JLA: Tower of Babel

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JLA: Tower of Babel is a Justice League story arc by Mark Waid, originally presented in JLA vol. 2 #43-46.

Tower of Babel deals with Batman's perceived betrayal to the superhuman community by keeping records concerning the strengths and weaknesses of his allies in the JLA. His files were stolen by Ra's Al Ghul, who used them to defeat the League through a coordinated attack.

Most of the League is temporarily defeated early in the story:

• J'onn J'onzz is covered with nanites that converted the outer layer of his skin to magnesium, causing him to burst into flame on exposure to air. He later survives by wearing an airtight suit, then waiting till he sheds enough skin cells to function normally(something the trap's designer, Batman, ignored because he did not expect J'onn to survive so long).
• Aquaman is rendered hydrophobic due to an altered form of the Scarecrow's fear toxin. Without water he would die in a matter of hours. J'onn uses his telepathy to help him overcome the effects of the toxin.
• Plastic Man is frozen solid, then shattered by a hammer by one of Ra's' henchmen.
• Green Lantern is rendered blind by his own power ring.
• Thanks to a nanite through her ear, Wonder Woman is trapped in a virtual reality battle which will eventually cause her heart to give out.
• A specially designed "vibra-bullet" strikes Flash in the back of the neck, causing him to experience seizures at lightspeed.
• Superman's skin becomes transparent after exposure to Red Kryptonite, causing him to suffer a power overload.

At this point, the JLA must also deal with Ra's attack against the language centers of all humanity, rendering the written language scrambled into unreadable nonsense.

As the rest of the League falls, The only unaffected member, Batman, fails to realize Ra's plan until it was too late. After the robbery of Thomas and Martha Wayne's graves, Batman was busy searching for the corpses of his parents. This robbery was a distraction engineered by Ra's. At the moment Batman discovers who was behind the robbery and subsequent attack, Ra's threatens to drop the corpses into a Lazarus Pit, which would (theoretically) revive them. Ra's' plan steps up when the second phase of his attack comes into play, scrambling not only the written word, but the spoken word as well.

Meanwhile, the League members recover from their injuries and Batman reveals Ra's actions to them, which causes much friction between him and the rest due to his role in devising the traps that nearly killed them. As the effects of the Red Kryptonite wear off, Superman is able to destroy the machine that is causing the chaos. Finally, Ra's reveals that a deadly nerve agent is about to be released, sparking a war between two nations already near a state of war. As Superman and Batman, and later a restored Aquaman and J'onn move on Ra's' base, Flash, Green Lantern, Plastic Man and Wonder Woman are able to prevent the release of the toxin barely in time.

Due to Batman's actions and measures placed against the JLA, a majority of the League vote to oust him: (Wonder Woman, Plastic Man and Aquaman for expulsion, Flash, Green Lantern and J'onn against, with Superman casting the decisive vote). Batman leaves before they officially give their decision. Superman is not surprised by this, saying that Batman would know how he would vote. It is later revealed in JLA #50 that Superman did indeed vote for Batman's expulsion from the League.

In the JLA Secret Files #3, it is revealed that Ra's' daughter Talia is the one that actually stole Batman's contingency plans, first from the Watchtower on the moon, and later from the Batcave. This issue also gives startling insight into the mind of Batman as he plots against his compatriots.

Even though Batman claimed that that the measure began when the Secret Society of Super Villains swapped bodies with the Justice League with the aid of the alien tyrant Agamemno years ago, later retcon revealed that the Justice League had betrayed Batman first in Identity Crisis some point after the event by editing his memory of what happened at the League's headquarter, which eventually he remembers and led him to create these contingency plans and eventually the creation of the A.I. satellite Brother Eye.