Batman Vs. Ra's al Ghul #1 - DC Comics

BATMAN VS. RA'S AL GHUL No. 1, November 2019

Excitedly reuniting legendary American artist Neal Adams with a character he co-created alongside Denny O’Neil and Julius “Julie” Schwartz way back in 1971, this opening instalment to “Batman VS. Ra’s al Ghul” was one arguably of the most hotly anticipated titles announced by “DC Comics” as part of their Year of the Villain promotion. And to begin with, at least, the twenty-two page periodical’s pulse-pounding plot genuinely looks set to provide a truly enjoyable read, as the Joe Sinnott Hall of Famer’s narrative goes straight for the jugular with the titular character desperately trying to single-handedly save his beloved Gotham City from a mass terrorist uprising.

Packed full of far more punches, pugilism and pooches than arguably your average modern-day superhero comic book contains, the Manhattan-born illustrator's dynamically-sketched action depicts the Caped Crusader at his bone-breaking best, even pencilling the Dark Knight heatedly turning upon a group of heavily-weaponed “not S.W.A.T.” who have started gunning down a group of extremists; “Batman is attacking… the… Batman is certainly angry here. He’s punishing those armed men for shooting the terrorists.”

Yet despite being supposedly “pushed back two weeks for a September… release” by its Burbank-based publisher, this “end of an adventure that's taken three graphic novels to resolve” suddenly provides a disappointingly palatable sense of ill-disciplined haste, by nonsensically proposing that Ra’s al Ghul, an international criminal mastermind and Image Games Network’s seventh top comic book villain of all time, has inexplicably been brought in by the municipal’s mayor in order for the maniac’s “thirty-five trained and equipped agents” to aid the over-stretched authorities in their fight to suppress an already disconcertingly contrived metropolis-wide emergency.

To make matters worse, this utterly whacky and unstomachable decision is even ardently defended by Commissioner Gordon, despite the senior policeman having literally just witnessed one of Professor al Ghul’s personal security guards gun down a “man in cold blood”. The fact Adams depicts the moustached, former United States Marine Corps veteran siding with Batman’s ‘Moriarty’, rather than turning to his government’s armed forces for assistance, unhappily makes this six-part mini-series story-line fall flat on its face almost from the get-go, and comes across as being as likely a response to such troubled times as the Bronze Age superstar’s next decision, which is to portray Bruce Wayne’s alter-ego wearily walking away from the ongoing death and destruction surrounding a triumphant Ra's al Ghul in abject defeat...

Written, Darwn and Coloured by: Neal Adams, and Lettered by: Clem Robins