Things haven't always worked out for The Demon's Head.
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00:00While the Joker might be considered to be Batman's arch-enemy, another strong contender
00:04for that title is the one and only Ra's al Ghul. While he may stick to his code of
00:09nobility and is even the grandfather to the current Robin, Ra's is also the head of
00:14the League of Assassins, and has proven himself to be a deadly opponent in his attempts to
00:18wipe out humanity for what he sees as the greater good. Of course, with the downside
00:22of being nearly immortal, is that Ra's has had plenty of opportunities for embarrassment
00:27over his rather long lifespan. That's what we're here to pick up today, as I'm Jules,
00:31this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Things DC Comics Wants You To Forget About
00:35Ra's al Ghul.
00:3610. He Met Talia's Mother at Woodstock
00:39Ra's' second-in-command is his daughter Talia. She's an important part of any story
00:44involving Ra's, and is also a love interest for Batman and the mother of his son Damian.
00:49Not much is known about Talia's origins, except that her mother was a woman called
00:53Oh, and that also Ra's met her while at Woodstock. That's right, the megalomaniac
00:58leader of an international organisation of assassins was a peace-loving hippie way back
01:02in the 1960s. It makes him a lot harder to take seriously as a threat, when you can also
01:06imagine Ra's strutting around in a paisley shirt and whipping up a batch of his special
01:10brownies for everyone else in the camper van.
01:12Talia's mother's original cause of death was that she overdosed on drugs, which was
01:16later retconned in that she was murdered by one of Ra's' enemies, just in case you
01:20had any doubts on what they were getting up to at Woodstock. It's pretty ridiculous
01:23to think of Ra's as a hippie, but then again, it does kind of explain why his outfits always
01:27seem to include an unbuttoned shirt and a sash.
01:309. He Lost a Swordfight to Green Arrow
01:33When Ra's al Ghul was announced to be part of Arrow's third season, a lot of fans were
01:37worried about actor Matt Noble's ability to pull off the iconic character. Those fears
01:41seemed to be put to rest, though, in the episode The Climb. Oliver challenges Ra's to a duel
01:46to the death, only to be destroyed by the master assassin. Despite him being unarmed,
01:50Ra's was able to easily disarm Oliver before running him through with his own sword and
01:54pushing him off the side of a cliff.
01:56It was a genuine shock, and a big highlight for what had generally been one of the show's
02:00weaker seasons, but it was a shame that when they fought again, it was so underwhelming.
02:03Ra's and Oliver fought again in the season finale, however this time Ra's fell victim
02:08to the one weakness of all Arrowverse villains – lazy writing. When it came down to a fight
02:12that the show's protagonist needed to win, Ra's conveniently just stopped being a better
02:16swordfighter than Oliver, and ended up being stabbed to death by an opponent that he could
02:20have pretty much beaten in his sleep before. It was an anticlimactic end to a pretty anticlimactic
02:26season. Still, at least it was better than season four.
02:288. He Was Jealous of Batman for Being a Better Father
02:31A lot of Ra's' plans are vast and elaborate schemes built around his goals for the entire
02:36world, but some of his plans, though, are just kind of petty. One of Talia al Ghul's
02:40main conflicts is how she is torn between her desire to be with Batman, and her desire
02:44to serve her father. However, in the 2000s, she finally decided that her father would
02:48never let her live how she wanted, and abandoned him.
02:51Like every other bad parent in history, Ra's blamed the collapse of his relationship with
02:55his daughter on somebody else, and swore revenge on Batman for taking her from him. He decided
03:00that he would take a member of Bruce's family from him, and in this case, it was his ward
03:04Dick Grayson. Instead of using the usual send ninjas to kill him plan, Ra's decided on
03:09the far less impressive plan of trying to drive a wedge between the two by convincing
03:13Nightwing that Batman hated him, and sabotaging Bruce's attempts at adoption.
03:18To add to the patheticness, the plan failed dismally, and Bruce Wayne ended up formally
03:22adopting Dick Grayson as his son. The entire plot was fuelled by Ra's' jealousy that
03:27Batman was a better father than he was, and looking on at the next entry we're about
03:31to list, he was definitely right to be jealous, because…
03:337. He Abandoned One of His Daughters in a Concentration Camp
03:37Long before Talia was born, Ra's had a daughter born in 18th century Russia. Nissa grew up
03:42hearing stories of her father, and once she was an adult, she tracked him down in one
03:46of his bases in Africa. Impressed by her skills, Ra's made her his second in command, and
03:50she accompanied him on his adventures. However, just like Talia eventually would, she became
03:55disenchanted with her father's cause, and left to start a family. Ra's was disappointed,
04:00but accepted his daughter's resignation, and even allowed her to keep using the Lazarus
04:03Pit to remain immortal. Then, as is so often the case, the Nazis came along and bloody
04:08ruined everything.
