MYTHCOMICS: BIRTH OF THE DEMON (1992)

 I posted two essays about Denny O'Neil the week after he passed in 2020. One was a mythcomics appreciation of one of his QUESTION stories. In the other essay, I wrote the following:

When considering my favored subject, that of “myth in literature,” O’Neil certainly doesn’t rank alongside the creators who tally up the greatest quantity of mythcomics, such as Fox, Broome, and Kirby. Of course, even the best myth-makers, in order to stay gainfully employed, had to craft many, many stories that appealed to the reader’s desire for easily comprehensible lateral meaning, whereas the more difficult vertical meaning proved hit and miss. Indeed, a lot of the stories in which I’ve observed a high symbolic discourse seem to have done so without much conscious intention. I would’ve thought that, given his considerable investment in the Caped Crusader, there might’ve been a fair sampling of myth-tales during O’Neil’s various outings with the character. But even the stories with O’Neil’s most celebrated creation, Ra’s Al Ghul, only rate as near-myths.

Happily, I recently learned that this was inaccurate. Though I tried to keep abreast of most major developments of commercial comics in the 1990s, I've missed some things without intending to do so. Just as I never heard anything about the WOLVERINE: ORIGIN series of 2001, I entirely overlooked BIRTH OF THE DEMON, a stand-alone graphic novel in which O'Neil related the origin-story of Ra's Al Ghul, aided by Norm Breyfogle. Breyfogle's selection for this project  was almost certainly predicated on his professional inspiration by Neal Adams, with whom O'Neil co-created Ra's Al Ghul in BATMAN #232 (1971). The selection of an Adams-like artist suggests to me that O'Neil aspired to recapture the elan that he and Adams captured in their attempt to move Batman away from the gimmicky stories that had dominated the character for many years-- not only in the tales of raconteurs like Fox and Robbins, but even from co-creator Bill Finger-- and back to his earliest roots in pulpish thrills.

Though BIRTH is devoted to the story of Ra's Al Ghul, it's framed as a Batman story. The crusader becomes obsessed with the possibility of finally ending the villain's menace by finding and destroying all of the Lazarus Pits scattered around the world. By so doing, Batman can at last prevent his enemy from being able to continually resuscitate himself-- which Ra's has done for many centuries, giving the immortal evildoer resources beyond any of the other criminals in the hero's rogues' gallery. In a non-diegetic sense the famous Bat-villains are of course as immortal as Ra's, as is Batman, but within the diegesis, an ever-recrudescent villain suggests the futility of the hero's war against crime. Additionally, Batman is emotionally entwined with Talia, "the daughter of the demon," whose off-again, on-again loyalty to her father further compromises the crusader's dedication to his crimefighting cause.

The main part of the story is a chronicle of the early life of Ra's Al Ghul, recited by both Talia and Batman as she tries to keep the hero from destroying another Lazarus Pit. The chronicle was compiled by Huwe, one of the future villain's few comrades in medieval Arabia, though in the sequence above Huwe relates a scene at the birth of the man who would be Ra's-- whom I will henceforth call "the doctor," since he's given no proper name and does not take the demonic cognomen in his early years.

O'Neil does not devote any time to the doctor's childhood, and only says that at some point in his studies, the doctor formed a preternatural aversion to the fact of Death. He becomes so skilled that he rises to the position of royal physician to a prestigious ruler, the Salimb. However, the king's son heedlessly injures an infirm townswoman, and though the doctor is not at fault, he offers himself as a sacrifice to the old woman's son. The young fellow, Huwe by name, almost accepts the sacrifice, but later becomes the doctor's companion throughout the majority of his ancient exploits.

The Salimb's unnamed son falls ill, and even though the doctor has only contempt for the prince, he journeys to the place where he the doctor was born. There he goes into a trance, and beholds a bat-like demon whom he associates with Death. He imagines himself being immerses and strengthened by a pit of liquid, though he has yet to actually experience a Lazarus Pit.

Using this visionary experience as a guide, the doctor revives the moribund prince by uncovering a real Lazarus Pit. The doctor pays dearly for this hubris, for upon rising the prince goes berserk, as do all such reborn individuals-- and the mindless royal slays the doctor's wife. The Salimb cares no more for the deceased doctor's wife than his son did for the old woman, and in fact he condemns the doctor for the act of murder. The prince provides the icing on the cake, ghoulishly confining the doctor in a cage with the dead body of his beloved.

Huwe saves the doctor and the two flee into the desert. The doctor guides them to the camp of his uncle, and despite initial resistance, the uncle makes it possible for the doctor to achieve vengeance-- the first time the reader sees evidence of the doctor's uncanny ability to plan the doom of his enemies. This time the physician imagines the bat-demon of his previous dream helping him slay the corrupt prince, though the full scheme-- once more depending on the use of the Lazarus Pits-- also brings doom to the Salimb as well.

Following the overthrow of the city's rulers, the formerly merciful physician leads his uncle's raiders against the city, slaughtering dozens of innocents. The doctor himself is wounded, and for the first time he uses a Pit to save himself from Death's grasp. Now that he feels himself the very incarnation of the power of the Pits, he overthrows the idol of the demon Bisu, whom the locals venerate as the representation of the desert's unforgiving cruelty. There are some intimations that the bat-demon seen in the doctor's visions may be covalent with Bisu rather than with Death, but O'Neil does not commit himself one way or the other.

Though the doctor uses the Pits to keep Huwe and his uncle as immortal as he is, the association goes sour after several centuries, when the doctor catches Huwe recording his chronicle. He ends up slaying Huwe, but the uncle preserves the chronicle so that it can fall into the hands of the Batman. Returning to modern times, the hero and the daughter of the demon discuss the similarity of Ra's obsessions and those of Batman himself. But in the end, Talia has to step back from the confrontation-- for Ra's himself has been listening to the conversation, and he demands access to the Pit being blocked by the Caped Crusader.

There is, inevitably, yet another climactic battle between the adversaries, and it ends with the mysterious maybe-death of Ra's, though of course no reader believes him truly destroyed. Batman survives as well, apparently having been succored by none other than the demon Bisu-- though of course only the readers, not the hero himself, may choose to believe that. 

I'll conclude by noting that not only does O'Neil provide a full-blown mythic origin for the best-known character of his creation, he also revises the origin of the second-best known O'Neil character, the demon's daughter. In the 1987 graphic novel SON OF THE DEMON, Mike Barr and Jerry Bingham purveyed a rather mundane backstory for Talia's mother Melisande. The O'Neil-Breyfogle narrative rewrites that as seen above, asserting that Ra's met Talia's mother at Woodstock. In his massive Bat-saga, part of which I reviewed here, Grant Morrison shows his respect for O'Neil by endorsing O'Neil's version of Talia's genesis, though Morrison does keep Barr's name for the mother, Melisande. I don't know what O'Neil thought of other writers' elaborations of his most famous characters. But I'm happy to see that, just as Morrison gave life to a full-blown myth for Talia Al Ghul, the Demon himself got his finest myth-narrative from the man who conceived him.