Talia al Ghul

• 1. Introduction

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  Talia al Ghul makes her debut in Detective Comics #411, dated May 1971, and before the story ends she shoots a man dead. The victim is Dr. Darrk, apparently the head of the League of Assassins, and she fires to save Batman's life. It is a striking first act for a character who would become one of the Dark Knight's most enduring love interests and also one of his most persistent female adversaries. She is the daughter of the eco-terrorist Ra's al Ghul, a spymaster, a mother, and eventually the leader of secret societies of her own. Who created her, and what did they borrow to do it? Why does a woman who loves Batman keep ending up on the opposite side of a fight with him? And what happens to a daughter when her father looks past her for an heir?

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• 2. Made From Borrowed Parts

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  Writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Bob Brown created Talia, and at first she carried only that single name. Her makers drew on other fiction. One influence was the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Another was the Fu Manchu stories.

  Those roots show in how critics describe her early shape. They talk about a character who began as a "Bond-girl archetype" and grew into a pivotal, complex figure with ambiguous motivations. The same ancestry has drawn sharper complaints. Some writers point to orientalism, arguing that she fits the dragon lady stereotype and is coded as "ethnic" and "foreign" without any definite identity. They trace part of that problem to the way her father Ra's was conceived by the artist Neal Adams.

  Her standing in the fan world has stayed high regardless. IGN ranked her 42nd on its list of the Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time. Comics Buyer's Guide placed her 25th on its list of the 100 Sexiest Women in Comics.

  Decades after her creation, the writer Grant Morrison gave the character a deeply personal edge. Morrison drew on being a child of divorce when writing the saga of Batman, Talia and their son Damian. That run lasted seven years and ended with Batman Incorporated.

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• 3. A Test for Batman

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  In Batman #232, published in June 1971 under the title Daughter of the Demon, Dick Grayson is kidnapped. Ra's al Ghul strides into the Batcave and reveals that he knows Batman's secret identity. He says Talia was taken along with Dick, and the two men set out to find them. The whole kidnapping proves to be a setup. Ra's staged it as a final test of whether Batman deserved to be Talia's husband and his successor. Batman turns the offer down, yet he returns her feelings.

  A 1978 story goes further. In DC Special Series #15, titled I Now Pronounce You Batman and Wife!, Ra's and Talia treat the hero as already married to her, needing only their consent.

  The 1987 graphic novel Son of the Demon, by Mike W. Barr, turns the idea into a real wedding, though the book is noncanonical. Ra's persuades Batman to help hunt a rogue assassin who murdered his wife Melisande, Talia's mother. Talia watched the killing as a small child. Batman marries Talia, and she becomes pregnant. Then he is nearly killed shielding her from the assassin's agents.

  Talia draws a hard conclusion from that attack. She decides she could never keep Batman, since he would always have to defend her. She fakes a miscarriage, and the marriage is dissolved.

  Later continuity revises the ending. Talia gives birth and leaves the child at an orphanage, along with a jewel-encrusted necklace that Batman had once given her. The boy is adopted and named Ibn al Xu'ffasch, Arabic for son of the bat.

  The tension between her love and her loyalty never fully goes away. When Gotham City was declared a No Man's Land in 1999 after an earthquake, Talia was the one who urged Batman to come back.

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• 4. Family Wounds

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  The graphic novel Batman: Birth of the Demon, written by Dennis O'Neil in 1992, places Ra's meeting Talia's mother at Woodstock, New York. In this telling her mother is confirmed dead of a drug overdose. Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham revised and expanded that origin in Batman, Incorporated #2 in 2012.

  A darker family secret arrives in Batman: Death and the Maidens, written by Greg Rucka in 2003. It reveals that Ra's had another daughter, Nyssa, born to a woman he met during his travels in Russia in the 20th century. Ra's abandoned Nyssa at a crucial time. She was tortured, her family was killed in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, and Nazi doctors left her unable to have children.

  Nyssa wants revenge, and she plans to turn Talia into the weapon. She captures her half-sister and kills and revives her in the Lazarus Pit again and again in rapid succession. The trauma leaves Talia nearly broken. Nyssa also plots to assassinate Superman with kryptonite bullets stolen from the Batcave. She hopes that a single moment of worldwide grief might rouse her from the numbness she has felt since the camp.

  Batman stops the attempt on Superman, but he cannot save Ra's from Nyssa. That death turns out to be part of a larger design by Ra's himself. He wanted his daughters to accept their destinies as his heirs and carry on his genocidal campaign. Both women take over The Demon. Talia disavows her love for Bruce Wayne, and both sisters now count Batman as an enemy.

  From this point Talia is more often Batman's foe than his ally. Countdown to Infinite Crisis shows her as a core member of the Secret Society of Super Villains, as part of Nyssa's scheme to take over the planet and bring about world peace and equality. After Cassandra Cain kills Nyssa, Talia takes charge of the League.

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• 5. Suitors and Disguises

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  Bane enters the League of Assassins, and Ra's begins to see him as a possible heir in place of Batman. He wants his daughter to marry the man. Talia refuses. She regards Bane as a cunning animal, no match for the cultured intelligence of the hero he replaced.

  Batman defeats Bane in the Legacy series of 1996. Ra's then agrees that Bane never deserved his daughter, and the engagement ends in Detective Comics #701 and Robin #33. Bane does not let go. In Batman: Bane in 1997 he has a nightmare in which Talia, presumed dead, betrays and stabs him and then embraces Batman. In Birds of Prey #26 in 2001, written by Dixon, he still speaks of his obsession. Talia is pleased by his supposed death in one of her father's underground sanctums.

