The Ra's al Ghul FAQ (2nd Draft)

[Lorendiac]

Section 1: Vital Statistics, Family Ties
1.01. What does "Ra's al Ghul" mean?
1.02. Is "Ra's al Ghul" his real name?
1.03. Where was he born?
1.04. When was he born?
1.05. What do we know about his ancestry?
1.06. How many children does he have?
1.07. Any grandchildren or other descendants?
1.08. Any other blood relatives besides descendants?
1.09. What's his interest in Batman anyway?
1.10. What superpowers does he have?
1.11. Is Ra's currently alive or dead?
1.12. That wasn't what I meant! Which is it?
1.13. Has he ever been Permanently Dead before?
1.14. Is there anyone else called "Ra's al Ghul"?
1.15. I've heard some confusing stuff about the graphic novel "Batman: Son of the Demon." What's up with that? Is Ra's al Ghul now, or has he ever been, Batman's father-in-law, and the grandfather of Batman's child? In the regular continuity, I mean?

Section 2: Lazarus Pits.
2.01. What is a Lazarus Pit?
2.02. What, exactly, happens when a body is dipped in a Lazarus Pit?
2.03. Just what are the limits of a Lazarus Pit?
2.04. How many Lazarus Pits are there?
2.05. What would happen if there were no Lazarus Pits in existence?
2.06. Exactly who knows how to make a Lazarus Pit?
2.07. Why doesn't Ra's franchise the silly things?
2.08. Who has been “healed” in a Lazarus Pit?
2.09. Outside of Ra's family and organization, who else knows that Lazarus Pits exist and really, really work?
2.10. Why don't any of the DC heroes who know about them make more use of them? For instance, why didn't Batman dunk Superman in the nearest Lazarus Pit when Superman was declared dead in 1992?
2.11. But wasn't there a passage in "Hush" wherein Jeph Loeb tried to answer that previous question?
2.12. But wasn't there also a passage in "Death and the Maidens" wherein Greg Rucka tried to answer the question differently?

Section 3. Agenda and History
3.01. What is Ra's al Ghul's purpose in life?
3.02. Has he made any progress in achieving his goal of genocide for the vast majority of the human race?
3.03. What did he have to do with Hitler's Holocaust?

Section 4: Miscellaneous Matters
4.01. How many guys named Ubu have there been?
4.02. How many hirelings has he had?
4.03. How many worthy suitors has he found for his daughter Talia?
4.04. Does Ra's know Batman's secret identity?
4.05. How is "Ra's al Ghul" pronounced?"
4.06. Who created Ra's al Ghul?

Section 5: Ra's in Other Media
5.01. What TV episodes has Ra's been in?
5.02. What movies has Ra's been in?



THE RA'S AL GHUL FAQ

WARNING: All of this is based on my understanding of the "Pre-Infinite Crisis" continuity of Ra's al Ghul. Any portion of it could have been changed or destroyed as a side effect of Superboy-Prime's Retcon Punch.


Section 1: Vital Statistics, Family Ties

1.01. What does Ra's al Ghul mean?

"The Demon's Head" or "Head of the Demon" in Arabic. For this reason, Ra's is sometimes referred to as "The Demon" for short, as in the titles of two graphic novels, "Batman: Son of the Demon" and "Batman: Bride of the Demon." Ra's should not be confused with the character Etrigan, also known as The Demon, who was created by Jack Kirby back in the 1970s in "The Demon #1."

1.02. Is "Ra's al Ghul" his real name?

According to the graphic novel “Batman: Birth of the Demon,” no. However, writer Denny O’Neil jumped through hoops to avoid telling us what the original name was of the “physician” character who eventually became Ra’s al Ghul. He has now been using that name for centuries, so after all that time we may as well assume that it's his "real" name now even if it didn't used to be!

1.03. Where was he born?

The fact that he uses an Arabic name would seem to suggest that he was born somewhere in the large area vaguely known as "The Middle East." However, he speaks a great many languages fluently and has never gone on record as to which of them, if any, was his native tongue.

The graphic novel "Batman: Birth of the Demon," written by Denny O'Neil, fills in some details about the "origin story" of Ra's al Ghul, but carefully avoids telling us the name or exact location of the city wherein he was born and raised and spent some years as a professional physician. Judging from the architecture, the style of clothing, and some geographical clues, it would appear to have been somewhere in North Africa. It is not absolutely clear if this graphic novel is currently supposed to be taken as gospel truth, however.

1.04. When was he born?

Someone has stated in a Wikipedia entry that he was born “six hundred to seven hundred years ago.” They do not specifically cite a source for that estimate.

(Note: An alert reader suggested to me that the Wikipedia estimate may have been influenced by dialogue in the "Avatar" episode of "Batman: The Animated Series," in which Ra's referred to having spent a good six hundred years searching for a certain mummy. Of course, dialogue in the TV continuity would not be binding upon the continuity of the regular comic book DCU.)

Just recently I found the following dialogue in "Azrael #6." Speaking to Jean Paul Valley, Ra's says, "I appear to be a vigorous fifty. I am actually a very vigorous four hundred and forty-eight . . . or is it four hundred and fifty-three? I lost count during the Black Plague. No matter."

This story has the advantage of being written by Denny O'Neil, the original creator of Ra's, who presumably "knows" more about the subject than anyone else. Given that this issue was cover-dated July 1995, and given that stories in the DCU generally seem to happen in the same calendar year in which they are published (unless otherwise stated), we may conclude that Ra's was born somewhere around the period of 1542-1547. (Give or take some margin of error?)

1.05. What do we know about his ancestry?

Practically nothing that we can be sure of.

1.06. How many children does he have?

Pre-Infinite Crisis Answer: Two that we know of. His daughters Talia and Nyssa, half-sisters because they had different mothers.

Nyssa was recently reported dead in the "Robin" title, but I do not know for sure if she is dead. And if she is dead, I do not know if she will stay dead, or will Talia (or someone else) be able to retrieve enough of the body to revive her in a Lazarus Pit?

When Ra's first appeared, we found out Talia was his daughter. (Talia had actually debuted earlier than he did in the Batman comics.) We have since learned that in English-speaking cultures, she sometimes uses the name "Talia Head" as a way of reflecting her ancestry.

Greg Rucka's "Death and the Maidens" nine-part miniseries (now available as a TPB) introduced Talia's half-sister Nyssa, whose mother was apparently a Russian Jew who had an affair with Ra's somewhere around the late 18th century, producing one daughter. Nyssa spent many years serving her father as a lieutenant in his organization; then broke away from him. It is not clear when Talia was born, but she never knew of her half-sister Nyssa's existence until very recently.

(Ra's would have saved himself a great deal of trouble if he had ever previously shown Talia a photograph and said, "This is your half-sister Nyssa - don't turn your back on her if you meet her! She's angry at me and knows most of my secrets!" But for Ra's to have taken such elementary precautions many years ago would have completely ruined Rucka's plot, therefore Ra's never got around to it.)

Post-Infinite Crisis Answer: He may or may not have a third child by Evelyn Grayce. At the very end of the graphic novel "Bride of the Demon" (1990) Ra's was believed to have just died (but it wasn't certain), and Evelyn asserted that she was pregnant with his child. There has never been any follow-up on that subject. As far as I know, that story was her first, last, and only appearance in any published story ever, in or out of continuity. For the past 12 years it has definitely been "out of continuity," but that may change soon. (See 1.15 for more discussion of the complexities of the status of "Son of the Demon" and "Bride of the Demon" in modern continuity.)

On the other hand, Ra's is supposed to have been around for centuries, so it's perfectly plausible to suggest that he could have sired dozens if not hundreds of other children, legitimate or illegitimate, that we simply haven't heard about yet. And of course any unknown children of his could have grown up and eventually produced offspring of their own, and so forth.

[Lorendiac]

1.07. Any grandchildren or other descendants?

There were further descendants of Ra's due to the marriage of his daughter Nyssa in the early 20th century. She had children and apparently one or more of them reproduced later. However, except for Nyssa herself, that entire branch of the family died out prior to the "present day" setting of the "Death and the Maidens" miniseries. In one flashback scene in "Death and the Maidens #1," set "last year" (which would be longer ago now, what with the DCU's recent leap to "One Year Later," we saw Nyssa get the sad news that her last descendant, a great-grandson named Vasily Vasilievich Arketov, had just died in action while serving as a Russian military officer. So, as far as we know at the moment, the only living descendants of Ra's al Ghul are his two daughters: Talia and Nyssa (unless she actually died as recently reported in the "Robin" title), and nobody else.

