How Batman: The Animated Series Brought a 1970s Comics Classic to TV

This week at CBR, I'm looking back on the second chapter of "The Demon's Quest" on Batman: The Animated Series.

Remembering Denny O'Neil's Classic Introduction of Ra's al Ghul

This week, I'm revisiting the two times Denny O'Neil introduced the classic villain...both in the comics, and on Batman: The Animated Series. 

Batman: The Animated Series – The Debut of Batman’s Favorite Mystery Lady

This week on CBR, I'm revisiting the debut of Talia on Batman: The Animated Series...along with her introduction from the Denny O'Neil era. Spoiler -- she's not wearing the catsuit in her first appearance.

BATMAN: SWORD OF AZRAEL #4 - January 1993

No One Is Innocent

Credits:  Dennis O’Neil (writer), Joe Quesada (penciler), Kevin Nowlan (inker), Ken Bruzenak (letterer), Lovern Kindzierski (colorist)

Summary:  Alfred is shocked by Azrael’s brutal assault on Harcourt’s guards.  Inside, LeHah murders Harcourt and flees.  Later, Nomoz chastises Azrael for pausing briefly to check on Harcourt’s body instead of pursuing LeHah.  Alfred questions Azrael’s bloodlust, but Azrael explains that he can’t help himself when The System kicks in.  The trio track LeHah to the oil refinery he owns in Texas.  Inside, Bruce tricks LeHah into taking off the Batman costume, but discovers that LeHah is now adamant about killing him.  Alfred, Azrael, and Nomoz arrive in time to stop LeHah.  Azrael’s battle with LeHah starts a fire; against Nomoz’s wishes, Azrael rescues Bruce, but refuses to spare LeHah.  Outside, Azrael tells Alfred that he now remembers his true name, Jean-Paul.

Irrelevant Continuity:  LeHah explains that he stole the Batman costume in order to “sow confusion and discord,” which is a responsibility of a follower of Biis.

Review:  Batman?  More like Fatman, amiright, folks?  (That’s a reference to the cover, of course.  That’s LeHah in the costume, and he really is getting fatter each issue.)  Okay, the Azrael introduction mini is over, and I think I can now make some sense out of those cryptic references in “Knightfall.”  I still maintain that the Jean-Paul we saw during that event isn’t quite the character Denny O’Neil introduces here.  This issue we see a savage Azrael unleashed by The System (he kills several security guards, and even a dog, which is a rarity in comics), but by the end of the story we discover that underneath it all, Jean-Paul is a decent young man who’s strong enough to fight against his father’s programming and do the right thing.  The fact that he allows LeHah to die in the fire indicates that he isn’t quite as respectable as the traditional superhero, but the implication on the final page is that Jean-Paul is on his way to learning about true heroism and becoming his own man.  

The Jean-Paul presented to us during “Knightfall” starts off as a Ken doll who seems to be chosen as Batman’s replacement based on his jawline, and within a few issues, he’s a raving loon that’s choking Robin and letting citizens be mugged because they need to be taught a lesson.  Azrael didn’t seem to struggle with right vs. wrong during his days as Batman; any internal conflict was dramatized by periodic “bad trips” involving medieval Catholic imagery that always ended with Azrael screaming into the heavens.  It is possible that the “Knightfall” trades skipped some of the issues that fleshed out Jean-Paul in-between this miniseries and his debut as Batman, I’ll acknowledge.  (I’m assuming some story established what happened to Nomoz, right?)  But based upon the story that DC is keeping alive in the reprints, Jean-Paul simply comes across as nuts.

As for the finale of the miniseries, let’s see…Quesada renders an Azrael that’s McFarlane-worthy, Kevin Nowlan’s distinctive faces are popping up again, there’s no payoff to Azrael losing his sword (based on the series’ title, I assumed this would be important), Batman has very little to do, and no one has acknowledged yet that Nomoz looks like something out of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.  We also don’t receive a real explanation for why LeHah turned against St. Dumas and worshiped a demon instead, leaving him more of a caricature than a legitimate villain.  I did enjoy his brief conversation with Bruce this issue, which has Bruce smugly telling LeHah that he’s been serving his own “demon” ever since his parents died.  Great trash talk that’s unfortunately not paid off.  I understand that Azrael needs to have a grand heroic moment at the end, this really is his miniseries after all, but Batman’s presence in the final two chapters hasn’t amounted to much.  I was expecting Bruce to participate in LeHah’s defeat in some way; ultimately, he’s merely a prop to be rescued in the finale.  Speaking of Bruce, why does he have Mad magazine-style rectangular word balloons throughout the miniseries?  I’ve never seen Ken Bruzenak do this before, which makes me wonder if perhaps Joe Quesada was taking an active role in designing the word balloons.  It’s just an odd design choice, and if we’re being honest, Quesada’s made a few of those over the years…

