Pre-Crisis Primer: A Lava Bath is like a Sauna

Batman Annual 8

'Messiah of the Crimson Sun'

Batman versus Ra's Al Ghul round 2!

Robin is concerned.

 I know, Batman just fought Ra's and dropped his ass into a volcano, how the hell is Ra's back already? Continuity Alert: originally this issue came out over a year after the previous story with the aforementioned volcano bath, but because all of these Pre-Crisis stories are less complete and more consisting of what I have and wanted to read, I was compelled to be a little loose with continuity. I know, I'm sickened by it way more than you are, but the continuity gets much tighter after 'Crisis' so no worries. Plus the continuity still works, it's just the pacing that's more off than anything. Usually human beings who take sauna-dips in pools of magma stay dead a little longer than 4 blog entries. Regardless, Pre-Crisis is about setting the stage so we can better appreciate (or not) what changes during Post-Crisis. Plus this issue is bad-ass! I didn't want to leave it out and make me sad.

I'll come right out and admit the story is disappointing and I'll probably run through the synopsis so, dear reader, you can marvel at the bitching art I will be posting. Calling it now: this is an art-heavy post!

Hey, burnt the faces right off those children. Fantastic.

The story starts out promising enough with the some madman or another proving his madman-ness by using the sun as a weapon to kill a man and his two sons in front of the family matriarch before slaughtering the entire town. The solar madman, presumably proud of his action, claims responsibility for the mass-murder by conflagration via television signal hijack and proclaims Gotham is next target. Essentially the town-burning was just the first step in an elaborate plan to piss off Batman.

Batman is so pimp in that large panel.

Talia , forever-estranged daughter of Ra's al Ghul appears; Robin dresses up as a  Jesus wannabe to infiltrate the sun-worshiping madman's cult; and, surprise, surprise, Ra's al Ghul is revealed as the madman behind it all. Being the smart man he is, Ra's only targeted Gotham because he knew it would get Batman's attention and he wanted to gloat. The master plan this time around is to harness the power of the sun as a destructive laser and use it to wipe out most of mankind from an orbiting space station. Batman objects to this by punching Ra's a bunch of times before sending him and an escape pod into the sun. It's clear Ra's burns to death because a) it's the sun and b) we clearly see his body turn to ash. Batman is not one with whom to fuck.

The pacing for the story is way off, cramming too much story into 40 pages. I also don't understand why the writer would go through the trouble of coming up with a complicated resurrection story for Ra's surviving the volcano dip (the Lazarus formula, the secret alchemical process that keeps Ra's immortal, somehow interacted with the primal Earth elements of the burning magma to regrow a brand-new body for the melted Ra's, whew) if he was just going to have Batman toss him into the sun ten pages later. Unless the writer just really wanted to push the point regarding what happens when one pisses off Batman and why it's a bad reason to do so.

He loves her. His coldness is the equivalent of punching a girl at recess.

 As I've shown, even if the story isn't very good, the artist was more than up to the task of producing bitching comics and creates one of the best-looking Batman comics I've ever read.

We get fetus Ra's as well as Ra's in a 'neon-apocalypse' costume.

Ra's Al Ghul death count: 2