Broken Frontier

With a new Azrael series debuting this week, Broken Frontier's Kris Bather takes an opportunity to look back on the character's history and the long, dark legacy of the avenging angel of death...

Ah, the glorious 1990s. It was a decade of cheap thrills and massive attraction. The decade was to comics what the decade before it was to music – sometimes shallow and with a multitude of one-hit wonders but upon reflection, much produced in the time is still memorable.

Bursting on to the scene in the 1992-93 mini-series, Batman: Sword of Azrael, no-one really knew what to make of the series. Back in those days the Dark Knight had more series, spin-offs and one-shots than Wolverine has today. To see this red clad anti-hero battling Batman, in a series named after him and away from the main Bat books, one could only assume that the character with the strange name was a flash in the pan, never to be seen again. But what came next was the real surprise. After Azrael’s four issue series ended, the character was integrated in to Batman’s main titles, at a most pivotal point.

It was a time in Batman’s history known as Knightfall, then followed by Knightquest and finally, KnightsEnd. Running in an astonishing ten titles, and encompassing seventy one issues the epic took almost two years to tell. As the Batman editor at the time, Denny O’Neil tells it, in the classic tome DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes, "The Knightfall saga was an exploration of Batman, an exploration of the idea of a hero, and it was also an exploration of comic book technique."

This is when Azrael comes along. Both he and Bane were new characters at this point, but both held dominant positions in the Bat books. Azrael’s debut in the Sword mini was an explosion of energy, as is anything drawn by Joe Quesada (who went on to become Marvel’s E-I-C). In the opening pages of Sword of Azrael’s debut issue a strange man is riding a violent horse through Gotham, knocking pedestrians out of the way, after falling from a penthouse, bleeding from bullet wounds. Crawling to his son’s apartment, dad gives the bespectacled blonde a brief lesson in Azrael history, before dying, leaving the Angel of Death legacy to overawed student Jean-Paul Valley.

Not much about Valley, or the past of his new namesake was revealed in the initial mini-series. Valley travelled to Switzerland where he met his gruff mentor, the dwarf Nomoz and learnt about The System, a secret conditioning which Valley’s father had been implanting in him since birth. Through The System, Valley would learn to be the latest in a centuries long line of Avenging Angels with cool costumes and flaming swords. He was a quick student, as Batman soon discovered. In the last issue Azrael rescues Batman, to Nomoz’s dismay and states, "I am not an angel. I am a man. My name is Jean Paul Valley. That was my father’s name too."

Not soon after Batman and Azrael would collide once more. Suffering from mental and physical meltdown, a weakened Batman faced the monstrosity of Bane, a hulking bad guy using a drug called Venom (no relation to Spider-Man) and a crafty mind to wear down the Dark Knight until he could land his final blow. Setting a few of Arkham Asylum’s wildest residents free, Batman put in a lot of overtime to keep the streets of Gotham safe. However, despite urban legends, the Bat is still just a man. At this point in the tale, he’s not the man he used to be. And that’s when Bane shows his hand. He had been watching and biding his time, and like a scorpion, knew just when to strike. Invading Wayne Manor a fight between the two men eventually ended with a shock no-one saw coming (even after The Death of Superman only months previous)– the breaking of the Bat. Like a mad wrestler, Bane picked up Wayne, and crippled him over his knee, before throwing him off a rooftop in the middle of Gotham.

Then Azrael steps in, becoming Batman, while a wheelchair bound Bruce Wayne recovers with the aid of Dr. Shondra Kinsolving and enemy Lady Shiva. Like readers at the time, Nightwing and Robin were astonished that Bruce Wayne would give the new kid the legendary cape and cowl. However, Wayne recognized Valley’s mad fighting skills and desire for justice. But it was those two things that became Valley’s undoing. His madness became greater and his sense of justice fatally skewed. During this time, with Azrael in a new armoured Batman costume, (nick-named AzBats by fans), he became increasingly driven for blood, with the dangers of The System driving his actions.

Caring not for the safety of civilians, heroes or villains, Azrael is Batman in name only, and heaven help anyone who dared to question it. The Knight series was filled with great moments, such as Azrael’s constant dismissal of Robin as a partner, his brutal (and sometimes lethal) crime fighting methods, the Bane showdown, the ever growing distance between him and the GCPD and the final fight between a recovered and crafty Batman and his deranged successor in the caverns around the Batcave.

After Bruce became Batman once more, Azrael set of on his own journeys away from Gotham, primarily focused on discovering his own identity while learning to hone his new found skills against The Order of St. Dumas. Returning to Gotham mid-way through his solo series, Valley was a new man (with a new costume) and managed to join the Bat Family once more during the post-earthquake centred stories of No Man’s Land. The legacy of Azrael will continue, though without Valley, as he was apparently gunned down in the final issue (#100) of his series.

Fabian Nicieza’s recent three part mini-series Azrael: Death’s Dark Knight revealed who would uphold the legacy. His name is Michael Washington Lane, an ex-cop and one of the so-called Three Ghosts of Batman from Grant Morrison’s initial Batman run. Lane also has a new, more street-level costume, a Suit of Sorrows from Talia al Ghul and comes under the watchful gaze of an off-shoot called The Order of Purity. In Batman’s absence he’ll dispense God’s justice in the streets of Gotham while trying to avoid being killed or manipulated.

Azrael #1 by Fabian Nicieza and Ramon Bachs goes on-sale on October 21