Batman: The Resurrection of
Ra’s Al Ghul, Grant Morrison and

Paul Dini, DC Comics, 2008

Batman: The Resurrection of

Ra’s Al Ghul, Grant Morrison and

Paul Dini, DC Comics, 2008

In my ongoing quest to provide some literary background for the year’s comic book movies (except for the Hulk; I’m as uninterested in the Hulk as everyone else seems to be), I’m faced now with reading up on Batman in preparation for the release of The Dark Knight, the much anticipated sequel to Batman Begins, the latest attempt to make the Hollywood incarnation of Batman vault backwards over the shark after all that silliness involving Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and Tim Burton. I picked up The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul, a new graphic novel that collects a recent Batman story arc; the shadowy figure of the Dark Knight on the cover, brooding and wielding a razor-sharp sword, promised a story involving the 21st-century Batman, a hero more interested in angst than gadgets. 

When my 11-year-old saw the book on my night stand he picked it up and tried to read it. He didn’t get very far; he said that he couldn’t understand the story and was having trouble following what was going on. I couldn’t imagine that a comic book could go over the head of a bright seventh grader, but once I got into the novel myself I understood his confusion. The story’s plot is extremely convoluted and overcrowded, and – especially in the early chapters – is told in such an awkward manner that it’s nearly incomprehensible.

The skeleton of the story is reasonable enough. Ra’s Al Ghul, a semi-immortal enemy of Batman (his name is a corruption of pseudo Arabic that supposedly means “The Demon’s Head”) is trying to resurrect himself after sort of dying. Thanks to a screw-up by an incompetent henchman, Ra’s (referring to a guy with a possessive name never ceases to seem weird) is forced to find a new body for his new life, and he decides the body of his grandson, Damian, would be a good fit. Damian happens to be the son of Batman and Ra’s (or would that be Ra’s’s?) daughter, Talia, herself a highly skilled super-assassin (Batman has a thing for bad girls). Batman, with the help of Talia, needs to stop grandpa from stealing the body of his son. The moral center of the story (comics always have one of those) is supposed to be fatherhood/parenthood: Batman/Damian, Talia/Damian, Ra’s/Talia, Ra’s/Damian, Batman/Robin, etc.

So far, so good, but the story is packed overfull with twists and subplots. Damian, an irritatingly flippant kid, comes into conflict with Robin, Batman’s pseudo-son. Nightwing (who happens to be Dick Grayson, a former Robin) leaps into the middle of that conflict. A trio of Talia’s assassin colleagues, buxom babes/ruthless killers who dress like strippers, briefly barge into the scene. Ra’s is obsessed with finding not only Damian’s body, but also a Tibetan fountain of youth which is guarded by Sensei, a formidable kung fu master who is also an evil assassin (actually, just about everyone in the book is an assassin). Characters such as I-Ching, a Buddhist monk/secret agent, pop up and disappear before popping up again. There’s even a cute little non sequitur in which Damian is tormented by ghosts in a graveyard.

In the early chapters the book is a blur of images influenced by the quick editing and spare narration of contemporary film. Scenes change abruptly, dizzingly and without helpful “meanwhile, back at the Batcave” tags – an old-fashioned convention that would be unthinkable to certain writers – it’s easy to get lost. I found myself re-reading entire pages, trying to sort things out, and examining the pages closely to see if perhaps the book had been bound incorrectly, with pages missing or out of order. Later, when other writers include explanatory text and Nightwing provides an expository voice over, things get better, but the plot is still no picnic to decipher.

The overall tone of the book is a little confusing, too. The old urban darkness of Batman has been replaced with the faux Eastern mysticism that has taken over the current mythology of the Dark Knight. The latex-caped crusader seems entirely out of place in the Tibetan surroundings, as does the Egyptian/Arabic, mummy-like Ra’s Al Guhl. Nightwing and the assassin babes would be more at home in Las Vegas, and Damian doesn’t seem to fit anywhere.

Like most collected graphic novels, this one is a compilation of chapters created by different writers and artists. Visual styles range from the sketchy, digitally-enhanced scribbles of Ryan Benjamin to the slick, more mainstream work of Don Kramer, to Jason Pearson’s anime-ish rendition of Damian’s graveyard digression. Damian presents the biggest consistency issue between chapters; no one seems terribly clear on who he is exactly, and he ages from a near-toddler to a young man and several points in between over the course of the story.

This is, no doubt, a contemporary Batman story. The hero is no longer the technology-focused tycoon of decades past. Now he is a moody follower of trendy philosophy whose exploits are soaked in blood. Gallons of the red stuff splatter over every surface in the book – there are too many decapitations, dismemberments, gunshots to the head, and impalings to count, all of them graphically, lovingly rendered. Combined with the confused, anti-narrative storytelling, this affection for violence makes The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul truly a Batman tale for our times.

Copyright 2008 Ad Media Inc.