BATMAN: SWORD OF AZRAEL #3 - December 1992

Direct Action

Credits:  Dennis O’Neil (writer), Joe Quesada (penciler), Kevin Nowlan (inker), Ken Bruzenak (letterer), Lovern Kindzierski (colorist)

Summary:  Jean-Paul’s life is saved when LeHah’s bullets hit his duffel bag, which contains his Azrael armor.  Bruce Wayne arrives with Alfred.  Bruce confronts LeHah inside the hospital, while Alfred escapes with Nomoz and Jean-Paul.  Bruce is drugged with ether and taken captive by LeHah.  LeHah’s attempts to interrogate Bruce fail, but he does steal the Batman costume Bruce was wearing under his clothes.  After killing the St. Dumas member Borgeron, LeHah travels to London to kill another brother, Harcourt.  LeHah dons the Batman costume just as Alfred and Azrael arrive outside Harcourt’s gates.

Irrelevant Continuity:  LeHah discovers Bruce’s secret identity because he’s wearing the Batman costume under his clothes.  Meanwhile, Alfred just casually reveals to Nomoz and Azrael his connection to Batman.  

I Love the ’90s:  Socks the Cat appears again in the alley behind the hospital.

Review:  In retrospect, it’s obvious that Dennis O’Neil wrote this miniseries with the intent of introducing Jean-Paul into the main titles as the new Batman.  This issue sees Jean-Paul stand up to his brutish mentor Nomoz and spare Alfred’s life (Nomoz declares that Alfred knows too much about the Order of St. Dumas and should die), just a few pages before he cracks the case and correctly deduces LeHah’s next move.  It’s amusing to read these passages today, because as I’ve mentioned earlier, the creators actually working on the monthly titles didn’t seem concerned about following the lead established by O’Neil in this series.  Not only was Azrael portrayed as a particularly lousy detective, but he was also much closer to Nomoz’s persona than the young idealist he appears to be in this issue.  O’Neil edited those comics, so if he had a real problem with their portrayal of Jean-Paul he could’ve done something, but it’s just odd to look back on this series and see how quickly Jean-Paul’s existing personality was tossed out in order to make him a strawman argument against vigilante anti-heroes.

There is a danger in this story of turning Batman into a bit of chump, and while I doubt O’Neil pleased everyone, I think he’s been able to prevent Batman from being totally overshadowed by Azrael so far.  Batman does lose the fight this issue, but O’Neil at least has him put up a respectable fight against LeHah, and the botched interrogation scene reads like classic O’Neil Batman.  It’s one thing for a drugged Batman to lose a physical fight, but there’s no way a punk like LeHah is going to break Batman’s will.

Every issue so far has had some excuse for a hallucination scene, presumably written with Quesada in mind.  This chapter has Batman hallucinating in the hospital after LeHah drops a shelf full of ether bottles on him, which is probably the best use of the gimmick so far.  Drugging Batman provides a credible excuse for him losing the fight, and allows Quesada a few pages to go even crazier, presenting a hazy Bruce vs. Demon action sequence.  Even when the story doesn’t require exaggeration, Quesada can’t help himself.  Azrael now appears to be ten feet tall in costume, while LeHah is growing shorter and fatter each issue.  Some of the signs of Quesada’s later excesses are already here, but I think he’s still at the stage where his overindulgences aren’t a major concern.  Looking over the issue, I do wonder if Quesada ran into deadline troubles during this month.  Some of the pages aren’t as heavily rendered as the ones in the previous issues, and it certainly seems as if Kevin Nowlan is doing more than standard inking on several pages.  Almost every panel of Bruce Wayne that isn’t a close-up looks like a Nowlan drawing, for instance.  I’m not complaining; Quesada and Nowlan don’t seem to be an obvious match, but I think the combination is interesting.  The panels that have Nowlan overpowering Quesada do take me out of the story, however.