04:09Nissa and her father were thrown into a concentration camp during World War II. She begged her father
04:14for help, but Ra's refused to involve himself in the world's politics, even to save his
04:18daughter. Most parenting guidebooks would probably list that as a big no-no. By the
04:23time she was released, the rest of her family was dead, and she had been rendered infertile
04:27by Nazi experiments. Her time in the camp left her pretty rightfully ticked off, and
04:31she eventually managed to track down and kill Ra's. Then, she and Talia took control
04:35of the League of Assassins. But it turns out that this was all part of Ra's' plan to
04:39have his daughters come around to his way of thinking.
04:426. He Poisoned Kingpin's Wife
04:44Though they may seem like pretty bitter rivals now, Marvel and DC used to be on pretty amicable
04:49enough terms, so much so that their universes would occasionally cross over. One such crossover
04:54was Batman and Spider-Man New Age Dawning. In this storyline, Ra's al Ghul planned
04:59to wipe out New York City by sinking it under the ocean. As part of the plan, he gave Kingpin's
05:04wife cancer and forced Fisk to work for him in exchange for a cure. Kingpin then almost
05:09immediately betrayed Ra's because cancer is not a great tool for keeping a workforce
05:13motivated. Fisk helped Spider-Man and Batman sneak aboard his plane so that they could
05:17stop Ra's' plan and save the city. Defeated, Ra's left. But before he went, though, he
05:21told Fisk that he had lied about ever having a cure for the cancer. It turned out that
05:25Fisk was just trying to continue his trend of trying to ruin people's lives for fun,
05:29and later Talia handed the actual cure over to the heroes. Sadly, with Marvel and DC now
05:34wrapped up in much larger and competitive companies, these kinds of friendly crossovers
05:38seem unlikely to happen again, and DC would probably rather you forget they existed. Although,
05:42saying that, that's nothing compared to the next entry.
05:455. He Was Amalgamated
05:48In 1996, Marvel and DC published DC vs Marvel, a crossover book in which powerful beings
05:53from each universe had their respective characters battle to see who was the best, and this concept
05:58led to the short-lived Amalgam comic line. Amalgam Comics was pretty much what it said
06:02on the tin, a shared brand revolving around a universe filled with merged versions of
06:06Marvel and DC characters. One such character was Darkclaw, a combination of the two most
06:11brooding vigilantes in comics, Batman and Wolverine, to make an even more brooding vigilante
06:15who was now 90% scowl. Logan Wayne was the son of a pair of wealthy socialites who saw
06:20both his parents gunned down by a mugger, and then also discovered that he was a mutant
06:24and then had adamantium bonded to his skeleton. It wasn't exactly a seamless join, thinking
06:29about it.
06:30Of course, Darkclaw needed enemies. One of the most obvious choices was to combine DC's
06:34near-immortal genocidal mastermind Ra's al Ghul with Marvel's near-immortal genocidal
06:38mastermind Apocalypse. And what did they name this new character? Was it something like
06:43Genocide? Maybe Armageddon? No, they went with Ra's Apocalypse. All forenames aside,
06:51the Amalgam universe was actually pretty fun while it lasted.
06:544. He Stole A Man's Brain
06:56This was another one of Ra's' plans that didn't exactly seem very well thought out.
07:00In Batman 240, the Dark Knight was called by Commissioner Gordon to help solve the case
07:05of a scientist who had been murdered and had his brain removed, while on the killer's
07:09trail, he bumped into Talia, who conveniently took him right to the culprit. The man she
07:13took him to confessed to the crime, but didn't seem to know anything about the brain involved.
07:17Talia offered to help by injecting him with a truth serum, but accidentally gave the man
07:21the wrong serum and killed him.
07:24Batman wasn't fooled, since he's the world's greatest detective and all that, and also
07:27not a five-year-old, so he tracked down Ra's and found him with the professor's brain
07:31hooked up to a machine that allowed it to talk. It turned out that this whole thing
07:34was so that Ra's could interrogate the professor about the work he was doing for the US government.
