Things haven't always worked out for The Demon's Head.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 And while the Joker might be considered to be Batman's arch-enemy, another strong contender
00:04 for that title is the one and only Ra's al Ghul.
00:08 While he may stick to his code of nobility, and is even the grandfather to the current
00:12 Robin, Ra's is also the head of the League of Assassins, and has proven himself to be
00:16 a deadly opponent in his attempts to wipe out humanity for what he sees as the greater
00:20 good.
00:21 Of course, with the downside of being nearly immortal, is that Ra's has had plenty of
00:25 opportunities for embarrassment over his rather long lifespan.
00:28 And that's what we're here to pick up today, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and
00:32 these are 10 Things DC Comics Wants You To Forget About Ra's al Ghul.
00:36 10.
00:37 He Met Talia's Mother at Woodstock
00:39 Ra's' second-in-command is his daughter Talia.
00:42 She's an important part of any story involving Ra's, and is also a love interest for Batman
00:46 and the mother of his son Damian.
00:48 Not much is known about Talia's origins, except that her mother was a woman called
00:52 Melisande.
00:53 Oh, and that also Ra's met her while at Woodstock.
00:56 That's right, the megalomaniac, leader of an international organisation of assassins,
01:00 was a peace-loving hippie way back in the 1960s.
01:03 It makes him a lot harder to take seriously as a threat, when you can also imagine Ra's
01:07 strutting around in a paisley shirt and whipping up a batch of his special brownies for everyone
01:11 else in the camper van.
01:12 Talia's mother's original cause of death was that she overdosed on drugs, which was
01:16 later retconned in that she was murdered by one of Ra's' enemies, just in case you
01:19 had any doubts on what they were getting up to at Woodstock.
01:22 It's pretty ridiculous to think of Ra's as a hippie, but then again, it does kind
01:26 of explain why his outfits always seem to include an unbuttoned shirt and a sash.
01:30 9.
01:31 He Lost A Swordfight To Green Arrow
01:33 When Ra's Al Ghul was announced to be part of Arrow's third season, a lot of fans were
01:37 worried about actor Matt Noble's ability to pull off the iconic character.
01:41 Those fears seemed to be put to rest, though, in the episode "The Climb".
01:44 Oliver challenges Ra's to a duel to the death, only to be destroyed by the master
01:49 assassin.
01:50 While being unarmed, Ra's was able to easily disarm Oliver before running him through with
01:53 his own sword and pushing him off the side of a cliff.
01:56 It was a genuine shock, and a big highlight for what had generally been one of the show's
01:59 weaker seasons, but it was a shame that when they fought again, it was so underwhelming.
02:03 Ra's and Oliver fought again in the season finale, however this time Ra's fell victim
02:07 to the one weakness of all Arrowverse villains – lazy writing.
02:11 When it came down to a fight that the show's protagonist needed to win, Ra's conveniently
02:15 just stopped being a better swordfighter than Oliver, and ended up being stabbed to death
02:19 by an opponent that he could have pretty much beaten in his sleep before.
02:22 It was an anticlimactic end to a pretty anticlimactic season.
02:25 Still, at least it was better than season four.
02:28 8.
02:29 He Was Jealous Of Batman For Being A Better Father
02:31 A lot of Ra's' plans are vast and elaborate schemes built around his goals for the entire
02:36 world, but some of his plans, though, are just kind of petty.
02:38 One of Talia al Ghul's main conflicts is how she is torn between her desire to be with
02:42 Batman and her desire to serve her father.
02:45 However, in the 2000s, she finally decided that her father would never let her live how
02:49 she wanted, and abandoned him.
02:51 Like every other bad parent in history, Ra's blamed the collapse of his relationship with
02:55 his daughter on somebody else, and swore revenge on Batman for taking her from him.
02:59 He decided that he would take a member of Bruce's family from him, and in this case,
03:03 it was his ward Dick Grayson.
03:05 Instead of using the usual 'send ninjas to kill him' plan, Ra's decided on the
03:09 far less impressive plan of trying to drive a wedge between the two by convincing Nightwing
03:13 that Batman hated him, and sabotaging Bruce's attempts at adoption.
03:17 To add to the patheticness, the plan failed dismally, and Bruce Wayne ended up formally
03:22 adopting Dick Grayson as his son.
03:24 The entire plot was fuelled by Ra's' jealousy that Batman was a better father than he was,
03:29 and looking on at the next entry we're about to list, he was definitely right to be jealous,
03:32 because
03:33 7.
03:34 He Abandoned One Of His Daughters In A Concentration Camp
03:37 Long before Talia was born, Ra's had a daughter born in 18th century Russia.
03:41 Nyssa grew up hearing stories of her father, and once she was an adult, she tracked him
03:45 down in one of his bases in Africa.
