ratcreature | Batman: Death and the Maidens

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Batman: Death and the Maidens

I've just read Batman: Death and the Maidens #9 (written by Greg Rucka, art by Klaus Janson) and right now I'm not all that pleased with the series. Maybe it is because I haven't (re-)read all parts in one setting, as I suspected all along while reading, that it was better suited to be read as graphic novel than as monthly, but I don't quite get it.

For one, should R'as' death turn out to be permanent, and it looks like that from his corpse being burned, I don't like that. More importantly, why is Nyssa now heading his organization? I mean, I get why the brain-washed cultists now follow her, but as I understood it, she now follows in R'as al Ghul's footsteps and I have no idea why she would want to do that. We just have Nyssa and Talia as a kind of incestuous sisterly couple heading the genocidal eco-terrorist cult, and everything else is the same. Or am I missing something?

I liked Nyssa better as a challenger to R'as power and Talia as a somewhat independent player. *grumble*

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I just read the whole thing in a go and... yeah. It works for me. It *really* works. I'm not crazy about killing off epic villains, but... I think the Nyssa-Talia connection could really be interesting. What confused *me* was the very ending. What on earth is Bruce smiling about?

Anyway, yes. I'm... cautiously optimistic about a R'as-free universe. Because Rucka sold me on Nyssa, and... yeah. Wow, that was ludicrously fucked up.

Talia needs SO MUCH THERAPY.

I have no clue what he's smiling about (I found that smile kind of unsettling), but my best guess was that Nyssa like her father didn't kill him when she could, despite claiming that she won't make the same mistakes again, and he smiles about that.

So after you've read the whole thing in one setting, what do you think is the reason why Nyssa would want to take over the organization and continue his kind of work? In the end I didn't get her character at all.

I have no clue what he's smiling about (I found that smile kind of unsettling), but my best guess was that Nyssa like her father didn't kill him when she could, despite claiming that she won't make the same mistakes again, and he smiles about that.

*nod nod* Entirely plausible. And... yeah. Bruce smiles are rarely NOT unsettling to me. *snerk* That's actually one of the reasons I made another Gothamite mood theme. Could not cope.

So after you've read the whole thing in one setting, what do you think is the reason why Nyssa would want to take over the organization and continue his kind of work? In the end I didn't get her character at all.

I read her whole set-up as "R'as has spent the last several decades -- or, perhaps, centuries -- doing everything he can to make sure her experiences were painful. Playing on whatever he could in the mortals around her to turn her into the sort of person who could not look on any mortal who wasn't, essentially, a MINION without fear, mistrust, and paranoia.

I see her as someone who tried very, very hard to turn her back on R'as' lifestyle and beliefs, and then was forced to watch her loved ones suffer and die -- pretty much always (indirectly) because of R'as' interference.

And while she *blames* R'as, she can't quite ever entirely make the connection in her mind until that dinner when he asks her for help. At which point she sets in motion a plan to kill him using his daughter. Along the way, those last few shreds of conscience (sanity?) fall by the wayside... my thought about those disturbing Nyssa/Talia scenes and the way they always (?) coincided with horrible flashbacks is that Nyssa was coming to realize that her actions with Talia were pretty much R'as' own.

By that point, she's come too far to turn back. She never stops wanting R'as dead, but it stops being about battling evil, or even about vengeance. I think it becomes about... the necessary conclusion of a battle between equals.

Rucka seems to be implying that all the grooming of Talia R'as has done canonically was never more than a back-up plan, or possibly even just a smokescreen. Which is an interesting way to handle it. In the hands of a lesser writer, it would've just been painful and Mary-Sue-ish.

But since Rucka rules, and since I never had that much invested in R'as or Talia to begin with... anyway.

As someone who has more invested in both the original Al Ghul characters, I see the whole matter quite differently, as I noted below. To me, the Nyssa character is a Mary-Sue, seeing as she was portrayed as more ruthless and more cunning than Talia, the true heir, and thus the real opponent to Batman. There is no prior story or even hint of her (that I know of), and that just strikes me as weak. To be honest, I'd even have preferred it if the Nyssa character were male, as that would fit in with the earlier role of the Al Ghul characters (Ra's selects Batman as his son-in-law because he can't name a female as his heir...) Thus, although I've read some of Greg Rucka, and people have said good things about his female characters, I don't have the appreciation that some of my fellow readers do. Indeed, I looked at this series as an opportunity to read his writing, which I'd heard praised, and have been most disappointed.

