he's somehow perfect when it comes to intellect, especially since he's following up on the incredibly brilliant Tim who put him to shame in every way when it comes to outthinking people and solving mysteries.
He's a really bad sidekick, and a pretty awful superhero. He disobeys orders constantly and nearly always lands himself in trouble for it. He has no notion of how to fight with anyone as part of a team: he couldn't do it with Bruce, or Tim, or Dick, and each time this inability has made he and his teammates less effective than they otherwise would be if they were actually in synch. He also has no notion that there is anything more to his job than hurting bad guys--very early on he casually kills a minor villain, and in the last issue of B&R he simply ignored a victim so he could concentrate on kicking the bad guy's ass. Compare this to Dick, who really does have the both the perfect personality and skillset/fighting style to both succeed as a sidekick and to be an inspiring hero.
So he's not perfect. But the plot also doesn't go out of its way to downplay his flaws and make him out to be a hero. When Damian screws up, which is often, it inevitably creates real problems for himself and for Batman. So far in B&R he's rushed headlong into an opponent who proved too much for him, which not only got him in trouble but meant Dick had to turn to help him out, turning their entire fight at the police station into a complete disaster. Then he runs off, thinking he can fix the problem on his own, and gets easily captured right away. Then he escapes, and almost immediately charges Pyg and almost gets killed, having to be saved by Bruce along the way. In doing so, he entirely neglected to rescue the one savable person in the entire place, a failure that looks like it will come back to haunt him as that little girl is now joining the red hood.
Really, far from being a mary sue, Damian is closest in character type to the most flawed and screwed-up Robin of all: Jason Todd. The differences mainly being that Jason just acted tough but was actually a punk, whereas Damian is legitimately a pretty big badass; and that Damian is transparently *supposed* to be an unlikeable jerk whose dickery is played for laughs and to make him a foil for the much more heroic Dick, whereas Jason was supposed to be someone we felt bad for and who existed mainly to provide Bruce with even more angst. Those are interesting changes, but they don't somehow make him a Mary Sue. That doesn't mean you have to like him, as I can certainly see a lot of reasons why people, especially if they were big Dick or Tim fans, wouldn't. But if you're gonna criticise him at least use the proper terminology.