ADDENDUM: It has recently been announced that Grant Morrison's upcoming run as a Batman writer will drag Batman's son by Talia back into continuity. This will give Ra's one living grandchild that we know of. See 1.15 for more details on the peculiarities of this situation and its status in continuity over the past 19 years.

1.08. Any other blood relatives besides descendants?

None that we know of. Of course, since Ra's is a member of the human race, he ought to be distantly related to every other human being on Earth if you go back enough hundreds (or thousands) of years to find common ancestors, but we haven't actually heard about anyone else whom Ra's al Ghul viewed as being a close relative and invited to family dinners or anything like that.

1.09. What's his interest in Batman anyway?

Ra's has a great deal of respect for Batman's abilities and dedication. He has often expressed the hope that Bruce Wayne will agree to become his heir, because even with Lazarus Pits available, Ra's doesn't really expect to live forever. The way Denny O'Neil wrote Ra's back in the 1970s, his ideal scenario would be to see Bruce marry Talia, give Ra's grandkids, and explicitly agree to prepare himself to someday take over the family business, meaning Ra's al Ghul's worldwide organization. (Some, but not all, of this scenario was shown to us in an Elseworlds tale, "Superman/Batman: Generations" by John Byrne.) Also, according to a comment quoted in the book "Tales of the Dark Knight" by Mark Cotta Vaz, Denny O'Neil once expressed the opinion in an interview that the hypothetical offspring of Bruce and Talia would naturally be the most genetically perfect kids on Earth. Make of that what you will. :)

1.10. What Superpowers does he have?

Apparently none per se, since the actions of the Lazarus Pits aren't the same thing as an inherent physical ability to heal from injuries and stay alive for hundreds of years (unlike, say, Wolverine's mutant healing factor that lets him spring back from practically anything without artificial aids). This makes Ra's a "normal" human being in terms of his strength, reflexes, etc - although a formidable one who can give Batman a run for his money in one-on-one combat. However, having been alive for hundreds of years, he has mastered many useful skills. (Including swordplay, although you wouldn't think that would be so important in the modern world, considering how far military weaponry has advanced since the old days of the Three Musketeers and all that fun stuff.)

1.11. Is Ra's currently alive or dead?

Yes. He is currently either alive or dead. I think.

1.12. That wasn't what I meant! Which is it?

I am told that the 9-part miniseries "Death and the Maidens," written by Greg Rucka and now available in trade paperback, was advertised as being "the last Ra's al Ghul story" or words to that effect. He certainly seemed to have died at the end of it, under circumstances where his vindictive daughter Nyssa was refusing to let his carcass be revived in a Lazarus Pit.

1.13. Has he ever been Permanently Dead before?

You betcha!

Several other stories over the years have shown Ra's either explicitly dying, or else left in a situation such that it seemed "certain" he must have died. And sometimes the authors bend over backwards to try to sell us the idea that this time even his trusty Lazarus Pits won't be able to save him, for one reason or another.

Notable cases wherein we were told or somehow led to believe that Ra’s ought to be “absolutely, positively, meaningfully, permanently dead – and we REALLY mean it this time!” include stories published in these comics:

Detective Comics #490
Batman #335
Batman Annual #8
Batman #400
Batman: Bride of the Demon
Batman: Death and the Maidens #9 (this is the recent one that is still in force - as far as we know)

In several of those cases even Batman, despite his professional paranoia, appeared to believe that Ra's had gone to his final rest.

But in the past Ra's has always returned when another writer wants to do another story about him. When we bear in in mind the lack of permanence in the previous deaths I mentioned, it seems likely that his most recent "Permanent Death" in the "Death and the Maidens" miniseries will also be undone sooner or later.

1.14. Is there anyone else named "Ra's al Ghul"?

There was for awhile. At the very end of the "Death and the Maidens" miniseries, Nyssa Raatko has claimed the title of "Ra's al Ghul" for herself and Talia claims to have accepted that, taking orders from Nyssa now.

However: I am told that Nyssa apparently died in a recent car bombing in "Robin #148." If this is accurate, and if we assume that her father is still dead in the absence of any direct evidence to the contrary, then at this exact time in DCU continuity (early May 2006 as I type this) there is no living, breathing character who currently uses the "name" or "title" of "Ra's al Ghul" to the best of our knowledge.

1.15. I've heard some confusing stuff about the graphic novel "Batman: Son of the Demon." What's up with that? Is Ra's al Ghul now, or has he ever been, Batman's father-in-law, and the grandfather of Batman's child? In the regular continuity, I mean?

Father-in-law and grandfather of Batman's son? In continuity? As far as I can tell, the answer to that question used to be "Maybe." Then it became "No." In the very near future, it is scheduled to "officially" change to "Yes, to the grandfather of Batman's child part, and presumably at least a qualified 'Yes' to the father-in-law part, at least in Ra's and Talia's opinion, if not necessarily in Batman's."

There you go! Three answers for the price of one! I'm glad I could clear that up for you! :)

Not satisfied? You want a little bit more detail so those three different answers from different times will make more sense? Look, why don't you sit down and get yourself something to drink? This one will take a while to explain. Let me lay it out in chronological order.

1978. DC Special #15: Batman Spectacular.

Batman is rendered unconscious. Then he wakes up aboard a ship belonging to Ra's al Ghul. Ra's tells him that Batman is now married to Talia. Batman pointedly observes, "I don't remember saying 'I do!'" Ra's sees no reason why that triviality should count for anything. According to the rules of his native people, it is enough for the bride to firmly express her consent, i.e. "I hereby take you as my husband" or words to that effect, we gather. (We never got to hear exactly what Talia had allegedly said before Batman recovered consciousness, either.) This might not be a valid marriage in the USA, but they're on board a ship, out at sea, at the moment. I don't know what international law might say about it, or what the exact laws are of whatever country had chartered this particular ship.

Hoping for the best, Ra's feeds the lovebirds a wedding feast and then has them locked into a stateroom on the ship where they can (hopefully) physically consummate their union. He may well be working on the theory that if Batman actually consummates it with Talia, his sense of honor will then require him to regard himself as mated to her for life as part of a package deal.

It doesn't work. Batman knocks her unconscious, picks the lock on the door, and escapes back to the mainland just in time to foil Ra's al Ghul's latest scheme. He clearly does not regard himself as a married man. (Talia, however, is still madly in love with him -- and he earlier admitted being very fond of her, as well.)

So all of the above "really happened" in the continuity of the 1970s. The story is reprinted in the TPB "Batman: Tales of the Demon" if you want to look it up later. As far as I know, just about everything reprinted in "Tales of the Demon" is still supposed to be firmly embedded in the regular continuity of Batman today. (With one trifling exception: In the story in which Kathy Kane died, there was a reference to her previous career as a superhero called Batwoman. After "Crisis on Infinite Earths," the revised continuity was that she had still died as shown in that story, but had never been "Batwoman" or any other type of superhero. Whether or not all that still applies to the Post-Infinite Crisis DCU is unclear.)

For the next 9 years, as far as I can tell at the moment, there is no specific reference to this putative "marriage" in any published story that featured one or more of the following characters: Batman, Talia, and Ra's al Ghul. This did not mean it was retconned out of existence

[Lorendiac]

1987. Batman: Son of the Demon.

In this graphic novel written by Mike Barr, Talia reminds Batman of the time when she consented to their marriage, in accordance with the laws or customs of her heritage. Although modern readers don't always recognize this when they stumble across "Son of the Demon" for the first time, Barr was not just "retconning" a previous "marriage" or "almost-marriage" into the plot out of thin air; instead, he carefully had Talia referring to something that had "really happened" almost a decade earlier in a story by Denny O'Neil. One possible implication, if you wanted to take it that way, was that all this time Talia had secretly regarded herself as morally committed to being Batman's wife, even though she had patiently recognized that he didn't see it that way yet, so she didn't press the point whenever she saw him from then on -- until now!

In this graphic novel, they start sleeping together and share a bedchamber for a period of months. They seem to be acting as if they regard themselves as married, or "as good as married," or whatever. Eventually Talia tells Batman she is pregnant. Later, she tells him she miscarried. At the end of the graphic novel, they break up for some reason and Batman goes back home to Gotham, as if nothing important had really changed in his life. I guess he decided he didn't really feel married to her after all?