BATMAN: SWORD OF AZRAEL #2 - November 1992

Azrael Does Not Protect

Credits:  Dennis O’Neil (writer), Joe Quesada (penciler), Kevin Nowlan (inker), Ken Bruzenak (letterer), Lovern Kindzierski (colorist)

Summary:  Batman and Alfred crash into the snow, while Nomoz leads Jean-Paul away from the remains of their chalet.  LeHah attempts to escape with his lackey, but the avalanche created by the rocket blast causes their helicopter to crash.  During the crash, LeHah becomes convinced that he is now the servant of the demon Biis.  After they recover, LeHah kills his assistant as a sacrifice.  Nearby, Jean-Paul attacks Batman on Nomoz’s orders.  Nomoz saves the outclassed Jean-Paul from the fight, leaving Azrael’s sword behind in the snow.  Later, Batman and Alfred continue to investigate the Order of St. Dumas while LeHah compiles a list of brothers to murder.  Nomoz and Jean-Paul, in his new Azrael armor, travel to a hospital where one brother is being treated.  Before Jean-Paul can don his armor, he’s shot repeatedly by LeHah.

Irrelevant Continuity:  

• Nomoz reveals that LeHah was once the treasurer of the Order of St. Dumas.  LeHah looted the Order's accounts months earlier, which is why Nomoz sent Jean-Paul’s father to deal with him.
• I have no idea what’s happened to Nomoz’s assistant, Heinreich.  He doesn’t escape the chalet with Nomoz and Jean-Paul this issue.
• Quesada’s interpretation of LeHah doesn’t match his appearances during the later chapters of “Knightfall.”  Based on those comics, I assumed LeHah was thin with blond hair; in this story he has a massive build and gray hair.  (It’s hard not to notice he looks like Cable, right down to the scar over his eye.)  Or maybe the character Azrael thought was LeHah in the later stories wasn’t him at all…he was going insane in those issues.

Not Approved By The Comics Code Authority:  LeHah’s rampage at the hospital is pretty bloody.  Also, we see LeHah nude from the back during one scene as he rants into a mirror.

I Love the ‘90s:  Cable LeHah, after taking the form of Biis, whips out a giant Chiclet gun.

Review:  I’ll admit that I was confused by the opening sequence of this issue, and even after rereading it, I had to go back to the previous issue to make certain I could follow what was going on.  The sequence of events has LeHah and an unidentified associate launching a rocket from the ground, acquiring a helicopter off-panel, and then being caught in the avalanche created by the rocket blast minutes earlier.  Intercut with their story are two other plots involving Batman/Alfred and Nomoz/Jean-Paul escaping the chaos.  Most of my confusion stems from the fact that a) Quesada kept LeHah in the dark for the majority of the previous issue, so it was difficult to place him this time, and b) O’Neil doesn’t seem to identify LeHah by name until the issue is half-way over.  The fact that a gratuitous Batman/Azrael fight is thrown in during LeHah’s descent into madness doesn’t help matters, either.  

After clarifying that the character I kept calling “Cable” was in fact LeHah, the rest of the issue seemed to be straightforward enough.  LeHah has betrayed the Order of St. Dumas, a secret organization with connections to the Crusades that avenges evil to this day.  Jean-Paul is destined to replace his father and adopt the role of Azrael, while LeHah has convinced himself that he is now the living embodiment of the demon Biis.  What this has to do with Batman isn’t clear, but whenever he does appear in the story, Quesada does make him look cool.  Okay, in fairness, O’Neil also provides a respectable amount of cute Batman/Alfred banter throughout the story.  I can’t say that Batman feels totally shoehorned into the plot, but it’s hard to pretend that he isn’t coming across as a guest star in Azrael’s story, either.  

The title of the issue eludes to something Nomoz tells Jean-Paul during the final scene.  Nomoz hasn’t brought Jean-Paul to the hospital to “protect” its inhabitants from LeHah because “Azrael does not protect.  Azrael avenges.”  That brief line sums up the difference between Batman and Azrael, a point the Bat-titles spent almost two years trying to make.  And yet, even over the course of dozens of comics, I don’t think this aspect of Azrael’s backstory was ever explained clearly during “Knightfall.”  Azrael just comes across as unhinged during the storyline; I don’t think the concept that he was literally created to serve vengeance and vengeance only was truly addressed during his time as Batman.  It’s obvious O’Neil had this idea from the beginning, but the writers of the monthly titles seemed far more interested in exploring Azrael’s mental instability than the concept of justice vs. vengeance.  

