10 Things DC Comics Wants You To Forget About Ra's Al Ghul
1. He's A Hypocrite
Ra's al Ghul has always been portrayed as one of Batman's most noble villains. While his actions trying to wipe out humanity may be heinous, he does so out of a desire to protect the natural world. In his mind, humanity is an evil that must be destroyed if nature is to survive.
Except sometimes he'll throw all that out the window and do horrible things to the natural world as well. In some stories, Ra's has been portrayed as a flat-out villain, caring about nothing more than his own immortality and increasing the power of the League of Assassins.
One such story was Batman and Robin #29. At the time, Robin was dead and his corpse had been stolen by Ra's. In this issue, Batman teamed up with Aquaman to track down The Demon's Head.
As they followed Ra's, they found the League of Assassins hunting down and killing an entire pod of sperm whales. Ra's had ordered the hunt so that the whales' wombs could be used to grow a brand new army of genetically-altered assassins.
It was a pretty gruesome scene and a sharp contrast to the environmentally friendly eco-terrorist that Ra's is usually portrayed as.