The reader, however, sees a cute little baby boy being adopted by what appears to be a nice, normal married couple somewhere. The obvious implication is that Talia decided things weren't going to work out and, for whatever reason, put the baby up for adoption so he could be raised in a "normal" environment far away from Bats and Demons and all that other weird stuff.

1990. Batman: Bride of the Demon.

This is a sequel to "Son of the Demon," but writer Mike Barr provides us with no new information on the fate of the child of Batman and Talia. At one point, Talia begins to raise the subject of that "unsuccessful" pregnancy from "Son of the Demon." In context, it seems as if she is working up her nerve to tell Batman the truth about what happened to their baby. Batman, however, cuts her off, saying he isn't ready to talk about that now. He isn't sure he ever will be. (He still thinks it ended in miscarriage.) She immediately lets the subject drop. We don't actually see the child at all.

As far as I can tell, at the moment I type this there has never yet been any explicit reference in any of the "regular" Batman titles to the events of "Son of the Demon" or "Bride of the Demon." They have generally seemed to exist in their own private little world. I do not know that anyone at DC explicitly said they were meant to be taken seriously as "in continuity" in the years right after they first came out. I doubt anyone at DC ever said that, but I could be wrong. So for several years, the events of "Son of the Demon" were basically "Maybe in continuity, but if so, it's as if there was a Total Amnesia Retcon, because nobody ever mentions any of it!"

At any rate, there was finally a new policy decision on the subject.

1994. Denny O'Neil lays down the law. The story I have heard more than once goes like this: Editors at DC were told that they could use "Zero Hour" as the handy excuse for one Great Big Retcon per regular title under their jurisdiction. As the editor in charge of all Batman's titles, O'Neil was in a position to enact several Retcons all at once. One of them was this: "Batman and Talia have never had sexual intercourse under any circumstances, married or unmarried. Therefore, 'Son of the Demon' and its sequel 'Bride of the Demon' obviously never happened in continuity. Regard them as the equivalent of Elseworlds stories."

Considering that as far as I know, there had never been any reference to them in the pages of any monthly Batman title since they were published, you could make a good argument that O'Neil was only "officially stating" what had already been the unspoken policy for years: "Sweep those stories under the rug and forget about them!"

For the next twelve years: Officially, there is no further word on "Son of the Demon." O'Neil said it was out of continuity back in 1994, and it's stayed there ever since. Although there's been quite a bit of confusion on this subject, thanks to the fact that anyone buying a copy of the graphic novel at a sale won't see anything on the cover (or inside) that explicitly says anything so helpful as "Attention! Denny O'Neil, the Lord High Batman Editor, Hath Proclaimed This to be Out of Continuity!" Nor are there any Elseworlds logos in sight.

2006. At this moment, nothing has been published in a Batman title to drag "Son of the Demon" back into continuity. But Grant Morrison allegedly intends to do so when he starts his run as a Batman writer later this year. I do not know exactly what his plans are, but apparently he makes no secret of the fact that he intends to make use of the "long-lost" child of Batman and Talia, somehow.


Section 2: Lazarus Pits

2.01. What is a Lazarus Pit?

A Lazarus Pit is a product of alchemy. It apparently requires elaborate and expensive preparations to turn a hole in the ground into a functional Lazarus Pit. Once you have it all set up, you lower a dead body to be completely immersed in it, and pretty quickly the dead body comes back to life. It has also been suggested that once treated this way, the body will not suffer from advancing old age but will become "immortal" in the sense of being pretty much locked in place at a certain physical age (although not "immortal" in the sense of "indestructible."

That is the principal reason Ra's al Ghul has lived for centuries - he keeps contingency plans set up so that if he dies, as he often does, loyal subordinates will locate the body as quickly as possible and rush it to the nearest Lazarus Pit site.

2.02. What, exactly, happens when the body is dipped in a Lazarus Pit?

The general idea appears to be this:

When Ra's dies, loyal servants (and/or his daughter Talia) retrieve the body and move it to a Lazarus Pit as quickly as possible. The body must be completely immersed in the steaming liquid in the pit. The Pit evidently has to be built well in advance, according to a precise recipe for the ingredients. Once the body is placed in the Pit, it quickly recovers life, being completely healed of any physical injuries or illnesses in the process. The first time we saw Ra's come out of a pit (which was far from the first time he had done it), he was in a berserker rage, inarticulate and incredibly, perhaps superhumanly, strong. That apparently happens every time, but only as a very temporary condition. Once it wears off, Ra's is his normal self again, physically and mentally.

In the "Bride of the Demon" graphic novel, a middle-aged actress named Evelyn Grayce was immersed in the Pit while still alive. Just as Ra's had promised her, it "turned back the clock" a few decades to make her look as young and gorgeous as she ever had when she was first making a name for herself in Hollywood. However, other people in other stories (including Ra's himself) have been dunked in Pits at other times without coming out looking physically decades younger than they previously looked. This appears to have been something of a special case.

Ra's has claimed that his Pits confer immortality. However, I don't know of any cases where anyone who has only been immersed once has said, ten or twenty years later, "That's funny - I don't look a day older than I did the day I got dunked in a Pit!" So it appears that just one use of the pit does not make you physically younger, nor does it cause your body to stop aging entirely after you come out, nor does it seem to greatly slow your physical aging (as far as we know at the moment). It is possible, however, that repeated use of the Pits can have a gradual effect which will cause a man's physical aging to slow to a snail's pace, and that this has happened to Ra's because of his many, many immersions, so that if he goes for decades before needing a Pit again, he does not necessarily age decades during that timeframe. (It might also explain the very youthful appearance of his daughter Nyssa, who is supposed to be over two hundred years old and has known the secret formula for building a Pit for most of her life.)

Note: I am told that more recently someone established it "in continuity" that the "temporary berserker rage" problem has finally been debugged. I am not clear on the details. In the graphic novel "Batman: Bride of the Demon" in 1990, Mike Barr had a scientist in Ra's payroll boast of having finally found a way to fix the glitch that previously caused the temporary insanity, but I don't think other writers felt obligated to honor that in later stories.

[Lorendiac]

2.03. Just what are the limits of a Lazarus Pit?

This is not clear. The flippant answer would be that the limits of a Lazarus Pit are whatever the current writer wants them to be!

Let's start with Pre-Crisis continuity.

Pre-Crisis version

In “Batman #335” (published in 1981, written by Marv Wolfman), Ra's said, "The Pit's life-essence works only on me. It would destroy any other."

This story is the only source I have been able to find for the explicit claim that the Lazarus Pits could only function properly upon Ra's own metabolism. I am not convinced that this story should be considered “solid” evidence of anything, all by itself. Other dialogue in the same story suggests that Marv Wolfman was not entirely familiar with the fine points of Ra's al Ghul's established continuity at the time he wrote it. (To provide one example: On that same page Ra's claimed to have just recently uncovered Batman's secret identity, as if this were a very new development of which Batman had not previously been aware. In context, it sure sounded as if Wolfman thought Ra's had never known that secret during any of their previous clashes -- which was wrong, I'm afraid. See 4.04 for details on the official version on this subject.)

On the other hand, a hasty search through various other Pre-Crisis Ra's stories in my collection fails to unearth any evidence that directly contradicts Wolfman's assertion that the Lazarus Pits only functioned to raise Ra’s from the dead, and no one else. I have not found any case where anyone else’s corpse was restored to life in a Lazarus Pit in the Pre-Crisis era -- nor have I noticed any dialogue indicating that Ra’s even thought that would be possible!

So what it boils down to is that the idea of the Lazarus Pits only being a safe and reliable way for Ra's to come back from the dead may or may nor have been the "official version" in the Pre-Crisis days. All of the other examples of people being raised from the dead by a Lazarus Pit are Post-Crisis examples (see 2.08 for details).

Post-Crisis version

In Post-Crisis stories, I have not yet found any clear statement that the Pits only function to raise Ra’s himself from the dead. Meanwhile, retcons in stories published after the Crisis have established the idea that Ra's has "always known" that his Pits can work on other people besides himself.

In "Azrael #6," Ra's says, after making a hasty examination of the fresh corpse of Brian Bryan, "There is a procedure . . . a thing I have called the Lazarus Pit. It is of exceeding risk to use -- for it involves being bathed in poisons and acids which would normally wreak destruction on the human body. If I had time to thoroughly analyze your friend, I could guarantee success. But such is his poor condition that in minutes his tissues will begin to deteriorate."

