History

  His name meaning 'the demon's head' in Arabic, Ra's al Ghul wants to take over the world, in order to make it a better place. However, since his plans would invariably result in many deaths, he has been opposed at every turn by 'the detective', Batman, whom he had hoped would marry his daughter Talia and become his heir. A master swordsman with a keen intellect, Ra's is made particularly dangerous by his knowledge of Batman's other identity and by his 'Lazarus Pits' in which he can rejuvenate himself, already having extended his lifespan far beyond that of a normal human. He has recently clashed with Superman and the rest of the JLA in a couple of incidents which have driven a seemingly permanent wedge between Ra's and his daughter.

  In the 31st century Ra's Al Ghul posed for a time as the United Planet president Leland McCauley. When the lost Legionnaires came back to Earth they were surprised to learn that President Brande had been impeached and that McCauley was now in office. As they were chased like fugitives, they discovered the decomposed body of the real McCauley dumped in the sewers of Metropolis. Shortly afterward the impostor was unmasked. The Legion defeated him and his Oversight Watch and thwarted his plans to jump-start the evolutionary process of humanity. A stock of cloned bodies of the Demon's Head were found and, for a time, the Legion assumed that this Ra's Al Ghul was a clone too. Brainiac 5 realised later that the resurrection process of the Lazarus Pit to which Ra's Al Ghul had submitted himself for decades had changed him. He "was" literally the Lazarus Fires and the cloned bodies were simply vessels for this "sentient blood".