10 Times The Justice League Were Utterly Destroyed

2. JLA Betrayed From Within In The Tower Of Babel

Batman Tower of Babel Wonder Woman Green Lantern
DC Comics

In the Tower of Babel story arc, which ran from JLA #43 to #46, prolific writer Mark Waid destroyed the Justice League from the inside when the paranoid contingency plans of one of their own were stolen and turned into a deadly scheme to kill the JLA.

Batman had a problem. He was only a man with a belt full of gadgets and he worked alongside gods and people with unimaginable powers. How could he ever stop them if they turned from the side of good? To deal with this possibility, he created contingency plans to take down, but not kill, every member of the Justice League, past and present, and kept the existence of these plans to himself.

Talia al Ghul broke into the Batcave and extracted the plans from the Batcomputer while the Caped Crusader was distracted by the thefts of the bodies of his parents. Talia's father, Ra’s al Ghul, unleashed the plans on the members of the Justice League while also using a machine that made the written and spoken word unintelligible to anyone, creating chaos all over the world.

The heroes overcame their individual traps and destroyed al Ghul’s machine. Once Batman confessed that these plans were his creation, the shocked Leaguers voted on whether or not to expel the Dark Knight for his actions - but he left before the vote was completed.

Contributor
Contributor

John Wilson has been a comic book and pop culture fan his entire life. He has written for a number of websites on the subject over the years and is especially pleased to be at WhatCulture. John has written two comic books for Last Ember Press Studio and has recently self-published a children's book called "Blue." When not spending far too much time on the internet, John spends time with his lovely wife, Kim, their goofy dog, Tesla, and two very spoiled cats.