As two servants prepare to dump Brian into the local Pit, Ra's adds helpfully, "In moments, he will either melt into slime or be rejuvenated." (Brian was lucky – he didn’t melt into slime.)

There are two interesting new implications that we can glean from Ra’s speech on this occasion.

1. Ra’s implies that whatever he uses as the “standard mix” of ingredients in a Lazarus Pit is carefully tailored to work best on the peculiarities of his own metabolism, and thus a Pit originally designed to his personal specifications might not do any good for some other human being who got tossed into it in a hurry. However, he also implies that, given adequate lead time, he can make some observations of another person, perform some calculations, and finally pour in more of one ingredient or another in order to fine-tune the exact mix in a particular Pit so that it will have an excellent chance of working properly on a different subject, if necessary.

2. On the other hand, his claim that it was too late to go through all that measuring and fine-tuning in Brian Bryan’s case seems to suggest that the fine-tuning for a different human subject is best done in advance of the person’s death; it appears that a body needs to be rushed to a Lazarus Pit pretty darn fast once it is already dead, if there is to be any real hope of recovery. (The exact timing may depend upon such things as the victim’s age, the nature and extent of his injuries, any other health problems he already suffered from and so forth – but we get the general impression that it is not something you can put off for days after the moment of death.)

So far as I can tell, both of those fascinating implications have generally been ignored by the other writers who have dealt with the use of Lazarus Pits in their own stories in the years since 1995.

(One way to rationalize this discrepancy would be to point out that we only had Ra’s unsupported word for it that the process of preparing and using a Lazarus Pit was so terribly finicky as he suggested; possibly he wanted to engender a deeper sense of gratitude in Jean Paul Valley, whom he was trying to recruit at the time, by restoring the life of Jean Paul’s friend Brian Bryan while simultaneously laying it on thick about what a miracle it would be if his precious Pit actually worked properly for a stranger on the spur of the moment?)

For what it is worth, there is some other evidence for the idea that eventually, depending upon how long a corpse has been a corpse, you will hit a point of probable failure – or at least of diminishing returns – if you try to revive the corpse within a Lazarus Pit. In the "Tower of Babel" story arc for the JLA title, Mark Waid wrote a sequence in which Ra's al Ghul's thugs had stolen the coffins containing the long-dead bodies of Thomas and Martha Wayne, Batman's parents. When Batman caught up with them, Ra's had the coffins suspended in midair above a Lazarus Pit and was threatening to drop them in.

That seems a rather strange threat at first glance. On the face of it, you would think Batman would want his parents back. Instead, he was obviously horrified by the prospect of their being lowered into the Pit, and prevented it from happening.

Let's break this down logically: If Batman had reason to believe that Absolutely Nothing would happen when such "old" corpses were dropped into the Pit, then Ra's threat would have been meaningless. On the other hand, if Batman had reason to believe that Thomas and Martha would be restored to life with perfect physical and mental health, looking just the way they did a minute before they were fatally shot, then his horrified reaction would have been ridiculous -- it would have made more sense for him to offer to reward Ra's for doing this! The only way we can make sense of the way this scene actually played out is if Batman “knew” -- or felt he had strong reason to suspect -- that something would change in their conditions after those coffins entered the liquid in the Pit, but the change would somehow be a Very Bad Thing.

At the moment, the best guess seems to be that he "knew" (or thought he did) that after his parents had been dead, embalmed, and then buried for somewhere in the range of 25 to 30 years (my best estimate is 30, but some people say less), they were no longer fully revivable. Not even by a Lazarus Pit. Possibly their bodies would have been reanimated, but only with the physical appearance and/or the stunted intelligence we normally associate with zombies; animated decaying corpses? Not a pretty sight for a loving son to see. If something along these lines was what he feared, then his outrage at the prospect becomes perfectly understandable.

There are also assertions that the Pits can't raise you if you're "really dead," just "mostly dead." On the face of it, that strongly resembles Ra’s claim in “Azrael #6” that although Brian Bryan’s heart had stopped, it was necessary to rush him to the local Pit as quickly as possible. However, there have been previous times when Ra’s himself apparently “died” in circumstances where there was no intact Lazarus Pit conveniently located just a short distance away (that we knew of), and he obviously managed to come back each time, regardless of how many hours or days were required for his minions to retrieve his body and fly it to the site of a functional Lazarus Pit.

It has sometimes been claimed that a typical Lazarus Pit is only good for a single use - bringing one corpse back to life would completely drain its energy or something along those general lines. That has not always been claimed, however - obviously, it would make a huge difference in Ra's al Ghul's strategic decisions regarding just how many pits he really needs to maintain in perfect operating condition at any given time in order to always have one handy when the need arises.

Ra's al Ghul has also suggested more than once that eventually the repeated use of the Pits crosses a point of diminishing returns, where his body needs regular doses of the Pit's power more and more frequently in order to help him stay healthy and active. No one else has used the Pits as many times, over as many centuries of experience, as Ra's has, but it seems reasonable to assume that in some ways the Lazarur Pit's healing influence can act like an addictive drug, so that with repeated exposure the subject's body gets more and more accustomed to the experience and more resistant to its influence. If this is correct, then the alleged "immortality" (lack of aging, or very slow aging) mentioned as a pleasant side effect of the Pit in 2.02 is not reliable in the very long run.

[Lorendiac]

2.04. How many Lazarus Pits are there?

There is no set number - for example, we have not heard of any hard and fast rule that says that only one Pit can be operational anywhere in the world at any given time. Nor have we heard that there is an upper limit of five, or ten, or any other number. So in theory - as far as we know - there could be a hundred of them built and ready for use, in different places around the world, at the same time. (However, to the best of my knowledge we have never had any solid reason to think there were actually that many of them in existence at any particular moment.) They are not permanent and unchanging fixtures that last forever; they can be built from scratch, used up, destroyed, etc. It appears that given the proper conditions and ingredients, they can be built in any part of the world. (The proper conditions allegedly include the presence of Ley Lines.)

2.05. What would happen if there were no Lazarus Pits in existence?

Until recently we didn’t know for sure, but the “common sense” answer appeared to be: “Nothing would happen, except that Ra’s wouldn’t find it so easy to come back from the dead the next time he died.” As the miniseries “Death and the Maidens” started, we were quickly informed that Batman had been working hard to bring about this exact situation by tracking down and destroying every Lazarus Pit he could find, with considerable success.

However, after “Death and the Maidens” ended, a two-part mini titled “Batman/Ra’s Al Ghul: Year One” was published, written by Devin Grayson. In it, we learn – partially from a letter written by Ra’s a few years earlier, and partially from what actually happens in Gotham during the story – that the total absence of functional Lazarus Pits in the world completely messes up the forces of life and death in such a way that dead people in Gotham start coming back to life, and live people who suffer mortal injuries, are dying of illnesses, etc., stubbornly refuse to die.

By the end of the story, Batman has followed some clues Ra’s left for him and has uncovered the crucial formula that lets a man build a brand new Lazarus Pit. He builds one inside the Batcave on the theory that this is the safest place to put it. All the “walking dead” in Gotham promptly die again.

(Please don’t ask me why Batman thought his Batcave was the safest place to put a Pit. I really don’t want to try to tally up the grand total of how many times the cave’s security has been penetrated by various people over the years; sometimes by Ra’s or his agents.)

Why did this problem of the walking dead only afflict the Gotham metropolitan area? We don’t know. Would the problem have spread from there to cover a larger and larger percentage of the globe, over time? We don’t know. Has Batman made any sort of contingency plans for other people to receive copies of the secret formula for making a Lazarus Pit in case something terrible happens, such as the Batcave getting nuked with Batman and his records still inside at the time? We don’t know. Is that Lazarus Pit he built still present and functional in the Batcave in the recent “One Year Later” issues of Batman’s titles? We don’t know. (Glad I could clear all that up for you! :))

2.06. Exactly who knows how to make a Lazarus Pit?

Until just a couple of years ago, the conventional wisdom would have gone like this: "Ra's definitely knows. He has very likely shared the secret with his daughter Talia. We don't know if he ever taught anyone else."

