Last week, Detective Comics brought back the Azrael-Batman costume, placing Jean-Paul Valley inside a version of the suit that made him one of the most notorious/beloved characters of the ’90s. So what does it mean for the character, and what
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The reason behind bringing back the Azrael-Batman suit is kind of twofold: first of all, there is a psychological dynamic that has not been explored for Jean-Paul Valley in years. That’s something Tynion wanted to bring back. But, writer James Tynion IV suggests perhaps more importantly…it’s just cool.
“Honestly, it goes back to when the Convergence: Shadow of the Bat two-parter [came out], that sold much better than anyone expected out of all those miniseries. There’s a lot of love for that costume,” Tynion told ComicBook.com. “As much as it embodies a kind of ’90s aesthetic that’s a bit outdated, there’s something so purely awesome about it that it is something that, the second we started bringing Azrael back in, I knew I wanted to put him in that suit. While his history has obviously changed a bit, right now he has never worn that costume before, but I want that costume to still have that power in the current continuity. It’s approaching it from a new angle that sort of on the other end of this story, of ‘Intelligence,’ that suit will have the same power in Jean-Paul’s life that it did before, for better and for worse.”
During the beloved “Knightfall,” “Knightquest” and “Knightsend trilogy of the ’90s, Jean-Paul took over for Bruce Wayne after Bruce suffered a broken back at the hands of Bane. His training as the master assassin Azrael took hold, and his modified Batman costume started to become a kind of funhouse mirror that reflected a twisted version of Azrael back at him and out into the DC Universe.
When Bruce finally retook the mantle of Batman, the battle to remove the costume and title from Jean-Paul emotionally broke him, and sent him on a journey of self-discover that fueled dozens of issues of his own solo series.
“That was always the thing: That suit represented something dangerous in Jean-Paul, and right now the Jean-Paul we have been seeing so far in Detective Comics has been at peace, almost monk-like,” Tynion said. “This story is, via St. Dumas and the creation of Ascalon, and via the creation of this suit, there have been seeds. Batwing is the one who created the suit here, but these are going to converge on him and recreate the classic tug-of-war inside of Jean-Paul of St. Dumas and Batman and where he’s going to be pulled to. That kind of internal conflict is what I wanted to rebuild with ‘Intelligence,’ and I’m really really excited.”
The story wrapped in last week’s Detective Comics #962, but as for where Azrael goes from here — next week brings a new chapter for him and the whole rest of the Bat-family when Detective Comics #963 provides a little bit of a buffer before the much-anticipated “Lonely Place of Living” storyline.
