Batman Incorporated #2

Issue Details

Synopsis

EYE OF THE GORGON Once upon a time, at a charity rock concert, a young astrologer met an older man with a head for economics, and fell in love. As soon as her baby was born, the man took her child, climbed with her to the top of a very high mountain, and promised her the world.   In the present day, Talia al Ghul is come before her father, who congratulates her for her Leviathan organization's strikes again Batman. However, his own plans mean that he cannot allow her to leave this base. This causes her to think back over her own life.   In her childhood, she was bright, eager to connect with her distant father. To please her father, she was trained as an assassin. One day, he came home near dead, and when she tried to hug him after his going through the Lazarus Pit, he struck her.   She went to see a soothsayer in her father's employ. The old woman told her about the stars, and in particular about Beta Persei, a binary star system in the constellation of Perseus, which forms the eye of Medusa's head. It is known as Algol. Talia wanted to know more, but the woman starts ranting, going on about the binary system as a father and daughter, and how Ra's has not aged while she has. As a guard drags the old woman away, she shouts that her name is Melisande, and the only way to avoid being hurt by a man is to seem harmless.   When she confronted her father, he insisted that her mother was dead. After that, she became more distant, falling into a pattern of asking her father for extravagant gifts: horses, ballet lessons, zeppelins. On her sixteenth birthday, he gave her the former London base of the Devil Doctor of Limehouse, and they were attacked by the assassins of the Sensei. He had to leave her party then, to prepare for the impending war of assassins.   One day, while attending school, she was kidnapped by a rogue faction of the League of Assassins led by Ebeneezer Darrk. He talks about seducing her, but she almost convinces him to let her go. He shrugs this off, but is defeated by the Batman. Talia is smitten.   It seems that the entire affair was orchestrated by Ra's al Ghul to bring Talia and the Batman together. Together, they could produce the perfect male heir for Ra's al Ghul's schemes. Talia objects, but when her father defeats Batman she revives him with chemicals, allowing him to defeat her father. In his victory, they make love under the Tropic of Capricorn. Soon she has a bright child of her own, who she wants to give the world. However, she is distant, running a criminal enterprise, and to please her, her son trains as a ninja. As the years go on, she seeded a mole in the Black Glove and helped found the Secret Society of Super-Villains. Eventually, she tried to use Damian to bring Batman over to her side, but this was not enough. She decided if she could not have love, she would bring war.   She has laid the groundwork well. Her loyalists have fully penetrated her father's organization, isolating his loyalists. Those they could not co-opt are swiftly defeated by the Fatherless. Combined with the Leviathan organization, she is the dominant player, and she will keep her father under house arrest until either she or Batman is dead. Ra's expresses admiration of what she has become.