At least two other characters should be added to that short list now. In the "Death and the Maidens" miniseries we learned that Ra's has a long-lost daughter named Nyssa Raatko with whom he shared the secrets of his Lazarus Pits way back when. In that miniseries, she boasted of having finally improved upon her father’s formula by developing a variation of the Lazarus Pit that will raise the dead again and again without exhausting its potency. His Pits allegedly only were good for one resurrection apiece, and then you had to move on to a fresh one the next time you needed a miracle.

And as mentioned in the question immediately above this one (2.05) Batman recently acquired Ra’s “secret formula” as well. It is worth noting that Batman’s version of the formula would be the “classic” one that Ra’s has been using for a long, long time. Accordingly, if we buy the idea that a standard Pit can only be used once, Nyssa has the advantage of knowing how to build a Pit that can be used over and over again, whereas Batman presumably only knows how to build a Pit that can raise a single person from the dead before it becomes worn-out and useless.

2.07. Why doesn't Ra's franchise the silly things?

In theory he could charge, say, a hundred million dollars a pop to resurrect very rich people. However, he already has a huge fortune of his own and apparently doesn't feel the need to sell his services to the highest bidders. On a similar note, he is often gravely concerned with what he sees as the overpopulation problem and occasionally tries to "fix" it by arranging to kill off lots and lots of "surplus" human beings. That being the case, he is hardly likely to publicly release the secrets of the Lazarus Pits and make it easier for other people to live longer by returning from the grave, is he?

2.08. Who has been healed in a Lazarus Pit?

Here is the current list. In the cases of Ra's, Talia, and Nyssa, I don't bother citing specific sources. The Pits have been a family secret for a long, long time and each of them may have used it many times we don't even know about.

For the other people on this list, the use of a Lazarus Pit is generally a very special event that only happened once. I am not including any events that definitely happened in "alternate timeline stories" or "Elseworlds graphic novels" or whatever, but I am including a few items whose place in continuity is "dubious."

Sometimes the person was “definitely dead” when he was dropped into a Pit; sometimes the person was very much alive but was expected to reap medical benefits from the experience, and sometimes it’s not entirely clear what the person’s vital status was at the exact moment he entered the Pit. For our purposes, I am lumping them all together into one Master List.

01. Bane ("Gotham Knights #49")
02. Batgirl III (Cassandra Cain) ("Batgirl #73")
03. Batman ("Birth of the Demon" graphic novel)
04. Black Canary II ("Birds of Prey #34" -- she regained her old Canary Cry superpower in the process)
05. Brant Carmody Jr. (A teenage boy in "Bride of the Demon")
06. Brian Bryan ("Azrael #6")
07. Evelyn Grayce (An aging Hollywood movie star who was restored to all her youthful beauty by the Pit and then gratefully married Ra's in the graphic novel "Bride of the Demon")
08. Jason Todd (Retroactively revealed to us in "Batman Annual #25" -- he was already alive again when he went into the pit, but it cured some amnesia for him)
09. Joker (The story arc titled "The Demon Laughs," in “Legends of the Dark Knight #'s 142-145.” I haven't read it, so I'm not sure which issue)
10. King Snake ("Robin #91" -- Sir Edmund Dorrance regained his eyesight in the process, but soon lost it again because of a new injury, thus reverting him back to his Sacred Status Quo as the deadliest blind martial artist in the DCU)
11. Lady Shiva (Seen dead, hanging in the air above a Lazarus Pit, in "Batgirl #73." Apparently it is widely presumed that after the end of that sequence, sooner or later she fell into the Pit and was resurrected -- but to the best of my knowledge, no published story has actually established this for a fact.)
12. Nora Fries ("Batgirl #69" – she is the wife of Mister Freeze, and her reaction was atypical. She became a character now known as Lazara.)
13. Nyssa Raatko (also known as Ra’s al Ghul II)
14. A prince; the son of the ruler of Ra's al Ghul's native city centuries ago (if we accept "Birth of the Demon" as "in continuity")
15. Ra's al Ghul
16. Riddler (this event was retroactively revealed to us in dialogue in "Batman #619" – the concluding chapter of the 12-part “Hush” story arc. We never actually saw it happen, not even as a flashback.)
17. Talia
18. Wonder Woman (in Matt Wagner's "Trinity" miniseries)

As I understand it, nobody at DC has told us that "Trinity" is in continuity, but I've seen some of its diehard fans arguing that it "could be" or "ought to be" or "will be" in the Post-Infinite Crisis world or whatever :)

Once upon a time, LOTDK stories were understood to be "apocryphal" -- some of them might have happened in continuity, but there were usually no guarantees. I don't know if "The Demon Laughs" is definitely in continuity or just "could be."

[Lorendiac]

The graphic novels "Son of the Demon" and "Bride of the Demon" (sequel to "Son") were ruled to be "out of continuity" by Denny O'Neil at the time of Zero Hour. In those days he was the editor in charge of all the Batman titles, so he had the authority to make that stick. However, he is no longer in that position, and I hear that Grant Morrison intends to drag "Son of the Demon" back into continuity soon. (Does this mean that all the events of "Bride of the Demon" will also be dragged back into continuity? Beats me!)

The graphic novel "Batman: Birth of the Demon," purporting to share with us the origin story of Ra's al Ghul, was written by Denny O'Neil and published in 1992.

However, there are things in it that appear to contradict data provided in other stories, and I am not aware of any occasion in any subsequent Batman comic book wherein the events of "Birth of the Demon" have ever been specifically mentioned and acknowledged as part of the established DCU mainstream continuity. This means that both #3 and #14 on my list are in the "dubious" category. If evidence comes up that Batman has ever said, in a story "in continuity," that a Lazarus Pit once brought him back to life, healthy as ever, then this will change.

(And, as I noted at the very top of the FAQ, it is always possible that Superboy-Prime's Retcon Punch and the other strange things associated with Infinite Crisis will eventually turn out to have changed or erased some of the events on this list, as well as changing or deleting the validity of any other detail in this FAQ. It's a risk I just have to take!)

2.09. Outside of Ra's family and organization, who else knows that Lazarus Pits exist and really work to cheat death?

Batman definitely knows about them. Just recently, Batman learned how to build one from scratch, as mentioned above (2.05). (Unless, for the sake of argument, that occurrence has been erased from the Post-IC continuity? Who knows?)

Presumably, anybody who has hung around the Batcave much, and worked as part of a "Batman Family" on a regular basis, has read his files about them and/or heard Batman talk about them. The people who have had such opportunities would plausibly include the following: Alfred Pennyworth, Barbara Gordon (Oracle, formerly Batgirl I), Dick Grayson (Nightwing, formerly Robin I), Jason Todd (formerly Robin II; later the Red Hood), Tim Drake (Robin III), Stephanie Brown (Spoiler, later Robin IV, now deceased), Jean Paul Valley (Azrael, apparently deceased), and Cassandra Cain (Batgirl III). In fact, several of those people have definitely been involved in cases where they had the chance to see Lazarus Pits in action with their own eyes even if they had never bothered to do their homework in the Batcave.

Some other heroes have actually met Ra's from time to time. And as a general rule we could plausibly argue that any hero who's ever been part of a team that simultaneously included Batman or any of his proteges ought to have access to a copy of the "Ra's al Ghul's dossier" that Batman surely has been steadily assembling ever since he first met the man. A great many DC heroes have been teammates of one member or another of the "Batman Family" in one incarnation or another of such groups as the Justice League, the Outsiders, Young Justice, and the Titans (some versions have been called the Teen Titans). There is no guarantee, however, that every hero who has ever theoretically been in a position to read up on Ra's has actually taken the trouble to do his homework and become familiar with the reported capabilities of Lazarus Pits.

By the same token, any reasonably large, well-funded intelligence-gathering agency ought to have a huge file on Ra's, including eyewitness reports of what happens at Lazarus Pits. I would certainly expect the U.S. government to know - the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, etc. Likewise, other national governments with substantial intelligence-gathering efforts ought to know quite a bit about Ra's and his Pits. If any of those governments have made a serious effort to locate and seize control of one or more functional Lazarus Pits for their own purposes, and/or seek a copy of the instructions for building new ones, then I don't think we've heard much about it. (Of course, this is no guarantee that it hasn't happened! Ra’s wouldn’t necessarily go running to Batman to cry on his shoulder for sympathy every time the CIA or some other cloak-and-dagger outfit started probing into his private business.)

