Batman One Bad Day Ra’s al Ghul #1: Unrealized Potential

Stories of villains making bad choices for arguably the right reasons are always compelling. When successful, they can do many things, such as consider questions about sacrifice and the greater good, interrogate whether the hero’s ideals keep them from making large-scale change, or even explore deep inside the villain’s head and make us reconsider them as a character. Given the titular villain in Batman One Bad Day Ra’s Al Ghul #1, this should be the perfect comic for such a story. Instead, it is mainly unrealized potential.

This is the formative memory at the heart of Batman One Bad Day Ra’s Al Ghul #1. Ra’s al Ghul is seven years old, running from a burning city as it is pillaged. One of the city’s conquerors pursues Ra’s into the forest but is prevented from hurting the child when a pack of wolves attacks. Seven hundred years later, the empire that conquered the city has collapsed, the forest that sheltered Ra’s has turned into a desert, and the last of the species of wolf that saved Ra’s is dying. The wolf’s death catalyzes Ra’s who tries to kill the 30 people he considers the most harmful to the planet (along with how many innocent bystanders may have to be sacrificed to get the job done). Predictably this puts Ra’s on a collision course with Batman,, whose commitment to individual life isn’t negotiable regardless of Ras’s promises about saving the planet.

Batman One Bad Day Ra’s Al Ghul #1 opens with promise. The Lazarus Pit resurrects first; it appears that Taylor will explore how it causes madness when it resurrects people–at least in the context of Ra’s. The horror of that moment from Ra’s al Ghul’s youth contrasts with how he sees the present when the Lazarus Pit resurrects him. Instead of being lost in the past and having to claw his way back to the present, it’s the past that Ra’s is trying to get back.

Unfortunately, this idea of a character examination is over before it begins. Five pages later, Ra’s al Ghul’s pet wolf is dead–its species is now extinct–and the Demon’s Head has become an eco-terrorist. He’s killing political and business leaders he blames for destroying the planet so that those he views as more right-thinking can take their place. Taylor quickly turns the comic away from honest character exploration and prioritizes the plot, presenting a fairly standard “save the planet at all costs” story.

The plot is reasonably well executed but lacks any particular inspiration and has no special bearing on the title character. Aside from the one childhood memory that opens the book, nothing here makes it a Ra’s al Ghul story. The closest Taylor gets to a deep dive into character development is in a confrontation between Batman and Ra’s. The two men voice their diametrically opposed philosophies on saving a life. Batman cherishes individual lives in the here and now. But Ra’s al Ghul’s focus on improving the world of tomorrow necessitates killing individuals today. Taylor tries to make this resonate as a balanced philosophical discussion by putting Damian between the two men, who are forced to choose which great patriarchs in his family to side with. But again, Taylor doesn’t explore the ideas he presents; instead, the story sides with Batman’s view as fundamentally correct.

The genuinely noteworthy aspects of Batman One Bad Day Ra’s Al Ghul #1 are all visual. Reis and Miki deliver a very compelling Ra’s al Ghul. His features have a timeworn quality despite the overwhelming strength and presence visible in how he carries himself. The only time Ra’s doesn’t dominate a panel is when he shares it with Batman, the one character of equal strength in the issue. Where the narrative doesn’t seem very concerned about making this book a unique Ra’s al Ghul experience, the art is determined to center everything in the book around him, his strength, and his expertise.

This is especially true on two different two-page spreads. In each case, Ra’s is expositing at length (the first time about the past, the second time about his evil plan). Small panels set against the larger spreads depict events Ra’s mentions. But what commands focus in both cases is the larger-than-life character dominating everything else around him. In the first instance, as Ra’s describes the past, he stands at the center of the spread with what he discusses depicted around him. For the second spread, panels depicting Ra’s al Ghul’s plans fill the left two-thirds. At the same time, the much more prominent character, his expression, and body language, that of someone who has achieved his goal and is moving on to something else, dominates the right third of the page.

An unfortunate choice is made with the lettering in the issue. Abbott uses a script-like font for Ra’s al Ghul’s narration and sets it in black against an almost mustard color in the caption boxes. The size of the script and the color contrast make this narration less reader-friendly than all of the traditional dialogue.

Ultimately, Anderson’s coloring is most memorable in this issue. Color saturates every scene, providing rich backdrops for the story to unfold in front of. Every setting has its unique feel. Even in the case of the glow put off by computers, the blues surrounding Ra’s al Ghul are much colder than those in the Batcave. Anderson’s choice of environmental colors also creseverall compelling moments of contrast. For instance, during the standoff in Ra’s al Ghul’s dark bunker, the red from Damian’s Robin costume stands out. As the two older men argue, the boy who could be heir to both is visually at the center of the confrontation. It adds considerable weight to an otherwise ordinary scene.