one of the interesting things about That Talia Spread is you can see the really clear split between Fraction and Jimenez as creatives running this story. Fraction’s script is so dismissive (at best) of Talia and Damian: Talia is written as a manipulator who duped Bruce, there’s these undertones that make her out to be a predator, Damian is directly compared to an explosive, Damian is unstable, Damian has to be saved by his white bloodline, Damian is a punishment, the al Ghuls are culturally foreign and thus malicious etc. Jimenez could have easily leaned into what the script provided and give us the same imagery we’ve seen 1000 times of shadowy bloodstained Damians who were abused into being killers and using lethal violence against the Bats or whatever, the worst possible version of this.
But instead the art looks like this:
None of this mitigates the damage or racism of the finished product but it’s definitely not really lining up with the tone of Fraction’s description either. Damian is being a studious little boy, he’s kicking ass with mama, he’s having a very brotherly petty squabble with Tim that’s played for laughs. The image of Talia holding onto his shoulders is the closest to anything sinister, and even then both of them are in the light and almost melancholy more than anything, and the presence of the shadowy beings behind them feels more threatening to Talia and Damian than they are to Bruce. And then there’s this illustration:
Right under where Fraction has Bruce describe his and Talia’s relationship as ‘unwilling’. Talia is not depicted as a predator here; at most she’s being seductive, but not coercive. The tone of the scene is erotic and gentle, and Bruce is positioned as both physically on top and actively engaging. The art is not communicating what the script is trying to convey, and if anything, it’s contradicting it.
