Batman: The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul Review

The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul

The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul as a story is great; Ra’s Al Ghul returns and wants to use the body of Damian Wayne as a host, giving him a fresh start with a new and perfect body, however, the greatness that this could have been was a little lost in this book’s crossover collecting style.

The book itself is an 8-issue collected story; only 2 of the 8 being written by Grant Morrison himself. This isn’t to imply that only the Grant Morrison written chapters/issues can be included as cannon in his story or are worthy of reading but rather that this book is typically referred to as a sequel to Batman and Son when really only certain parts of it are necessary, the majority of the book feels like filler with character plots that have obvious endings done by different creative teams, distracting from the Ra’s story by Grant Morrison (which is why I bought the book). And in the end, nothing really changes, Morrison’s plot doesn’t thicken much, and your left still wondering whether Damian Wayne is an ass-kicking assassin pre-teen or a immature cry baby who still needs years of training.

As I said though, the Ra’s story is solid, and anytime you are reading a Grant Morrison chapter/issue (all two of them) it’s an obvious difference from the rest of the book. The story is more focused on Bruce and and the surrounding characters and dialogue has a very Grant Morrison-feel to it. This is also Tony Daniel’s first work with Batman and Grant Morrison, a job he would come back to in Batman: The Black Glove and RIP, and although his work gets better and better the more familiar he gets with the characters, he immediately was drawing one heck of a book. And the final show down between Batman and Ra’s (plus the third baddie which I won’t spoil here) is epic. You really begin to feel for Bruce here, who had just been through the ringer in the previous story and then takes maybe the worst hand-to-hand beating yet to be matched in Morrison’s run. The way Grant Morrison concludes Ra’s journey back to life is a great read also. Ra’s desperation to stay alive reaches an all time “freaky” level here and my hat is off to Grant for taking a somewhat predictable character and making me say out loud, “Oh man…that was cool.”

The rest of the book is far from related to anything concerning Batman, the whole story of Ra’s return involved the entire Batman-family and instead of including them into Grant’s story they were told in their own titles and later collected here. So this is a classic case of a story being better told separately than in one lump. It is interesting to see Damian work for the first time with Nightwing and Robin but they do nothing more than punch ninjas. Robin does get a tempting offer from Ra’s but we never really believe he’s going to make the wrong decision. This leads into one of my least favorite comic book cliche’s of all time; good guys fighting good guys. In certain cases it can work (Thor vs. Iron Man most recently) but to get several pages of Tim and Dick fighting is boring. Does anyone really want me to believe that Dick is going to punch out Tim and leave his body in any more danger than it’s already in? No. If your a big Batman-family fan though you’ll enjoy the inclusion of the team-ups and Damian’s awkward fit into it.

I Ching also plays a fairly large role and he makes for an interesting character who helps the Batman-family out in combat but plays an un-bias opinionated mentor figure throughout Nightwing and Robin’s inclusion. I didn’t expect him to show up in the story and was glad he did.

At it’s core this is a Batman-family book; telling the story of how Batman and his crew of Robin’s try and take down the return of one of their greatest foes. Technically, yes, it is a sequel to Batman and Son, telling how Ra’s Al Ghul returns. But don’t think of it as such or else you be left a little disappointed. Fans of Tim Drake and Dick Grayson should love this, seeing how those two haven’t teamed up with Bruce in awhile, but the distance between this book and the consistence in writing and art you got in Batman and Son is great. Skip out on the hardcover, get the paperback, go into it with a light mindset, and pay attention when Batman and Ra’s go head-to-head.

I can’t bring myself to score this very high. Each creative team in their own title did a pretty good job, but as a collected book that sits on the shelves at your comic shop or Borders sporting a beautiful cover luring you in and making a promise of a great self contained Batman story, it falls short. Ryan Benjamin and Tony Daniel (who go on to have their work included in Batman: The Black Glove) make for some beautiful art, along with Grant Morrison Paul Dini adds to the awesome writers so this is FAR from a waste but flip the first page with a little bit of caution.