Issue #125

January 17th, 2008

In December, DC Comics announced that a new Azrael miniseries dubbed Azrael: Death’s Dark Knight will be hitting shelves in March. Now, I’m going to ignore that this probably kills the possibility of a Tomio written, and Barry Windsor-Smith penciled Vertigo title featuring Jean Paul Valley (the original Azrael), with covers supplied by Sam Kieth. With that aside, I may be the only one, but if so, there is no shame in my game – I’m a HUGE Azrael fan. The character is simply too tied into my personal comic reading history for me not to be a fan of the character. Not to mention, he was actually the god damn Batman, and not too far into my introduction to both Batman and DC in general.

Like, I think, many people my age (and older), my introduction to Batman was the Adam West TV show, which can be best described as buffoonery gold. In many ways I think that this show and the Superman films (the first two being undisputed classics), while certainly being entities I enjoyed and loved, skewed my view of DC’s print material. When I was younger, I was solidly a Marvel guy, a VALIANT fan, and in some sense an Image, and even a Vertigo fan before I ever would read a DC-proper title regularly. The two events that would change that are two of the most commercially successful, and as with anything successful they now both now have their fair share of detractors. The Death of Superman and Knightfall story lines were what had me adding Superman, Batman, Action Detective and thus DC to my regular pull list. My fellow Marvel zombies of the 80′s and 90′s – most of us by never reading any – can all attest DC was for kids. Marvel comics is where teenagers and adults were at. Marvel had Wolverine, Venom, Punisher, Ghost Rider, Cable and Gambit – the cool kids. McFarlane, Keown, Silvestri, Lee, (Jae) Lee, Romita Jr., Larsen, Liefeld (let’s not front, the guy was on national jean ads for being a comic book artist – and it was fucking cool). I mean for a time (and more importantly at the time as hindsight allows to find some gems) it felt like DC was still running of the fumes of the greatness of Wolfman and Perez, and I was almost looking for any comics to read to not read DC. Then DC decided to start breaking my icons, the icons of the younger me, but even though I didn’t want to read of their adventures before, I had to witness. My fellow fantasy fans, and specifically fans who have recently read the latest Steven Erikson, know the gravity of having to be present– to witness; a concept that DC recently played with in recent event in Final Crisis as well.

Around this time, two other projects came out that I bought on a whim. The Vengeance of Bane one-shot, and a four issue miniseries called The Sword of Azrael. It has to be noted that at this time there was no internet buzz. Companies had to win you on (for the most part) the shelves. How do you do this? You put out books with Joe Quesada and Glen Fabry covers on them that say ‘Batman” on the cover. Typically, you’ll see younger readers now who broke in with Kevin Smith Daredevil, Meltzer Identity Crisis, a Bendis Ultimate Spiderman etc, etc, and you will see some sense of shock as to why not too long ago that it was the artists that made books hot, and motivated sales and migration to titles. During the information age of the net that balance has shifted back to writers able to piggyback off of the pre-release publicity machines and images they put online, and into a smaller more knowledgeable fan base that they don’t have to entice initially off the rack. Children of the direct market, we really aren’t consumers as much as a dedicated club. As a kid collecting comics, let me tell you– when seeing a Joe Q cover for the first time live, that’s going to be a pick-up. I can sit here (figuratively – literally, I type Jan-ken-pon while dueling a half dozen Fish Speakers) and tell you that I was buying Sandman off of the racks in the 90′s before Gaiman achieved demigod status and it was of course brilliant, but WHY I bought them to begin with was that there wasn’t another book on the shelf looking like what McKean was doing on those bad boys!

The two titles, Vengeance of Bane and The Sword of Azrael were rather unique as they seemed to specifically serve the purpose of introducing two characters who were in the near going to play a role in what was probably one of the biggest Batman arcs ever. When we talk memorable Batman covers in the modern conscious there are many to choose from. A number of Neal Adams covers would come to mind, perhaps headed by #227 or #251; the former itself an homage to another cover we’d note from the Golden Age (#31). We’d think of the first issue from Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns; or perhaps from an issue he wrote, Detective#404 by the great David Mazzucchelli, kicking off the (re)foundational Year One story. Younger readers may point to a Lee cover from the Hush storyline. Not many – if any – would mention Batman#497, but there isn’t anyone involved in comics that doesn’t know the cover.