03:47 Impressed by her skills, Ra's made her his second in command, and she accompanied him
03:51 on his adventures.
03:52 However, just like Talia eventually would, she became disenchanted with her father's
03:56 cause, and left to start a family.
03:58 Ra's was disappointed, but accepted his daughter's resignation, and even allowed
04:02 her to keep using the Lazarus Pit to remain immortal.
04:05 Then, as is so often the case, the Nazis came along and bloody ruined everything.
04:09 Nyssa and her father were thrown into a concentration camp during World War II.
04:13 She begged her father for help, but Ra's refused to involve himself in the world's
04:17 politics, even to save his daughter.
04:19 Most parenting guidebooks would probably list that as a big no-no.
04:22 By the time she was released, the rest of her family was dead, and she had been rendered
04:26 infertile by Nazi experiments.
04:28 Her time in the camp left her pretty rightfully ticked off, and she eventually managed to
04:32 track down and kill Ra's.
04:33 Then she and Talia took control of the League of Assassins.
04:37 It turns out that this was all part of Ra's' plan to have his daughters come around to
04:40 his way of thinking.
04:42 6.
04:43 He Poisoned Kingpin's Wife
04:44 Though they may seem like pretty bitter rivals now, Marvel and DC used to be on pretty amicable
04:49 enough terms, so much so that their universes would occasionally cross over.
04:53 One such crossover was Batman and Spider-Man New Age Dawning.
04:57 In this storyline, Ra's al Ghul planned to wipe out New York City by sinking it under
05:01 the ocean.
05:02 As part of the plan, he gave Kingpin's wife cancer and forced Fisk to work for him in
05:06 exchange for a cure.
05:08 Kingpin then almost immediately betrayed Ra's because cancer is not a great tool for keeping
05:12 a workforce motivated.
05:13 Fisk helped Spider-Man and Batman sneak aboard his plane so that they could stop Ra's'
05:17 plan and save the city.
05:19 Defeated, Ra's left.
05:20 But before he went, he told Fisk that he had lied about ever having a cure for the cancer.
05:24 It turned out that Ra's was just trying to continue his trend of trying to ruin people's
05:28 lives for fun, and later Talia handed the actual cure over to the heroes.
05:32 Sadly, with Marvel and DC now wrapped up in much larger and competitive companies, these
05:36 kinds of friendly crossovers seem unlikely to happen again, and DC would probably rather
05:41 you forget they existed.
05:42 Although, saying that, that's nothing compared to the next entry, as...
05:45 5.
05:46 He Was Amalgamated
05:48 In 1996, Marvel and DC published DC vs Marvel, a crossover book in which powerful beings
05:53 from each universe had their respective characters battle to see who was the best.
05:57 And this concept led to the short-lived Amalgam Comic line.
06:00 Amalgam Comics was pretty much what it said on the tin, a shared brand revolving around
06:04 a universe filled with merged versions of Marvel and DC characters.
06:08 One such character was Darkclaw, a combination of the two most brooding vigilantes in comics,
06:12 Batman and Wolverine, to make an even more brooding vigilante who was now 90% scowl.
06:17 Logan Wayne was the son of a pair of wealthy socialites who saw both his parents gunned
06:21 down by a mugger, and then also discovered that he was a mutant and then had adamantium
06:25 bonded to his skeleton.
06:27 It wasn't exactly a seamless join, thinking about it.
06:29 Of course, Darkclaw needed enemies.
06:31 One of the most obvious choices was to combine DC's near-immortal genocidal mastermind
06:35 Ra's al Ghul with Marvel's near-immortal genocidal mastermind Apocalypse.
06:40 And what did they name this new character?
06:42 Was it something like Genocide?
06:44 Maybe Armageddon?
06:45 No, they went with Ra's Apocalypse.
06:50 All forenames aside, though, the Amalgam universe was actually pretty fun while it lasted.
06:53 4.
06:54 He Stole A Man's Brain
06:56 This was another one of Ra's' plans that didn't exactly seem very well thought out.
07:00 In Batman #240, the Dark Knight was called by Commissioner Gordon to help solve the case
07:04 of a scientist who had been murdered and had his brain removed.
07:08 While on the killer's trail, he bumped into Talia, who conveniently took him right to
07:12 the culprit.
07:13 The man she took him to confessed to the crime, but didn't seem to know anything about the
07:16 brain involved.
07:17 Talia offered to help by injecting him with a truth serum, but accidentally gave the man
07:21 the wrong serum and killed him.
07:23 Batman wasn't fooled, since he's the world's greatest detective and all that, and also
07:27 not a five-year-old, so he tracked down Ra's and found him with the professor's brain
07:31 hooked up to a machine that allowed it to talk.
