Batman Incorporated: Azrael Returns...But Why?

In a twist more surprising than the one used on the gatefold cover this month, a character not [...]

Batman Incorporated #10 gatefold cover

In a twist more surprising than the one used on the gatefold cover this month, a character not seen since the launch of the New 52 appears in preview pages just released for Batman Incorporated #10 (and embedded below). Michael Lane, the most recent character to use the name Azrael in Batman comics and the second long-term candidate (Mark Shaw, a former Manhunter, was briefly hinted to have been recruited by the Order of St. Dumas) will make his first appearance of the New 52 this week, as he's recruited by Batman to go to war with Talia al Ghul, who is responsible for the death of their mutual test tube baby, Damian Wayne (the most recent Robin). The trio share a history in the form of the Suit of Sorrows, armor designed for the pure of heart which can drive its wearer mad. Having once belonged to Talia, the armor was given to Batman as a gift. It made him stronger and faster--but also less stable and more violent, leading him to stop wearing it. After his apparent death in Batman R.I.P., the armor was stolen from the Batcave and later reappeared in Lane's possession.

The sword that killed Damian Wayne

"Even when Damian dies, and I don't know if people have noticed, but the sword that kills him belongs to the very first known ancestor of the Waynes, it was used in Batman: Shadow of the Bat, in the 90s, so what we went back to," Morrison said in a recent interview. "There's a suit of armor in the case, and it's Bruce Wayne's earliest ancestor's. That's who kills the boy, and so there's a lot of you know, you see him smashed against the Wayne 'W' and the foyer of the Wayne tower and so it's kind of very much about how these things play out over generations and how repetitive patterns play out of destructive patterns and it really never ends." ComicBook.com tracked that sword and suit of armor back to Batman: The Scottish Connection, a one-shot by Shadow of the Bat writer Alan Grant and frequent Morrison collaborator Frank Quitely. By way of clarifying some minor details, series artist Chris Burnham confirmed we'd found the right one. Also, Batman's British equivalent Knight was recently killed in action. Don't be surprised if the climax to Morrison's epic Batman run involves at least two and probably more different characters squaring off in armor, with swords.

Previously, the only hint of Azrael to appear in the post-Flashpoint DC Universe was when a vision of the character (which seemed not to be Lane but his precursor Jean-Paul Valley) was visibly removed from the background of an issue of Batwoman. Other characters similarly removed fromthe background of the image had been removed from DC's rebooted history. As a result, many fans had assumed that (like other Bat-characters like Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown) his history in the DC Universe had been wiped out by the reboot and that while we might eventually see Azrael, he would probably require some retooling and a reintroduction. Some more conspiracy-minded fans even thought the character has been sent to limbo because he was co-created by current Marvel honcho Joe Quesada.

Batman Incorporated #10 Preview

The Batman titles, though, have been somewhat more immune to change than other DC Comics since the relaunch, even when the lack of change causes almost as much consternation as a change would have. Damian Wayne himself was a continuity problem if you thought too hard about his timeline, and last week's issue of Batwoman took for granted some continuity that doesn't really jive with the New 52's history. Some of this has to do with the fact that Batwoman was conceived and approved before the launch of the New 52, but other elements can be attributed to the fact that in service of Morrison's epic uber-arc, DC seems to have allowed him extraordinary leeway when crafting his story, to reach back and use whatever elements of the mythology he deems necessary. (In an ironic twist, the Mark Shaw/Azrael story that seems to have been removed from continuity was tied to Marc Andreyko's Manhunter, the comic that brought Cameron Chase back into mainstream comics after an absence.) The result has been a story that will stand well on its own and sell well in the bookstore market, but which has drawn some criticism from fans and other creators for not really being part of the New 52. James Robinson's The Shade operated much the same way, drawing off Starman's history even though almost nothing in Starman would make sense in the context of the New 52. A bigger question might be whether Lane will survive the war he's being signed up for. After all, Morrison has talked about "putting all the toys back in the box" at the end of his run, and has pretty freely killed characters he created. And while Azrael may be an old property, Michael Lane is Morrison and Tony Daniel's...and Jean-Paul Valley much more closely fits the New 52 bill of the iconic, recognizable version of the character (his own series ran for 100 issues).

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