BATMAN: SWORD OF AZRAEL #1 - October 1992

Vanishing Angels & Sudden Death

Credits:  Dennis O’Neil (writer), Joe Quesada (penciler), Kevin Nowlan (inker), Ken Bruzenak (letterer), Lovern Kindzierski (colorist)

Summary:  Azrael confronts weapons dealer Carleton LeHah, and is shot repeatedly.  He stumbles into a nearby parade and accidentally causes a riot that kills several people.  Near death, Azrael reaches the apartment of his son Jean-Paul.  Azrael leaves Jean-Paul a cryptic message before dying.  Following the directions left by his father, Jean-Paul travels to the Swiss Alps.  He meets his tutor Nomoz, and Nomoz’s burly assistant, Heinreich.  They train Jean-Paul to follow in his father’s footsteps, while Batman investigates Carleton LeHah in Gotham.  His investigation leads him to the ancient Order of St. Dumas, and to the Swiss Alps.  As Batman and Alfred fly overhead the Order of Dumas’ chalet, LeHah fires a rocket that destroys the building.

Irrelevant Continuity:  

• According to Nomoz, Jean-Paul’s father has been preparing him to become Azrael since childhood.  His secret conditioning (“The System”) would go on to play a major role in many “Knightfall” stories.
• Carleton LeHah debuts this issue.  He’ll also become important later during “Knightfall,” even though the stories reprinted in the Knightfall trades never get around to really explaining who he is.
• A reporter named Sherri Port is killed during the riot.  Batman claims that he knew, and liked, Sherri.

Dramatic Exits:  After receiving information on the case from Commissioner Gordon (Azrael had a sword that no one’s recovered), Batman disappears in the middle of their conversation.

I Love the ‘90s:  Quesada sneaks a Socks the Cat balloon into the parade scene.  I guess Socks was going to be Quesada’s Felix the Cat for a while there.

Not Approved By The Comics Code Authority:  Like most of DC’s special miniseries projects of the day, this doesn’t appear to be Code approved.  Aside from a few bloody panels, there’s nothing that would cause any problems with the CCA, however.

Review:  Unless something snuck by me, Sword of Azrael has been out of print for over twenty years now.  I have no way of knowing why, but the only reasonable explanation I can think of would be a simple desire to prevent Joe Quesada from earning reprint royalties.  It’s not as if this miniseries is a forgettable, gratuitous cash grab from the salad days of 1992.  Sword of Azrael is the basis of a multi-year Batman event that’s still inspiring material to this day.  By all rights, it should’ve been included with the phonebook Knightfall trades; its absence is impossible not to notice if you sit down and try to read those books.

My memory is that Sword was one of the few breakout hits from DC during the early ‘90s.  There was Lobo, “Death of Superman,” and the Batman miniseries by that hot new Quesada guy.  In the pre-Image days, DC’s mainstream titles tended to resemble Jim Shooter’s (or more accurately I suppose, Mort Weisinger’s) platonic ideal of superhero art -- midlevel shots, plausible anatomy, and simple page layouts that any kid could follow.  Sword broke that mold, presenting a Batman comic that could easily compete with any of the wild visuals seen in those Image books.  Quesada’s art is certainly tied to this era, but it’s not embarrassing in the way a second-tier Extreme Studios book might be viewed today.  Quesada’s pencils take elements from everyone from Mike Mignola to Michael Golden to Bart Sears, and his panel layouts are reminiscent of Todd McFarlane’s more imaginative pages.  Anything that can be exaggerated is, which leads to another obvious McFarlane comparison -- Quesada’s Batman is almost identical to the Batman we’ll see a year later in Spawn/Batman.  I don’t know if Quesada extrapolated this look from Todd’s early Batman work in the ‘80s, or if Todd saw this miniseries and was inspired, or if it’s all a massive coincidence.  Nevertheless, this Batman has the longest cape in the world, a chest wider than a Mack truck, and a tendency to literally become a shadow when he steps out at night.  Needless to say, Wizard loved this series, and the entire run became a hot collector’s item a few months after its release.

Written by Dennis O’Neil during his days editing the Batman line (this specific mini was overseen by the legendary Archie Goodwin), I’m sure most Bat-readers had some idea this story would pay dividends in the future.  I doubt many people knew it was the first step in a lengthy meta-commentary on just what Batman is supposed to represent, but surely you had to know this Azrael guy was going to be important if Denny O’Neil is plotting his debut story arc.  The first issue is mostly setup, establishing Jean-Paul’s origin while slowly drawing Batman into the story.  Quesada certainly runs with the visuals; a riot during a parade might be a chore for many artists, but Quesada seems to enjoy the chaos.  And while Azrael (the senior Azrael, not the one who’ll soon replace Batman) is a fairly dull vigilante cliché this issue, the outrageous visual is more than enough to sell him during the opening scene.  

