From the Batcave: Azrael

I remember when Michael Lane appeared towards the end of Morrison's Batman Inc. I was a bit confused. I thought he died when helicopter crashed during R.I.P., but he is alive and.. Azrael? Well, turns out he had a bit of focus after R.I.P. that I wasn't really aware of because I never cared about the original Azrael so why would I pick a series about another Azrael? 

I don't know anything nor do I care about the original Azrael so I can't say how faithful and compatible this new version was with what came before. So yeah, it all starts during Battle for the Cowl event with Death's Dark Knight miniseries. And I'm going to jump ahead and say that those 3 issues are only ones with Azrael that are worth picking up. 

Why? It sets up Lane in his new role and thats all you need for that later appearance to make sense. Irving also does the art and that provides some visual continuity with Morrison's run. As for Nicieza, I'm not a big fan of his writing, but he does decent job here.

Probably worth mentioning that before this mini DC published some related material as well. Detective #842 by Milligan/Nguyen provides some background information on Azrael's Suit of Sorrows. It is a decent one-shot Batman story and also worth picking up if you want to know more about Azrael's lore. Then there were Batman and Outsiders #11 and #14 that provided hints about coming new Azrael. They also tried to tie-in to R.I.P. storyline and we all know how well usually that went. And those hints? Nothing important and some stuff ends up mattering less than you'd think after reading these issues. Easy skip.

After mini concluded Nicieza did two part story in Batman Annual #27 and Detective Annual #11. Then he wrote new Azrael's ongoing till #9. Ongoing had bunch of one-shot stories and "finale" that was related to the story from Batman and Detective annuals. Wasn't a fan of the art on either of those, as for the writing? One-shots had some interesting things even if execution was a bit lacking. But the big story about sins, sinners and faith? Ugh, can't say anything nice about that.

With #10 Hine replaces Nicieza. In general I like Hine's work better and in my opinion he got better artists than Nicieza so I should have liked his run more? Only marginally. This run is structured more like "traditional modern" run with arcs building towards bigger finale. Unfortunately sales were very bad so it was cancelled before it could reach that big finale. 

DC partially solved this problem by doing Judgement on Gotham crossover (Batman #708-709, Red Robin #22 and Gotham City Sirens #22) that allowed to close some plot points. But since Azrael didn't have his own title he was more of a side character in these issues and it didn't feel like a proper ending.

Story itself was about evils of organized religion, church secrets and Jesus conspiracies. I know that there is a market for such things, but it never really interested me so I'm not sure that I would have enjoyed Hine's run even if he got opportunity to finish it "properly". And lets not even start talking about lame Crusader's design or meta from Afghanistan ending up as super-powered suicide bomber.

And then there was appearance in Morrison's Batman Inc. After many continuity "fixes" original Azrael was back and it looked like thats were DC will focus, well as much focus as "Azrael IP" warrants. But very recently Michael Lane made a surprising cameo in Batman #9 by Fraction/Jimenez. Was it a mistake? Will DC try to have two Azraels at the same time? 

I don't know and I don't really care. I enjoyed Death's Dark Knight mini and Detective #842, but everything else was mediocre at best and I'm fine with leaving this version of Azrael (and frankly Azrael in general) behind.

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