A Spoiled Return

Anyone who knows anything about the Batman series knows that Azrael is a character with promise that has never been truly realized. With the religious subtext and his strength alone, Denny O’Neil and Joe Quesada’s creation is loaded with possibilities.

However, even with the release of the “Azrael: Death’s Dark Knight” graphic novel, something is still left to be desired. With Jean-Paul Valley Jr. dead for quite some time, Michael Washington Lane is next in line and is out to clean up the streets in a way that Batman never intended to.

By any means necessary.

With Bruce Wayne’s whereabouts unknown and Dick Grayson still finding his niche as the new caped crusader, as well as Wayne’s son taking Tim Drake’s place as Robin, the Boy Wonder, you’d think Gotham would embrace Lane and his alter-ego.

That doesn’t happen however.

Despite being an interesting character with an intriguing back-story, one similar to Wayne’s, he’s pushed too quickly into the limelight and is never able to hold his own. That’s partly the fault of writer Fabian Niciera, who gives him far too many one-liners and situations to get a cheap pop.

But even in spite of Lane’s dry wit and likeability, he needs a different background to develop his character. Overall, there’s just too much going on here, with Grayson as Batman and Damian as Robin and those are the parts of the book you’ll want to read, rather than learn about Lane’s doomed fate. In the end, you’ll like the character, but much like Larry and Moe from “the Three Stooges,” you know he’ll never be able to make it by himself.

Artistically, this series has some beautiful art work, especially the covers, done by Guillem March and J. Calafiore. Again, much like Niciera’s writing, the art is solid and does enough to give the series it’s own flavor, but it feels too much like a Batman comic with Azrael in it than the other way around.

In spite of all of this, it’s not enough to say that it’s a bad book or even that Azrael is a sub-par character, he’s just been cool by association for far too long. The crutches need to come off and the character needs to be developed by his lonesome rather than depending on the Batman universe.

Until that happens, the character and any series based on him with revel in mediocrity.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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