Posted By Dan Greenfield on Mar 30, 2026 | 1 comment

An ANNIVERSARY SALUTE to the Masked Manhunter’s (other) great love…

Detective Comics #411 — featuring Talia’s first appearance by Denny O’Neil, Bob Brown and Dick Giordano, with a Neal Adams cover — came out 55 years ago, on March 30, 1971.

“Into the Den of the Death-Dealers!” is a solid story of international intrigue and Brown/Giordano gave us a beautiful mystery woman straight out of a Bond flick, but readers wouldn’t really know what was in store for them until a few weeks later when we’d first meet her father, Ra’s al Ghul — and Neal Adams got his pencils into Talia.

Detective Comics #411

In a bit of a Mandela Effect, readers tend to think Adams was Talia’s first artist — and I suppose technically he was because of that tiny image of her on the ’Tec #411 cover — but it’s really because of this knockout page in April 1971’s Batman #232:

Also inked by Giordano

Regardless, Adams is her definitive artist — no question — so this piece grabbed me when I saw it posted online (by whom, I don’t recall) not long ago:

The resolution is not great but it’s still pretty fab. It’s been on Comic Art Fans for more than 15 years and was purchased in Chicago in the early 1980s.

Just something nice to look at on Talia’s 55th anniversary.

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MORE

— CAROLINE MUNRO — The Greatest TALIA That Never Was. Click here.

— DES TAYLOR Draws the Sexiest TALIA Since NEAL ADAMS. Click here.