Part of my annoyance is that I've always felt the character of Talia had huge potential that was never used - she's in this interesting gray area between being a hero an villain, as half the time she helps Batman, and half the time she helps her father. It just seems that most of the authors wrote her off in standard "daughter-of-villain-loves-hero" scenarios, and that was that. Son of the Bat was, after all, one of the better! treatments of her, though it was thrown out of canon, and there was a good Superman/Batman Adventures episode that showed the difficult balance she walks.

I actually found the recent Lex Luthor as President/Talia Head running LexCorp arc quite promising in that regard, despite it never being developed - and I could draw huge parallels to Smallville Lex Luthor and DC Talia Al Ghul in terms of their situation, upbringing, etc. (Lex/Talia? Maybe...;)

Also, there were so many other ways this story could have been more interesting, and (I believe) more true to canon. I mean, this was originally sold to me on the premise of Batman facing the question of whether his destruction of the Lazarus Pits is tantamount to murder, and that got very little play. Or Nyssa and Ra's could fight to the death, with no one knowing what exactly happens (leaving a return possible) and Talia is left to decide whether to continue her father's organization. Or even Ra's makes his daughters fight each other, and *then* they decide to team up to defeat him. But brainwashed, Stockholm syndrome Talia? Feh.

Apologies for this rant, everyone. I'll stop now....

I *think* I see what you're saying about things, but, well, again -- I commented again on the matter -- I just didn't see it the same way. If you're going to take Talia out of play, that was most assuredly the way to do it, especially since there's now all *kinds* of room for more character development with her in the future.

I *didn't* see her as being weakened, or being portrayed more 'weakly' than she should be. It's kind of like good porn. (Bear with me)

When I want to get two characters together who normally wouldn't do what I want them *to* do, I make a point of having the characters behave in ways that are as close to canonical-as-I-see-it, but which also happen to be the ways that push the *other* characters' buttons. I ask myself "How can I get these people smooching? What needs to happen? How can I make those things happen in ways that make sense for the characters, so that the reader finds the eventual smooching believable, or even inevitable?"

How successful I am at any given time is, of course, open to debate. But to bring this back to Rucka and DatM, I kind of see Rucka doing something similar. "How do I get Nyssa and Talia to do the things I want them to do? What would Nyssa have to do in order to make Talia turn against her father? There's nothing. Ergo, I have to play it another way, and put Talia in a situation where she would act against her father without realizing she was doing so. How do I make *that* happen? What would break her *that* much?"

And while the necessity of breaking any character can (and will, and should) be argued to death, I don't think Rucka did Talia wrong. Because the *only* thing that would take her to that point... is what Nyssa actually did.

Now, if she'd been broken in some other way, or if it had taken less effort, or if she hadn't shown signs of coming out of it at the penultimate moment? Yeah, I'd be right with you. However... yeah. This felt right.

Of course, ymmv.

*reads more of the discussion*

Also, I think one of the reasons why Talia's situation didn't bother me is because Rucka makes it so clear that Nyssa has to break her. And, well, killing her multiple times and forcing her to use the pit -- that Talia had worked so hard to stay OUT of for so long -- was an excellent, believable-to-me way to do it. I didn't find Talia to be weak, I found her to be entirely sympathetic and her situation understandable.

Nyssa convinces Broken!Talia that they have to *help* R'as. Even once Talia is a Stockholmed wreck, Nyssa has to appeal to the bond she feels to her father. Again, I was never that attached to R'as and Talia, but I thought that was neat, and a great acknowledgment of the reality of the characters.

Additionally, I read the killing scene as Talia's-about-to-come-out-of-the-brainwashing. The sight of R'as, healthy and strong and THERE, was beginning to remind her that her actions were *wrong*.

So... yeah. Blither, blather.