The breaking of the Batman, part of the inter-bat family story arc called Knightfall was the first time I followed Batman, and the first time I followed DC. This was an era that had a damn solid group of creators Denny O’Neil, Kelly Jones, Norm Breyfogle, Doug Moench, Chuck Dixon, Alan Grant, Graham Nolan, Jim Balent and others. Sure, it’s not classic material, but for a kid who wasn’t an adult with a 35-60 title-a-month buying power, being able to pick up a few titles during this time allowed for what amounted to a fairly consistent and autonomous pocket of Bat Family goodness. Consider this; a new reader like myself entered Knightfall and learned everything one has to know. You see what Batman is – an Icon, but still a man– still somebody who could be worn down, who had limits. You see the relationships of the Robins. One ,the prodigal son who became his own man; the other, the one would be the next generation’s choice as heir apparent. The education I received via Azrael – as one would think – is brutal. He represented in many ways the new age hero, DC’s answer to those gray characters noted above. That yes, he was needed for a short time, until Batman, until Bruce, could get back his legs has always been telling to me. One is the Icon, the other a fad, but even a fad can bring with them lessons. If you were a Marvel reader who didn’t know where Batman fit into your comic reading vocation, Knightfall told you.

The new ‘gray’?

Batman has been living there since the 30′s. He’s not a mutant. He was not bitten by a radioactive bug. He wasn’t a soldier given a super serum. He wasn’t exposed to a random space phenomenon. He – like the Punisher – saw his family get shot in front of him, and has been living in gray for so long, that we had to wait 50 years to reinvent what gray meant – which he did via Frank Miller. Here DC pitted their go-to-guy against a character that embodied the competition, but only after the competition filled his shoes. Indeed the end was the Dark Knight forcing his would-be successor literally back into the light, to confess, and to apologize. The display of inadequacy, and the failed grasp for the cowl didn’t, however, cause me to view the character of Azrael negatively. It was Azrael who showed me what the mantle of being the Batman meant. He was certainly a pretender, but only in his attempt at assuming the position of one of the world’s finest. Note that many today discuss or display (Moore doing so the best) the edge of insanity that one walks when patrolling the rooftops of Gotham, to be THE Batman. Azrael was specifically imbued with psychological conditioning to handle situations– and yet he failed at what bruce does through sheer will power. He DID handle Bane, a role Bruce didn’t want even his most trust capo to attempt – why? Because Dick Grayson is for all intents and purposes his son– you don’t send your boy to handle what you couldn’t do. There is a reason why the supporting cast of Batman is known as The Bat Family, and I learned that here.

Batman rose up to tell us that other’s have gone too far – and even to this day it’s parodied by (again Miller) in All-Star. Bane breaking the Batman deconstructed why Batman is so enduring. Azrael’s stewardship of the mantle was a warning to not take it for granted. As we sit here now, many of the fads created during this time have come and gone or been greatly diminished, yet we are left with Batman being the second highest grossing film ever (yes, I’m aware of some changes that can be made due to economic truths of certain times). There is a fascination with the role of Batman, as every generation of writer and reader will attempt to write or see a story that examines it – indeed another Battle for the Cowl is set to begin soon. Another Azrael primed to return, and I find myself excited about reading it, as the concept of the character is something I’ve always found intriguing. Though I always thought he’d work much better outside of the Bat mythos, only attached due to a once shared locale or history, like a Simon Dark or Hitman (with the former), his reappearance (not the original) is one that doesn’t cause the anguish I see around the net. For one thing, Frazer Irving (the artist for the next series) is big pimpin’ – if he is given the time, it’s going too look sweet. Nicieza (the writer) is somebody I can’t ever figure out, and is a wildcard. He’s written some quality stories, but I’m also a VALIANT fan so I can never completely get behind the guy!

But honestly? The crash course of the Batman mythology and what is most certainly not a small amount of nostalgia aside, Joe Quesada was a beast on the pencils. I know people now will choose to hate on the guy due to his current position, but man that character design is still in my mind one of the illest. People know who inked it? Kevin Nolan!

O’Neil-Quesada-Nowlan on the shelf staring at your. No 10 podcasts talking about it before it comes out,, no 35% of the pages in the book on the net for people to preview a month before it came out, no trailers on the net, no going to get something, but instead finding something to get.

It’s where I found Batman.

_{Jan-ken-pon is the time traveling, force-walking, multiverse crossing column of Jay Tomio, owner of 1/3 of everything you see currently on screen and the editor of Heliotrope. He is the god damn Bat Mite. Some call him the Bodhisattva.}