However, as far as I can tell, Ra's has generally managed to keep his name out of the general media, and I don't think the "average citizen" in the DCU would recognize the name "Lazarus Pit" if someone suddenly mentioned it in conversation. And if he did recognize it from a rumor he once heard somewhere, he might not seriously believe it was anything more substantial than an "urban legend." To the best of my knowledge, none of the Lazarus Pit resurrections that are "in continuity" ever happened in front of TV cameras, nor in front of panels of well-respected physicians who were prepared to go into court and swear under oath that they had absolutely, positively, witnessed a "miracle" as a dead man was not only brought back to life but also restored to perfect health in the process, being healed of any cancers, gunshot wounds, or other inconveniences he might previously have suffered from.

2.10. Why don't any of the DC heroes who know about them make more use of them? For instance, why didn't Batman dunk Superman in the nearest Lazarus Pit when Superman was declared dead in 1992?

Darn good question! It is worth pointing out that according to the list provided in 2.08, as many as five different current or former superheroes may have benefitted from baths in a Lazarus Pit at one time or another. Batman (if “Birth of the Demon” is considered to be “in continuity”), Batgirl III, Black Canary II, Jason Todd, and possibly Wonder Woman (if “Trinity” ends up being considered part of the “modern, Post-IC continuity”). If five can do it, why not more?

Right after the Death of Superman, Batman appointed himself to prowl the rooftops of Metropolis and work security during the big funeral procession (we saw him catch one terrorist before the guy could actually throw his bomb to disrupt things), but neither Batman nor anyone else ever even whispered the possibility of dunking Superman in a Lazarus Pit and watching to see what happened.

Granted, based on past performance, a resurrected Superman emerging from a Lazarus Pit would probably be in a temporary berserker rage, much like the Incredible Hulk on a really bad day. However, Batman at that time still possessed a piece of green kryptonite set in a ring. If he brought it along and was backed up by such stalwarts as Captain Marvel, the Martian Manhunter (then calling himself Bloodwynd), a couple of Green Lanterns, Wonder Woman, and a few other heavy hitters, they would have had a fair chance of being able to weaken and restrain Superman until the fit of madness passed and he was his lovable old self again.

Be that as it may, no "in character" explanation was offered for why neither Batman nor anyone else intended to try. The possibility was simply ignored.

The "real" or "out of character" explanation would presumably be that having Superman return from the dead via Lazarus Pit, a mere day or two after he had died, was not the sort of story that the writers and editors associated with the Superman titles in 1992-1993 wanted to tell, therefore it was not the sort of story they told. Period.

The way Lazarus Pits are completely ignored 99% of the time whenever a superhero dies -- or a friend or relative of a superhero dies, is a classic example of what I call the Total Amnesia Retcon. The Total Amnesia Retcon is the vague situation where the reader is forced to assume that if certain key events of previous stories are still "in continuity," then a superhero who was involved in those events has mysteriously developed Total Amnesia on the subject for the writer's convenience, no matter how strongly current events ought to remind him of the details of those past experiences. (Or possibly the writer is quietly trying to "really retcon" those past events out of continuity, but doesn't have the nerve to explicitly say so.)

In real life, if you knew all about Lazarus Pits and then your best friend or Significant Other died a violent death, you would immediately start wondering if it would be possible to rush the body to a Lazarus Pit in time to resurrect the dear departed. In the DCU, with rare exceptions, any superheroes affected by someone else's death implicitly develop Total Amnesia about the fact that Lazarus Pits even exist. For the purposes of that particular story, they basically don't exist.

Before the recent announcement at the 2005 San Diego Comics Con that "Hypertime is gone from the DCU," you could have "rationalized" this by saying, "The story arcs about the Death of Superman and his subsequent funeral must have happened at a time when the main timeline of the DCU had, due to the vicissitudes of Hypertime, become a timeline in which the Lazarus Pits of Ra's al Ghul simply did not exist and never had existed. Likewise, all subseqnent DCU stories in which someone important to a superhero died, leaving a reasonably intact corpse, but without anyone mentioning Lazarus Pits as an alternative, must have occured at a time when Lazarus Pits had been hypertimed out of the history of the DCU. Any stories that explicitly referred to Lazarus Pits must have occurred at a time when the main DCU timeline had miraculously had the Lazarus Pit continuity merge back into the mainstream again. Back and forth, back and forth . . ."

[Lorendiac]

2.11. But wasn't there a passage in "Hush" wherein Jeph Loeb tried to answer that previous question?

Yes and No. Mostly "No." He didn't answer the question in sweeping general terms that would cover the Death of Superman and lots of other situations. He only made a sincere effort to answer the question in a very small way, because the explanation that was offered was only being retroactively applied (fifteen years after the fact!) to the circumstances of a single, specific case of a violent death in Batman's established continuity. The death of Jason Todd in 1988, that is to say.

Loeb had Batman's narrative captions inform us, retroactively, that when he found Jason Todd's dead body way back when, he briefly considered carting it off to the nearest Lazarus Pit, but rejected the idea because there was so much head trauma that he had to figure Jason's brain was no longer in good condition and reviving his body to be healed of its other wounds wouldn't do poor Jason much good. The implication seems to be that the Lazarus Pit can heal most physical wounds and restore life to flesh that has just recently died, but can't magically replace those parts of a person's memory and personality that were previously stored in brain cells which have now been destroyed in large quantity by an explosion or other massive physical trauma. (Corollary: Fire a few bullets through Ra's al Ghul's skull and even his Lazarus Pits shouldn't be able to bring him back with his full mental faculties.)

How does Batman know for a fact (or think he knows for a fact) that replacing missing brain cells and the information they had stored is far beyond the capabilities of a Lazarus Pit? Has he ever actually witnessed a case where someone with profound head injuries got tossed into a Lazarus Pit and emerged physically healthy, but severely brain-damaged? Or is he just gullible enough to believe anything Ra's or Talia have ever asserted to him about the precise limits of Lazarus Pits in a conversation we didn't see? Or what? I don't know.

Even if we buy Loeb's rationalization for why Batman didn't hunt up a Lazarus Pit in 1988 for Jason Todd, this still fails to address the question of why Batman doesn't use Lazarus Pits when any other close friend, teammate, or protégé dies in the line of duty.

Superman, for instance, in 1992. Or Stephanie Brown, in 2004. Or Kathy Kane in material reprinted in the TPB "Tales of the Demon" containing stories Denny O'Neil wrote about Ra's back in the 1970s.

Interestingly enough, in that last case I mentioned, Batman recovered consciousness and found the corpse of his old friend Kathy about five seconds before Ra's al Ghul walked onstage to commiserate with him. Despite which, it never occurred to Batman to ask if it would be possible to rush Kathy's body to a Lazarus Pit in time to restore her to the pink of physical and mental health. Denny O'Neil didn't want that to occur to Batman, therefore Batman couldn't remember that Lazarus Pits even existed! (Or it is possible that at the time, O'Neil took it for granted that the Pits only worked for Ra's al Ghul and not for anyone else, although that never was explicitly stated in the stories from the 1970s, and is definitely not consistent with what we have later learned about the use of the pits.)

2.12. But wasn't there also a passage in "Death and the Maidens" wherein Greg Rucka tried to answer that same question differently?

Arguably. At one point, Batman asserts that prolonged exposure to the Lazarus Pits has had a steady corrupting influence on Ra's personality. Therefore, deliberately subjecting yourself to the power of a Lazarus Pit would be a bad idea.

How would Batman "know" this? We don't know. After all, he never met a "Young and Pure Ra's"; he has only met a Ra's who has probably used the Pits dozens and dozens of times over the centuries before Batman ever came along.

Even if we grant for the sake of argument that Batman believes the Pits have a corrupting influence, is he correct in his assumption? We don't know.

And even if Batman has a point, would using a Lazarus Pit on Superman (for instance) just once have any visible impact on the subject's previous moral standards of behavior? We don't know, but it seems highly unlikely. I haven't heard any complaints about Black Canary's behavior taking a sharp, permanent turn for the worse after she came out of a Lazarus Pit. (And if we accept “Birth of the Demon” as being in continuity, then Batman himself was once revived by a Pit, and he still seems dedicated to his original ideals.)

As far as I know, none of the DCU's high-level experts on spiritual and mystical matters (such as Dr. Fate or the Spectre) have ever commented on the subject of whether Lazarus Pits have a corrupting influence upon a person's moral fiber. So Batman appears to be speculating wildly on the subject, without having ever gotten a truly "expert" opinion.


