From RAGs to bitches

Ah, Ras Al-Ghul. The comic book Fu Manchu with the light shellacking of 'environmental concern' to make him shiny enough for the 1970s when he was created.

"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, ... one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present ... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."
–The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

I have little love for RAGs.  Batman's rogues gallery of deformed and idiosyncratic gangsters may stink of the Depression-era Dick Tracy, but at least, like Batman, they are firmly rooted in urban cops and robbers. RAGs, however, is based on Edwardian-era British terror of the alien 'yellow peril' of Asian villains with inscrutable values and goals, bent only on the destruction of Western civilization.

Who would put a Fu Manchu knockoff in Detective Comics?!
Those '70s writers had no respect for tradition, I tell ya.

Decent criminals, of course, want to just steal some crap and maybe kill a few people along the way.

Fu Munchu, on the other hand, wants to kill everyone in what you would call 'civilization'. Just like Ras Al Ghul!

RAGs kind of fits on "Arrow" because, well, Green Arrow is SUPPOSED to be dumber than Batman is (his rogues gallery certainly is). Arrow is, after all, the guy who brings an arrow to a gunfight; pitting him against asian/assassin/ninja/sword people makes some thematic and tactical sense. And he has the same ridiculous sense of honor/drama that the GA crew do.  Batman does not have time to waste on your schoolyard swordfights, RAGs.  Librarians are being shot and pre-Incan moth idols are being stolen, even as we speak.

Even Liam "Darkman" Neeson couldn't make Ras Al Ghul cool.  Admit it; you barely remember him from the Bale-Batman trilogy, certainly when compared to the likes of the Joker, Two-Face, and the insidious Coleman Reese.

"You were supposed to UNDERSTAND. ... I'll MAKE you understand."

Characters like the Joker and Two-Face earned their street cred.  They showed up a long time ago and worked for it, for decades.  And doing some grubby **** too, like robbing chewing gum shipments and flower shops. DC just lazily 'ported in Ras Al Ghul and declared him a Big Bad-Ass through exposition, "OMG he knows who Batman is, and he has unlimited resources and a numberless army of faceless killers and lives in a mountain with a hot-to-trot daughter and is ancient and justified and can come back from the dead and wants to destroy the world!"  Yawn. Call me when he's stolen the Van Landorph emerald or fought somebody on a giant prop.  Because so far his major accomplishments have been...not destroying the world, and dying.  There are a lot of people who've done that.

Oh, and he spends a lot time on his retirement plan; marry off his daughter and find someone to take over his business.  He's Tevye the Supervillain.  On Arrow he's gone so far as to frame Ollie for murder because he wants him to take his place as head of the league of pointlessly evil Asians.  Fortunately, that's a idea so ridiculous that RAGs never tried it on Batman!

Except that time where he DID.

By disguising himself as a circus midget.

Oh, look; it is the head of a demon on a banner. 
What a strange but surely entirely coincidental thing.

WORDS!  Sure, I'm a fan of words...in moderation.  And this ain't moderation.  Comics books used to read as if they were written for a radio play.  Maybe it was because they thought readers were stupid and wouldn't understand the pictures. Maybe writers were paid by the word or were all frustrated novelists.  In the High Bronze Age, every Batman story started this way: with pretentious Vincent-Price-like palaver.  No matter! It is almost fitting.

Batman, at this point in the arc, is wanted and on the run from the GCPD, having been framed for the murder of Ra's Al Ghul and his daughter, Talia. You know, the only two people on earth with free and easy access to a magical mud bath that brings the dead back to life.  Naturally, we know he's not guilty, not because of Batman's code against killing, but because the incompetent Bronze Age Batman couldn't kill a butterfly with a bazooka.

In fact, the comic opens with a disguised Batman getting help from Jack Ryder.  Apparently the World's Greatest Detective needs a hack reporter to tell him that a lion's hair probably came from a visiting circus.

You get three guesses who the snake charmer really is.

This story checks all the 'circus setting' boxes. Suspicious sideshow? Check.  Wild chase through the Hall of Mirror? Check.  Acrobat attack? Check.

Bronze Age Batman NEVER shut up and what he said was always soul-crushingly stupid.
Goons fell over themselves to get knocked out first,
because the sooner they were unconscious the less they  had to listen to.

At some point Batman disguises himself as Ra's, which is stupid.  Which gets pointed out.

Clowns are Batman's kryptonite.

Some times Bronze Age Batman just seems like a giant kid playing at being Batman.  "Ah ha! But... I MYSELF am disguised as Ra's!  And then.... and then I jump at you!"  Stupid Bronze Age Batman.

Just like in Arrow, RAGS has framed Batman for murder so that Batman will give up Batmanning and become Ras Junior.  Batman tells him, "Take This Job and Shove It!"

Literally.

Batman is then attacked by a sharpshooter and a flaming knife-thrower. Um, it's the knives that are flaming, not the thrower. Batman hurls an arrow in the sharpshooter's gun barrel and catches the knife and throws it away.  Bronze Age Batman may be an idiot, but he's a savant at catching crap and throwing it back at you.  Just as Batman is about to be overwhelmed by a second acrobat attack, the Creeper saves his butt.  

The Creeper, by the way, was the "Captain Atom" of the 1970s. DC owned him and was damned determined to force him down your throat and make you love him.  Which is why the Creeper is such a beloved figure to kids and adults today!  With his own comic book, the cartoon, and of course the forthcoming feature film.  I can't wait till his live-action show crosses over with Captain Atom's!

This is so stupid I'm at a loss for words.
And I've written about evil Kryptonian space-cats in the Phantom Zone.

Batman is observant enough to see through RAG's midget-disguise...

Stupid Bronze Age Batman.
I think RAGs used to just show to keep him from accidentally killing himself.

...but not enough to notice that he threw a flaming dagger into a circus tent and set it on fire.  Which lets RAGs get away (again), but somehow gives Batman the evidence he needs to exonerate himself.  I guess he couldn't have just asked Gordon to dig up the 'corpses' before, could he?  Then there'd be no reason for a circus (either figurative or literal).  

Add "flipped my cork" and "oh, yeah" to the list of Things Batman Should Never Say.

So, that's how Ra's Al-Ghul seems to me still.  Wastes all his time like Sally Brown following around Linus Van Pelt, trying to make Batman (or, on tv, Green Arrow) love him. Lurking around circuses atndthe like, playing little "How to Host a Murder Mystery" parlor games.  Not destroying civilization, or anything bigger than a circus tent.

He's the enemy Green Arrow deserves.