Hi, you don't know me, followed a te link.

Why would they kill R'as? Did no one tell Rucka he makes appearances in the Legion books? It seems like a hell of an anticlimactic death to kill off a character who's already been confirmed alive in some fashion (albeit a somewhat ambiguous one) a thousand years later.

I haven't read any Legion comics, but I suppose within that time frame all sorts of things could happen that make R'as appear again like he was, even if he's really dead now. Like his cult cloning his body and transplanting Nyssa's or some other person's consciousness into it, or things like that.

Woah, just met the new lj comment box. Strange.

Anyway, it's funny you should mention clones, because part of the Legion storyline involves a big room chock full of naked Ra's bodies, and the implication that his consciousness sort of moved into new shells as it needed them. So in theory the DC folks can bring him back any time they want. Which is why even burial is a bit of an empty gesture; they've already explained how he's going to return.

Personally, I think physical ends to cerebral villains is kind of missing the point, but maybe that's me.

Well, I have to agree with you about being disappointed in Death and the Maidens. For one, I like Ra's Al Ghul as a villain, and I was incredibly disappointed with the way he was portrayed and the anticlimax that was his death. (The one good thing? Reinforcing the concept of the Demon's Head as a title - sort of a "The King is Dead, Long Live the King...")

I also have to say that I wasn't convinced by the new character at all, Nyssa just kind of popped out of nowhere, and moreover her very existence undermines Talia as a character. From the beginning, there were just all kinds of ways in which the author sought to weaken Talia so as to make the new girl look cool, which I just found completely out of character. Also, torture notwithstanding, I still can't see Talia transferring her allegiance so easily - devotion to her father is one of the tenets of her existence. Basically, it felt to me like the author decided he couldn't be bothered to develop the *existing* characters of Ra's and Talia, and thought he'd throw in a new "edgy" psychopathic Al Ghul daughter instead.

Canon and crossover problems aside, I'm hoping that this whole series gets retconned or ditched from continuity. (And quite frankly, I wish I hadn't spent the money on it....:(

I was interested in Nyssa at first, but in the end her character didn't work for me and I ended up disappointed. I mean, at first I could sort of sympathize with her, but then, like you said, she turned out to be more or less psychopathic, at least that is the only explanation for her behavior that I can see without rereading and looking for more clues I might have missed. IMO Gotham has enough villains who are insane, and I've always like that while Ra's is extremely ruthless and has more or less genocidal objectives I can (at least when he's handled by good writers) see his rationale and objectives. And I agree that this series made Talia less interesting and strong. I always liked the conflict in her loyalties, and think that was better than having a double feature villain with her and Nyssa together in the cult.

My general reaction to the mini -- I read 1-6 or 1-7 all in a bunch, and then the last couple (arrrgh delayed) issues as they came out -- is that it's rather cool that they managed to "reboot" Ra's al Ghul as a -- to me -- more interesting and female character without going back and retconning all of his previous appearances. I also like the end being put to the interminable Bruce/Talia dance.

I somehow missed any billing of the storyline as a "last Ra's story!" so the end left me nicely stunned.

I'll probably reread the whole thing, and be able to do some more analytical reviewing afterward. I remember being glad I'd saved up and waited to read that first bunch of issues all together -- something I do with certain kinds of storylines anyway, particularly when spoilers are easily avoidable or I don't care about being spoiled.

Did you read the prologue that ran as a back-up in Detective? I liked the way it introduced Nyssa, and I didn't realise until I got Te's realtime responses to the miniseries how much of a difference it would make to one's perspective on the story.

Yeah, I read the back-up in Detective, though that's been a while, because I read the whole thing, including the prologue, as it came out in installments. I liked the start well enough, though it was *slow* for a monthly (that slowness was why I think it might work better when read as a graphic novel), but in the end Nyssa doesn't work for me as a Ra's replacement. But then I admit that Ra's always has been one of my favorite Batman villains, he's certainly in my top three Gotham villain characters, so I'm not easily mollified when it comes to replacing him with someone else.

Eeee! Look! Batman fan!

*friends you*

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Batman: Death and the Maidens

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Al Ghul

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