1971: Ra’s Al Ghul – He’s not an Arrow villain, he’s a Batman villain!

You might recognize the name Ra’s Al Ghul from the hit CW show Arrow. You might recognize it from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. Hell, you may even recognize it the from the Batman Animated series that turned this issue into the two part episode: The Demon’s Quest. As one of Batman’s biggest threats, Ra’s Al Ghul has been a mainstay in the comic books since his inception. No, not Inception, that Nolan film is unrelated.

Ra’s’ inception came with Batman #232. He comes to Batman for help after his daughter Talia, whom Batman had met a month earlier over in Detective, and Robin are kidnapped and ransomed.

1970: No Evil Shall Escape My Sight!

There are a few writer/artist duos, that individually are great, but when together, their work stand above the rest. They represent a pinacle for others to strive for. I’m talking about teams such as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the 60’s, Marv Wolfman and George Perez, and Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale in the 90’s. For the 70’s it was the guys I’m about to talk about now: Dennis (Denny) O’Neil and Neal Adams. First teaming up for Detective 395 the award winning work would raise the bar for the standards of storytelling readers expected, pushed the envelope for what was permitted in comics by the Comics Code Authority, and made comics a much more realistic world. They also introduced characters such as Ra’s and Talia Al Ghul, and Green Lantern John Stewart.