  Near the turn of the century, the writers sent her in a new direction. Disillusioned with her father and his plans, Talia calls herself Talia Head and leaves him. She becomes the new CEO of LexCorp when Lex Luthor is elected President of the United States.

  The job suits her. She is described as highly intelligent, with advanced degrees in biology and engineering and an MBA. She is also said to hide her own prowess so that opponents underestimate her. At LexCorp she seems to support Luthor while secretly working against him, anonymously leaking word of his shady dealings to Superman. After Luthor falls, she sells every LexCorp asset to the Wayne Foundation, leaving him penniless and his crimes exposed.

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• 6. Mother and Weapon

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  In the Death in the Family storyline of 1988, the Joker murders Jason Todd, the second Robin, in Ethiopia. Years later, in Under the Hood in 2005, the League of Assassins finds him alive. The story Red Hood: The Lost Days shows what Talia did next. Out of love for Batman, she brings Jason to her father, and he spends months in the League's care. His body heals, but his mind stays shattered.

  Seeing no other option, Talia throws Jason into the Lazarus Pit while her father is regenerating in it. He wakes whole in body and mind. She then helps him escape to spare him her father's anger. Jason is furious that Batman never killed the Joker. To keep Jason from going after Batman, Talia pays for his training and helps him become the second Red Hood. She also seduces him, hoping to turn him against Batman. After the New 52 reboot of September 2011, her role changes: she has Jason trained by a secret cult of warrior monks called the All Caste.

  Then comes Damian. Batman and Son, written by Grant Morrison in 2006, folds the lost child of Son of the Demon back into continuity. Damian Wayne is raised in the League of Assassins, and his conception is portrayed as a sexual assault of Batman by Talia.

  During Batman R.I.P., Talia and Damian learn of the Black Glove's plot against Batman and save Commissioner James Gordon from being killed. Batman vanishes after a fight with Simon Hurt, is captured by Darkseid, and apparently dies. Talia leaves Damian with his adoptive brother Dick Grayson, who becomes Batman with Damian as Robin.

  The warmth does not last. After an operation replaces Damian's spine, Talia is revealed to have planted an implant that lets her, or anyone she chooses, including Deathstroke, control his body remotely. She meant to force him to kill Dick Grayson, whom she believed was holding him back. When Grayson frees the boy, Talia reveals she has begun cloning her son. She is too much of a perfectionist to love a child who defied her, and she tells him he is no longer welcome in the House of al Ghul.

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• 7. The Leviathan War

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  A bounty of US$500 million is the sum Talia puts on her own son's head. The New 52 reboot of 2011 reveals her as the mastermind behind Leviathan, a shadowy organization formed to oppose Bruce Wayne's Batman Incorporated project. She declares war on Batman.

  In Batman Incorporated Vol. 2, #2, a Talia origin issue from 2012, she puts her father under house arrest for opposing her plan and takes his men with her. She tells Batman that her agents have infiltrated all of Gotham's infrastructure. She says she is giving the poor purpose by arming them, handing them slogans to chant, and supplying an enemy to fight. Batman, she says, must choose between saving Gotham from suicide and saving Damian from a death sentence. Her clone of Damian, called Heretic, kills Damian.

  When Heretic loses his last fight with Batman, Talia kills him herself. She then destroys Wayne Tower and challenges Batman to a duel to the death in the Batcave. She poisons him. Mid-battle he embraces and kisses her, unaware that her lips are covered in poison. He apologizes for being unable to love her the way she wants and admits defeat. Talia asks him to beg for the antidote, but he says nothing.

  Jason Todd arrives and offers her the Oroboro trigger, a device that would set off the destruction of seven cities. She claims it would give the world a new source of energy. When she tries to activate it, Jason reveals that he has double-crossed her and that the weapons were already disarmed. Kathy Kane then shoots and kills Talia.

  She does not stay buried. After her burial, her body vanishes from the gravesite along with Damian's.

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• 8. Return and Screens

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  Following Damian's resurrection, Talia turns up on Nanda Parbat with amnesia. A robed figure restores her memory and tries to make her his servant, but she resists and knocks him unconscious. He is Den Darga, of the ancient immortals known as the Lu'un Darga. Talia tells Damian that her family has fought them for ages and that they plan to cleanse the Earth entirely. Den Darga sinks al Ghul Island, and the clones he leaves behind give their lives to save Damian. Afterward Talia says she has been seeking redemption and warns her son that vigilantism will corrupt him. Damian chooses to leave. Talia rejoins the League of Assassins to prepare for war.

  She and Batman later reappear together, bickering like a couple, to help their son save life on Earth. Damian gives his life in the effort and is brought back by Suren Darga.

  In DC Rebirth, Talia visits Damian on his birthday to warn him that Ra's is sending the Demon's Fist to assassinate him and the Teen Titans. The plan backfires, because Damian saves those targets and they become his teammates.

  In Shadow War, a reformed Ra's decides to atone by surrendering and revealing his secrets in public. During a press conference a sniper resembling Deathstroke shoots him dead, and his body is turned to ash so he cannot be resurrected. Talia gathers the League of Shadows and strikes back at Deathstroke and the Secret Society of Super-Villains. In a one-on-one battle she kills the man she believes is Deathstroke. He turns out to be Geo-Force, who staged the war hoping the two would destroy each other. Damian and Bruce help her defeat him, and Damian persuades her to spare his life, because Ra's believed their family should be better.

  Outside the comics, Helen Slater and then Olivia Hussey voiced Talia in the DC Animated Universe, her first appearances beyond comic books. Marion Cotillard played her in the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises, with Joey King as the child Talia, and Lexa Doig played her in the television series Arrow. Stana Katic voiced her in the game Batman: Arkham City, and Vanessa Labrie voices her as a playable character and the final boss in Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.

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