Batman: Death and the Maidens

[ratcreature]

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*

Comments

Al Ghul

[killalla]

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....:(

Re: Al Ghul

[ratcreature]

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.