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

[ratcreature]

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.