07:39Somehow Ra's thought that this elaborate plan was easier than just kidnapping the man
07:42and asking him the questions. Anyway, the story ended with Ra's and Talia fleeing
07:46and the brain tricking Batman into flipping a switch that killed it, causing Batman to
07:50break his rule against killing for, I don't know, what, the 70th time by this point?
07:543. He Dated Black Canary
07:56One time in comics, Ra's al Ghul took time out of his busy supervillain plans to have
08:00a little bit of midlife crisis. In Birds of Prey number 31, Oracle sent her detective
08:06friend Jason Barr to follow her teammate Black Canary. Laurel had recently begun seeing
08:10a rich older man, and Barbara was worried that something wasn't quite right. That
08:14rich older man turned out to be Ra's al Ghul, a man old enough to be Laurel's great
08:18grandfather, but here the great would be repeated until the end of time. Ra's was masquerading
08:23as a count and wanted to seduce Black Canary into marrying him and joining the League of
08:27Assassins. Laurel was pretty into him at first, but the relationship took a bit of a turn
08:31when she found out about the whole trying to greatly reduce the world's population
08:35through murder thing, and she rejected his advances. Like the romantic that he is, Ra's
08:40tried to change her mind by kidnapping her and taking her to the Lazarus Pit. He intended
08:44to use the pit to destroy Laurel's mind and make her more compliant. Oracle arrived
08:48in time to stop Ra's, but in the ensuing battle, Laurel was injured. Barbara put her
08:52into the pit to save her, and as a side effect, Black Canary regained her iconic canary cry.
08:582. He Tried to Seduce Batman as His Own Daughter
09:01Batman Beyond, also called Batman of the Future, imagined a new Batman taking up the mantle
09:06in a cyberpunk future under the guidance of an elderly Bruce Wayne, and it was brilliant.
09:11The series saw the return of several classic Batman villains, including Mr. Freeze, the
09:15Joker, and in one super creepy episode, Ra's al Ghul. In the episode, Out of the Past,
09:21a seemingly unaged Talia appears in the Batcave. It was revealed that before he retired, Bruce
09:25had one last confrontation with Ra's. In that fight, Talia betrayed her father and
09:29sided with Batman, and Ra's was mortally wounded. Talia explained that his injuries
09:33were too much even for the Lazarus Pit to fix, and so Ra's had finally died. She had
09:38returned to offer Bruce a chance to use the pit himself and restore his youth so that
09:42they could be together forever. It turned out to be a trick, though, because before
09:45he died, Ra's had built a device that allowed him to transfer his mind into Talia's body,
09:50killing her in the process. He intended to do the same thing to Bruce once his youth
09:53was restored, and impersonating his son, take over Wayne Enterprises. Knowing that, it's
09:58pretty damn creepy to hear Ra's in Talia's body call Batman her beloved.
10:031. He's a Hypocrite
10:05Ra's al Ghul has always been portrayed as one of Batman's most noble villains. Whilst
10:09his actions trying to wipe out humanity may indeed be heinous, he does so out of a desire
10:14to protect the natural world. In his mind, humanity is an evil that must be destroyed
10:18if nature is indeed to survive. Except, sometimes he'll just throw all of that out the window
10:22and do horrible things to the natural world as well. In some stories, Ra's has been
10:26portrayed as a flat-out villain, caring about nothing more than his own mortality and increasing
10:30the power of the League of Assassins. One such story was Batman and Robin number 29.
10:35At the time, Robin was dead and his corpse had been stolen by Ra's. In this issue,
10:39Batman teamed up with Aquaman to track down the demon's head. As they followed Ra's,
10:43they found the League of Assassins hunting down and killing an entire pod of sperm whales.
10:47Apparently, Ra's had ordered the hunt so that the whales' wombs could be used to
10:50grow a brand new army of genetically altered assassins.
10:53It was a pretty gruesome scene, and a sharp contrast to the environmentally friendly eco-terrorist
10:58that Ra's is usually portrayed as.
11:00And there we go my friends, those were 10 things DC Comics wants you to forget about
11:04Ra's al Ghul. I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about
11:07it down in the comments section below. As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow
11:10me over on Twitter at RetroJ with a zero, or you can swing by Live and Let's Dice where
11:14I do all of my streaming outside of work. As always, I've been Jules, you have been
11:17awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.