Batman: Birth of the Demon is Ra’s Al-Ghul’s origin story – and it’s so astoopid!
Set hundreds of years ago, Ra’s was once the kind and gentle Middle Eastern doctor to the Salimb (an Arabic king) – middle middle middle, he becomes the evil Demon’s Head who hates Batman and wants to destroy humanity.
I’ve never understood the adulation so many (admittedly older) readers have for Denny O’Neill – this guy is such a bad writer! Maybe back in the day his work wasn’t as noticeably crappy but compared to the calibre of writers Batman fans read today, like Grant Morrison, Paul Dini, Scott Snyder and Tom King, O’Neill’s stuff nowadays looks amateurish at best.
All of the pieces in Ra’s origin are clunkily ticked off. Why does he hate Batman? He hates death and death, in his dreams, takes the form of a giant bat. How did he figure out how to build Lazarus Pits? From a dream. How did he figure out how they worked? Another dream. Where did he get the “Demon’s Head” title from? Some random god these people worshipped. Totally contrived hackery!
Ra’s is “dying” and Batman gets infected with toxic waste in two plotlines that go nowhere, and Batman and Ra’s fight pointlessly at the end to no effect. Norm Breyfogle’s weirdly grainy art looks like it was coloured in crayon!
Batman: Birth of the Demon was thoroughly terrible! A dumb, tedious origin poorly told and badly written by a talentless incompetent. Ra’s isn’t among my favourite villains from Batman’s rogues gallery but he deserves better than this.
Wow, your're still bad at writing comic reviews.
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