07:33 It turned out that this whole thing was so that Ra's could interrogate the professor
07:36 about the work he was doing for the US government.
07:38 Somehow Ra's thought that this elaborate plan was easier than just kidnapping the man
07:42 and asking him the questions.
07:43 Anyway, the story ended with Ra's and Talia fleeing, and the brain tricking Batman into
07:47 flipping a switch that killed it, causing Batman to break his rule against killing for,
07:51 I don't know, what, the 70th time by this point?
07:53 3.
07:54 He Dated Black Canary
07:56 One time in comics, Ra's al Ghul took time out of his busy supervillain plans to have
08:00 a little bit of midlife crisis.
08:02 In Birds of Prey #31, Oracle sent her detective friend Jason Barr to follow her teammate Black
08:08 Canary.
08:09 Laurel had recently begun seeing a rich, older man, and Barbara was worried that something
08:12 wasn't quite right.
08:13 That rich, older man turned out to be Ra's al Ghul, a man old enough to be Laurel's
08:18 great-grandfather, but here the 'great' would be repeated until the end of time.
08:21 Ra's was masquerading as a count and wanted to seduce Black Canary into marrying him and
08:26 joining the League of Assassins.
08:28 Laurel was pretty into him at first, but the relationship took a bit of a turn when she
08:31 found out about the whole 'trying to greatly reduce the world's population through murder'
08:35 thing, and she rejected his advances.
08:38 Like the romantic that he is, Ra's tried to change her mind by kidnapping her and taking
08:42 her to the Lazarus Pit.
08:43 He intended to use the pit to destroy Laurel's mind and make her more compliant.
08:47 A miracle arrived in time to stop Ra's, but in the ensuing battle, Laurel was injured.
08:51 Barbara put her into the pit to save her, and as a side effect, Black Canary regained
08:56 her iconic 'Canary Cry'.
08:58 2.
08:59 He Tried to Seduce Batman as His Own Daughter
09:01 Batman Beyond, also called Batman of the Future, imagined a new Batman taking up the mantle
09:06 in a cyberpunk future under the guidance of an elderly Bruce Wayne, and it was brilliant.
09:11 The series saw the return of several classic Batman villains, including Mr. Freeze, the
09:15 Joker, and in one super creepy episode, Ra's Al Ghul.
09:19 In the episode 'Out of the Past', a seemingly unaged Talia appears in the Batcave.
09:23 It was revealed that before he retired, Bruce had one last confrontation with Ra's.
09:27 In that fight, Talia betrayed her father and sided with Batman, and Ra's was mortally
09:31 wounded.
09:32 Talia explained that his injuries were too much even for the Lazarus Pit to fix, and
09:35 so Ra's had finally died.
09:37 She had returned to offer Bruce a chance to use the pit himself and restore his youth
09:41 so that they could be together forever.
09:43 It turned out to be a trick, though, because before he died, Ra's had built a device
09:47 that allowed him to transfer his mind into Talia's body, killing her in the process.
09:51 He intended to do the same thing to Bruce once his youth was restored, and impersonating
09:55 his son take over Wayne Enterprises.
09:57 Knowing that, it's pretty damn creepy to hear Ra's, in Talia's body, call Batman
10:02 her beloved.
10:03 1.
10:04 He's a Hypocrite
10:05 Ra's Al Ghul has always been portrayed as one of Batman's most noble villains.
10:09 Whilst his actions trying to wipe out humanity may indeed be heinous, he does so out of a
10:13 desire to protect the natural world.
10:15 In his mind, humanity is an evil that must be destroyed if nature is indeed to survive.
10:20 Except, sometimes he'll just throw all of that out the window and do horrible things
10:23 to the natural world as well.
10:25 In some stories, Ra's has been portrayed as a flat-out villain, caring about nothing
10:28 more than his own mortality and increasing the power of the League of Assassins.
10:32 One such story was Batman and Robin #29.
10:35 At the time, Robin was dead and his corpse had been stolen by Ra's.
10:38 In this issue, Batman teamed up with Aquaman to track down the demon's head.
10:42 As they followed Ra's, they found the League of Assassins hunting down and killing an entire
10:46 pod of sperm whales.
10:47 Apparently, Ra's had ordered the hunt so that the whales' wombs could be used to
10:50 grow a brand new army of genetically altered assassins.
10:53 It was a pretty gruesome scene, and a sharp contrast to the environmentally-friendly eco-terrorist
10:58 that Ra's is usually portrayed as.
11:00 And there we go my friends, those were 10 things DC Comics wants you to forget about
11:03 Ra's Al Ghul.
11:04 I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in
11:07 the comments section below.
11:08 As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter @RetroJWithA0, or you can
11:12 swing by Liv and Let's Dice where I do all of my streaming outside of work.
11:15 As always I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak
11:19 to you soon.