Section 3: Agenda and History

3.01. What is Ra's al Ghul's purpose in life?

Aside from making his life last as long as possible, and having done various things over the centuries to make himself filthy, filthy rich and the head of a large organization, he sometimes makes it clear that he is dedicated to sharply reducing the global human population "for the greater good." In that sense, you could call him an environmental terrorist.

However, to call him a "terrorist" might cause you to not take him seriously enough. Most terrorism is very small-scale compared to the size of the putative target. A terrorist's bomb kills a few people; then he expects many times more to be "terrified" by his savage attack. Even a terrorist act that kills thousands in a single day (as happened on September 11, 2001) only kills a tiny, tiny fraction of all the citizens of the society which the terrorists are attacking.

That's standard terrorism. Ra's al Ghul seems to have little or no faith in such picayune tactics. If he decides a society is fundamentally flawed, he then tries to kill off, say, ninety percent of its inhabitants - as opposed to just killing a handful in hopes of "terrifying" the rest of that society so that it will take his agenda more seriously. In his case, he seems to have selected "global civilization" as his target rather than any single nation.

In other words, his philosophy is, on a much larger scale, the same as that expressed by someone during the Vietnam War: "In order to save the village, it was necessary to destroy it." (Although Ra's would allegedly settle for destroying, say, 90% of the human race.)

3.02. Has he made any progress in achieving his goal of genocide for the vast majority of the human race?

Not particularly. Batman and other superheroes have foiled various diabolical schemes that could have killed millions upon millions of people if they had succeeded - but they never did entirely succeed. Some people die because of Ra's al Ghul's schemes, but as far as we know, the Earth of the DCU, like the Earth of our real world, has seen its human population growing steadily, year by year, for centuries. We have never been told that Ra's managed to make the death rate exceed the birth rate in any given year. (Nor that any other supervillain of the DCU has ever managed to do so, whether that villain was explicitly aiming for "population control" or just throwing around Weapons of Mass Destruction for some other reason entirely.

3.03. What did he have to do with Hitler's Holocaust?

According to writer Mike Barr in "Son of the Demon," Ra's used his international organization to join in the resistance efforts against the Nazis and their allies during the days when large parts of Europe were dominated by Hitler and his fellow fascists.

According to writer Greg Rucka in a flashback to the WWII era in "Death and the Maidens," Ra's was a willing participant in Hitler's Holocaust, apparently working on the theory that anything that kills millions of human beings many years sooner than they would otherwise die just has to be a good idea. (See 3.01, "What is Ra's al Ghul's purpose in life?" for a better explanation of why he might feel that way.)

I don't know if any other writers have explicitly addressed the subject one way or the other.

[Lorendiac]

Section 4: Miscellaneous Matters

4.01. How many guys named Ubu have there been?

Lots. I'm sure of at least four different ones, one of whom was Bane. Once or twice it has been suggested that most of them come from the same extended family (somewhere in Asia, probably), but Bane's example demonstrates that it is a name which may also be bestowed on a newcomer to Ra's organization if he seems to have the proper qualifications to fill a sudden vacancy. (Bane killed the previous Ubu in single combat, thereby creating the vacancy. We have no reason to think it normally works that way, however.)

In general, anyone called "Ubu" is very big, very strong, very skilled in combat, and will kill anyone Ra's tells him to kill. With the possible exception of Bane, they are also usually considered to be extremely loyal to Ra's before he trusts them to serve as bodyguards and troubleshooters for him.

Bane's new job title of "Ubu" was first revealed to us in the "Legacy" story arc, but didn't last long. We later learned how he had gotten the job in the four-part miniseries "Bane of the Demon," written by Chuck Dixon, which was basically one big flashback to show us what happened to him prior to the events of "Legacy."

4.02. How many hirelings has he had?

Thousands and thousands, probably, most of whose names we never knew. Many of them appear to be fanatically loyal to him. However, "name" characters who have served on his payroll for various lengths of time have included:

His daughters Nyssa and Talia (not simultaneously!)
Bane (who was briefly an Ubu)
Whisper O'Daire
Lady Shiva (in one sequence in the "Hush" storyline by Jeph Loeb, but it was probably just a temporary freelance job)

4.03. How many worthy suitors has he found for his daughter Talia?

At different times, Ra's has considered Batman, Bane, and Azrael as strong contenders. Azrael was rejected after Ra's found out he had some animal genes spliced into his genome. (Which made very little sense, given that Ra's had previously claimed to be long aware of the clandestine activities of the Brotherhood of Saint Dumas. How had he managed to know practically everything about them except the fact that they indulged in gene splicing from nonhuman sources when breeding their Azraels?)

4.04. Does Ra's know Batman's secret identity?

Yes, indeed. He has known it since before his first appearance onstage in "Batman #232." He had apparently drawn up a list of everything he thought a lone wolf crimefighter operating in Gotham could possibly need, and then started digging into the records of companies who manufactured and sold such items, looking for a customer in the Gotham area who had bought the things on that hypothetical shopping list. One name kept coming up: Bruce Wayne. (Various stories have suggested that since then, Bruce Wayne finds ways to buy various bits of equipment through phony names, or perhaps in untraceable transactions where cold cash is offered in exchange for merchandise without leaving his real name on any paperwork.)

In justice to Denny O'Neil, we should note that at the time he introduced Ra's, it was a Strange and Exciting Idea to have a recurring villain who actually knew Batman's secret identity but, for reasons of his own, would not expose Batman's secrets to the world. Since that time, such characters as Hugo Strange, Riddler, Bane, Catwoman, Lady Shiva, Deathstroke the Terminator, Henri Ducard, Hush, and other people with criminal records have learned Batman's secret identity and lived to tell the tale - except that they never actually went public with the information.

(And some such stories have subsequently been retconned. For instance, Post-Crisis Hugo Strange stories have tried to sell us the idea that he thinks he knows, more or less, but has never actually managed to pull off Batman's mask and get a good look at the face underneath, and thus he sometimes temporarily decides he must have been wrong.)

4.05. How is "Ra's al Ghul" pronounced?"

In Arabic, I am told it ought to be "Rosh all'ghoul."

In the recent movie "Batman Begins," it sounded a lot more like "Rozz Owl Ghoul."

4.06. Who created Ra's al Ghul?

His first appearance was in Batman #232 -- written by Denny O'Neil and penciled by Neal Adams. Accordingly, I believe O'Neil deserves credit as the "creator" who first invented the man and his personality and gave him a name, but Adams would be the one who first created his visual appearance.

Section 5: Ra's in Other Media

5.01. What TV episodes has Ra's been in?

In "Batman: The Animated Series," Ra's appeared in the following:
"Off Balance"
"Demon Quest (Parts 1 and 2)"
"Avatar"
"Showdown"

In "Superman: The Animated Series":
"Demon Reborn"

In "Batman Beyond":
"Out of the Past"

The Ra's of the TV shows is closely based on the classic version from the comic books. As is the TV version of his daughter Talia. One difference: "Avatar" established he has a son named Arkady, whom he judged unfit to rule his empire.

5.02. What movies has Ra's been in?

Just one. Batman Begins, released in June of 2005, was the first appearance of any version of a character called "Ra's al Ghul" on the big screen. It was also the first appearance of Ra's al Ghul in any live-action production, big screen or small, as opposed to the animated TV episodes mentioned immediately above.

The version of Ra's that is presented to us in the film is different - in at least one or two important respects - from the classic comic book Ra's. Movie Ra's is the leader of a group called the League of Shadows, which is (allegedly) dedicated to tearing apart great cities which it feels have strayed too far into the paths of corruption. Taking these things one city at a time is considerably smaller-scale thinking than Comic Book Ra's oft-stated intention to drastically "cull" the entire human race at once (if he can ever get one of his master plans to work properly).

On the other hand, we don't know just how many similarities there may be between Movie Ra's and Comic Book Ra's, because we really didn't learn very much about Movie Ra's beyond the fact of his involvement with the League of Shadows and his prowess in personal combat. He might have a daughter named Talia, for instance - but we simply don't know, because no one ever said he did or didn't. He might have a secret formula for building Lazarus Pits - but no one in the movie ever mentioned Lazarus Pits one way or the other! And so forth.

