Character Profiles - Villains - Ra's Al Ghul
Real Name: Ra's Al Ghul
Occupation: Criminal
Marital Status: Single
Base of Operations: Gotham
Height: 6ft 5in
Weight: 215 lbs
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Gray
First Appearance: Batman #232 (June, 1971)
Created By: Dennis O'Neil, Neal Adams
Once, centuries ago in Arabia, there was a physician who quested to defeat death. He was a brilliant man, and loved his wife dearly. He was called before a mighty sultan to cure his son’s ailment, and when he could think of no way to do it, he wandered into the desert to seek some divine breakthrough. While there, he stumbled across the knowledge that pools of chemicals set at certain ley lines would raise the dead. Calling these Lazarus Pits, he summoned the sultan, for a pit could only be used once, and only when certain prerequisites were set.
The sultan brought his son’s dead body, and it was dumped into the pit. The son was revived, but little did the physician know that, after first escaping the Pit, a man is driven temporarily insane. The sultan’s son lashed out at the nearest person, the physician’s wife, for whom he lusted, and he killed her. The sultan, refusing to believe his son a killer, had the man and his wife interred underground with raiders. Only the intervention of one whom the physician had saved years before allowed him to escape. Taking command of the band of raiders that were his family, he laid siege to the sultan’s city, killing all within, and smashing the statue of the demon the people worshipped. He took the head of the statue, and the raiders began worshipping him, calling him Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon’s Head.
Ra’s used the Lazarus Pits to keep himself alive over the years, and noticed that humanity was slowly destroying the planet that was its greatest gift. He accumulated great wealth, and became one of the world’s great secret powers. A tribe of fighters became servants to him, and one would always serve as his bodyguard, Ubu. There have been hundreds of Ubus over the centuries. He fathered a daughter named Nyssa on the Russian Steppes, and she traveled with him for years, learning the secrets of the Lazarus Pits, but the two had a falling out, and they separated, a bitterness growing between them.
Ra’s eventually did have another daughter, Talia, and she became his loyal right hand. She encountered the Batman, and Ra’s took an interest in him. The Lazarus Pits effects were not permanent, and became less effective over time, and so Ra’s had begun to think about an heir. He thought that Batman, or “the Detective” as he called him, would make an excellent husband to Talia and heir. Having discovered Batman’s true identity, Ra’s kidnapped Dick Grayson to test Batman’s skills and intellect, and at the end of the quest revealed his intentions: Batman would become his heir and soldier in his quest to wipe out the majority of the human race, leaving only a handful to live in an ecologically pure Eden. He also revealed the secrets of the Lazarus Pit and immortality. Batman refused, but Ra’s would not be deterred so easily.
Ra’s and Batman clashed often over the years. It was revealed that Ra’s was the master of the League of Assassins, a cartel of the world’s deadliest killers. He would use many of Batman’s rogues gallery as agents. He would even briefly ally with the Joker, although that would not work out.
When Gotham City was beset by the Clench, a deadly virus, the source was traced through agents that had infiltrated the Order of St. Dumas, and back to Ra’s. He had found a deadly device called the Wheel of Plagues, an ancient artifact that, used properly, would enable one to make the deadliest diseases in history. Batman and his allies led a worldwide hunt to stop Ra’s and his newest ally, Bane, who had been taken as Ra’s heir. In the end, Batman bested Bane in single combat and his allies destroyed the wheel. Seeing Bane as weak, Ra’s dismissed him, and Bane decided to take his revenge by destroying all the Lazarus Pits, cutting off Ra’s immortality.
Ra’s came into conflict with other heroes, including Superman, and stole the plans that Batman had stored away in case any of the JLA went rogue and used them against the League. He put a designer drug out onto the streets of Gotham to thin the populace and to regain many of the funds lost during his recent campaigns. A void began growing between Ra’s and Talia, and she left him to run Lexcorp. He also attempted to court the Black Canary, but when she discovered his true identity, she spurned him as well, but not before she was placed into one of the Lazarus Pits, restoring her Canary cry.
The years had finally caught up to Ra’s, and with Bane and Batman having destroyed all but one of the Lazarus Pits, he was aging quickly and with no way to recover. He came to Batman with an offer: leave the last pit be, and he would give Batman a drug that would allow him to see spirits and encounter his parents. Batman agreed, and Ra’s went to the last of the pits. After Ra’s was rejuvenated he found Nyssa, who he had not seen in decades waiting for him. She had her own Lazarus Pit, and had discovered a way to make them last indefinitely, as opposed to the one use. She had turned Talia utterly against him, and while Batman watched, held at bay by the legion of Ubus, Nyssa stabbed Ra’s to death. All along, Ra’s had used his cruelty to make Nyssa as cold and hard as he was, to make her the proper heir to his great empire. As he fell dead, he told her to take care of her sister, and the Ubus chorused, “The Demon’s Head is dead, long live the Demon’s Head.”
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