In "To Quote a Phrase," I spotlight memorable quotes from comic books.

March will be a Month of "To Quote a Phrase," as I'll feature 31 notable comic book quotes all month long (not necessarily one per day, but there will be 31 in total by the end of the month)!

We begin with Ra's Al Ghul's famous exclamation of shock at the seemingly undying fighting prowess of Batman!

One of the important things to remember about Denny O'Neil's Batman is that, for the most part, his take on Batman wasn't that the Dark Knight was this perfect crimefighter. He was obviously a talented superhero, but he was about as close as you could get to a "normal" superhero. Never is this more obvious than in the storyline that introduced Ra's Al Ghul to the comic book world.

Batman fakes Bruce Wayne's death and takes on the identity of Matches Malone because he needs to concentrate solely on tracking down and defeating Ra's Al Ghul. He even puts together a team of experts in their fields to help him (like a martial arts expert named Ling). This is all roughly based on the James Bond films of the era, where Bond would team up with a disaparate group of folks pretty much every movie.

In Batman #243 (by O'Neil, Neal Adams and Dick Giordano), Batman accosts Ubu when he runs into Talia, but then Batman is taken down by a champion skier...

And when she insists on joining his team, he's basically like, "Eh, okay."

Later, Molly saves Batman's life, even!

However, the whole thing appears to be a moot point when they get to Ra's Al Ghul's headquarters and he is already dead!

Of course, things are never quite that easy, as Ra's is brought back from the dead and he is PISSED...

He kicks everyone's ass at the start of the next issue, and as he escapes, Batman tries to go after them on skiis, but Molly insists on coming, too, and things don't go well for her...

Batman has to let Ra's and Talia escape to tend to Molly, but Batman is a really good detective, so he tracks Ra's down and this impresses Ra's a lot. They decide to have a sword fight in the desert with their shirts off, because of course they did...

As I was noting before, Batman is super FALLIBLE in this comic, as he is bitten by a scorpion and nominally appears to die. But Talia comes to him with an antidote for the scorpion bite and we almost see Batman transcend his normal "typical guy" self and become something more, something that shocks Ra's, as well, with his whole "still being alive" deal, as Ra's delivers the quote that we're spotlighting this time around...

I love that a dude who JUST CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD HIMSELF is so shocked by Batman not being dead. It's still an EXCELLENT scene. My goodness, Adams drew the heck out of it.

Ra's folds like a cheap suit and Batman kisses Talia...

Then heads off with her dead, to, you know, travel across the world to have the Gotham City PD arrest him, I guess...

I imagine some interesting Weekend at Bernie's style stuff where Batman changes back into Matches and has Ra's get on to his private plane unconscious.

Okay, folks, if you care to suggest cool comic book quotes that you'd like to see spotlighted here, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com. There's a decent enough chance that if you think the quote in question is super cool than I, too, will find it super cool and feature it here. Not a 100% chance, though, of course. Let's say roughly a 60% chance. I do need a whole month's worth of these quotes, after all!