On a similar note: Some viewers of the recent movie have leaped to the conclusion that Movie Ra's is "really" a Frenchman named Henri Ducard, in sharp contrast (they say) to Comic Book Ra's with his apparent Middle Eastern roots. It is true that Movie Ra's first introduced himself to Bruce by that name, but I do not recall that he explicitly claimed to be a "Frenchman." Even if we accept this as his original name, his ancestry is not necessarily pure French, and his place of birth could still be anywhere in the world.

But should we accept the name "Henri Ducard" as authentic? Bearing in mind the mysterious nature of the character and his taste for subterfuge, I'm afraid that those viewers are taking too much for granted when they accept his self-introduction at face value, no questions asked. All we can say for certain about Movie Ra's is that at least sometimes it pleases him to introduce himself by the French-sounding name of "Henri Ducard." It may well be his original name, but no proof of this was provided to us, nor to Bruce, within the movie. Did Bruce ever try to run a background check on him under that name? Not that we know of. So what do we really know about the man's original name, place of birth, ethnic heritage, etc.? Nothing!

(NOTE: In the regular continuity of the comic books, there is a dangerous man named Henri Ducard who is an incredibly amoral bounty hunter, occasional assassin, etc. He is indeed a Frenchman. "Henri Ducard" is almost certainly his real name. However, he is not the same guy as the Ra's of the comic books, and to the best of my knowledge he has never had any close association with Ra's. For some reason, his name was "borrowed" for the movie.)

***** END OF FAQ *****

This concludes my second draft of The Ra's al Ghul FAQ. As always when I undertake such an ambitious project, I welcome any constructive criticism regarding possible improvements that could be made in the next draft!

(I try my best, but in the end my philosophy is: "If I waited until I knew it was perfect before I posted it, then it would never get posted in the first place!")

[Omar Karindu]

2.02, 2.04 -- In one or both of these sections, it should be noted that Batman #400 demonstrates that Ra's can gain super-strength and berserker rage by deliberately dipping himself into a Pit prematurely. This story, and IIRC Batman #243, both also indicate that a Pit has deleterious, possibly lethal effects on an ordinary, healthy body. Indeed, Ra's adopted son Quayin slew Ra's wife, Melisande, by shoving her into a Pit in Son of the Demon. (I'[m aware that these two stories contradict one another; if a Pit kills healthy people in Son of the Demon, why can Ra's use it to go berserk in Batman #400?)

4.01 -- It is worth noting here that "Ubu" was originally the name of an actual character, the bald goon who turned up in the first Ra's stories in Batman #242-4. Detective Comics #438 revealed that he'd been mutated somehow when the Demon's Swiss HQ exploded in those stories, and he died trying to kill Batman and Alfred at Wayne Manor.

Thereafter, Denny O'Neil had Ra's employ an explicit successor named Lurk, in DC Special Series #15 and Detective #490. Marv Wolfman, who, as you note above, seemed to have missed many of O'Neil's plot points, then revealed that the bald, powerful Ubu was just one in a series of similar mutates (Batman #322). Wolfman reused the idea in issues #330-2 as well.

Mike W. Barr, in his Ra's stories, used a third successor, a man named Grind (Batman Annual #8, Son of the Demon) and implicitly killed him off in the conclusion of Bride of the Demon.

The idea that "Ubu" is a position under Ra's rather than a specific person is original to Chuck Dixon, and was first revealed in Detective Comics #700. Since then, it's been Post-Zero Hour canon.

In the Animated DC Universe, of course, there's just one Ubu, and it's the same character every time out.

4.02 -- Dr. Moon, a longtime DC villain, made his first appearance as a hireling working for Ra's (Batman #240).

Whisper's partner Kyle Abbot should also be added to his list of hirelings. He's a wolf-man, in contrast to her snake act.

[lawman]

Great, great work, Lorendiac!

Just one thing...

1.04. Regarding Ra's' age... in the Chalice GN (1999, written by Chuck Dixon), there's a flashback in which an adult Ra's attempts to steal the Holy Grail when it's being smuggled back into Europe from the court of Batu Khan. Batu Khan ruled Asia c. 1235-1255. So far as I know that's the earliest chronicled appearance of Ra's (aside from his undated origin in Birth of the Demon), but it seems to indicate that he's at least 800 years old (and thus was just "joking" with Azrael... especially likely seeing as how the Black Plague was actually a couple hundred years before the 1540s).

[Lorendiac]

Great, great work, Lorendiac!

Just one thing...

1.04. Regarding Ra's' age... in the Chalice GN (1999, written by Chuck Dixon), there's a flashback in which an adult Ra's attempts to steal the Holy Grail when it's being smuggled back into Europe from the court of Batu Khan. Batu Khan ruled Asia c. 1235-1255. So far as I know that's the earliest chronicled appearance of Ra's (aside from his undated origin in Birth of the Demon), but it seems to indicate that he's at least 800 years old (and thus was just "joking" with Azrael... especially likely seeing as how the Black Plague was actually a couple hundred years before the 1540s).

I think I've never read "the Chalice." It must be one of the comparatively few Ra's stories that I didn't end up reading or rereading in the days when I was researching this FAQ. :)

As to the Black Plague -- the most famous outbreak of bubonic plague was in the mid-14th Century as I recall (so about six and a half centuries ago), but there were regular outbreaks on smaller scales for centuries after that. I think the historical event that popped into my mind when I read Ra's comment to Azrael was a time in the 1660s when London was hit pretty hard -- lost perhaps one-fifth of its population at the time. I believe that plague ended, more or less, after the Great Fire which gutted the heart of London (and probably eliminated a lot of the rats, fleas, etc., that presumably carried the plague, although I don't think anyone had deliberately planned it that way).

[foxley]

2.06. Exactly who knows how to make a Lazarus Pit?

Until just a couple of years ago, the conventional wisdom would have gone like this: "Ra's definitely knows. He has very likely shared the secret with his daughter Talia. We don't know if he ever taught anyone else."

Pre-Crisis Talia was probably the only person other than Ra's to know the secrets of the Lazarus Pit. In The Brave and the Bold #159 (written by Denny O'Neil) Talia is supervising Ra's' resurrection and Batman states "And only you - his daughter - knows the secret of the pit!" and Talia says nothing to disabuse him of this notion.

[Omar Karindu]

Pre-Crisis Talia was probably the only person other than Ra's to know the secrets of the Lazarus Pit. In The Brave and the Bold #159 (written by Denny O'Neil) Talia is supervising Ra's' resurrection and Batman states "And only you - his daughter - knows the secret of the pit!" and Talia says nothing to disabuse him of this notion.

The villain Kobra learned how to make the Pit in issues #7-8 of his own short-lived title in the 1970s. Batman put a stop to Kobra's schemes in a DC Special that wrapped up threads from the cancelled title.

[lawman]

I think I've never read "the Chalice." It must be one of the comparatively few Ra's stories that I didn't end up reading or rereading in the days when I was researching this FAQ.

The Chalice is a story well worth reading, IMHO, although Chuck Dixon's personal religious sentiments do seem to color it to a surprising degree.

As to the Black Plague... I think the historical event that popped into my mind when I read Ra's comment to Azrael was a time in the 1660s when London was hit pretty hard...

Well, it's true that there have been smaller plague outbreaks throughout history. But whenever one refers to "THE Black Plague," unless the context specifically refers to London, it's generally understood to be the one that swept Europe in the 1340s.

[Lorendiac]

The villain Kobra learned how to make the Pit in issues #7-8 of his own short-lived title in the 1970s. Batman put a stop to Kobra's schemes in a DC Special that wrapped up threads from the cancelled title.

That's interesting. I've never read that title; I've only occasionally seen Kobra pop up in other titles over the years. Should I take it that Kobra did, in fact, manage to use his home-built Lazarus Pit to bring one or more people back from the dead? Is there any indication that the Post-Crisis version of Kobra still remembers how to build a Lazarus Pit from scratch?

I see that in this FAQ (posted almost a year and a half ago now, and scheduled to be revised after the fallout from Ra's al Ghul's return has settled), I stated that Marv Wolfman wrote a single bit of dialogue in the early 1980s in which Ra's asserted the Pit only worked on himself -- and that I haven't found any other Pre-Crisis story that definitely supported or definitely contradicted that sweeping statement!

If the Kobra series provided contrary evidence regarding whom the Pits could work their magic upon, then I'd like to include that in my Third Draft when the time comes!