Quesada’s so over the top, it’s hard to tell when he should or shouldn’t tone things down.  For example, is Nomoz supposed to look like the creature Billy Barty played in the Masters of the Universe movie?  As far as we know, there’s no supernatural element to the Order of St. Dumas, outside of a flaming sword.  If Nomoz isn’t supposed to be inhuman in some way, then why does Quesada draw him like this?  If there’s no need in the story for this character to resemble a troll, rendering him that way makes no sense.  (Then again, maybe Nomoz is supposed to resemble something out of Tolkien and I’m just getting ahead of myself.)  At any rate, for an issue that largely consists of cryptic hints and exposition, there’s enough here to keep the reader going to the next chapter.  Jean-Paul will go on to become an insufferable character, but thankfully there’s no hint of that in this issue.  Right now, I’m curious to see if Jean-Paul’s already a crazed loon by the end of the miniseries.

LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #63 - August 1994

Climax

Credits:  Denny O’Neil (writer), Barry Kitson (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), Willie Schubert (letterer), Digital Chameleon (colorist)

Summary:  Jean-Paul refuses to relinquish the title of Batman.  He taunts Bruce by destroying his father’s portrait and then retreats to the Batcave.  Bruce digs up the hole he fell through as a child on the day he discovered the cave.  He confronts Jean-Paul in the Batcave and manipulates Jean-Paul into following him back up the hole.  In order to fit, Jean-Paul must remove all of his armor.  When dawn breaks, the light entering the hole blinds Jean-Paul’s eyes through his night-vision lenses.  He realizes Bruce truly is Batman.  Bruce allows him to leave, wishing Jean-Paul well.

Review:  I only purchased one issue of “Knightsend” off the stands, and this is the one.  I imagine I wasn’t alone.  If you were even slightly interested in comics at the time, you knew about the massive Batman event that been raging for years, and that this issue was the big Batman vs. Azrael fight.  Even if I missed virtually all of the build-up to this moment, I still viewed this issue as a satisfactory conclusion (not knowing that Bruce Wayne was still months away from truly returning.)  I also loved the art, which I thought had a strong Jim Lee influence.  That’s the only time I can recall linking Barry Kitson to Jim Lee, but I can still kind of see it this issue.  Somewhat realistic figures, strong chins, battle armor, heavy emphasis on detail lines; it also didn’t hurt that this issue had “Image coloring” as well.

Finally, we’ve reached the actual conclusion.  Yes, DC slaps “Knightsend” on the cover of two more comics shipping at the end of this month, and the final Knightfall trade goes on to reprint the “Prodigal” event, but as for Batman/Azrael, this is the end of the line.  Thankfully, the creator of Azrael and the architect of this event, Denny O’Neil, has stepped in to bring all of this to a close.  I can’t say that this issue is enough to change my opinion of Azrael (a name he’s almost never called in these comics, by the way), but he is far more tolerable in this chapter than he has been for the past several dozen issues.  

O’Neil writes Azrael as an angry young man, lashing out in pain and desperate to fill the loneliness inside of him.  He’s not stable by any definition, but he isn’t a raving loon, which is all we’ve seen of Jean-Paul during the event so far.  It seems as if the other creators latched on to the concept of Jean-Paul being brainwashed as a youth and couldn’t go anywhere else with it.  Brainwashed psychotically violent quasi-religious nut just isn’t a strong enough hook for a protagonist who’s starring in around a thousand pages of Batman comics.  Azrael’s “insanity” became tedious ranting almost as soon as the storyline began, leaving him thoroughly unlikable for way too long.  

I think O’Neil understands that the appeal of the hyper-violent loner vigilante comes from the wish fulfillment of the adolescent males that make (or made) up the bulk of mainstream comics’ readership.  An angry, confused, powerful man lashing out at the world is an easy archetype to mock, but I think it evokes a visceral response in readers at a certain age.  Some readers move on to material like Alan Moore’s Supreme, rediscover old classics, or just abandon superhero comics altogether, but a segment of the audience gets stuck at that point and can’t let go of this stuff.  Having Azrael represent that mindset does make him a respectable nemesis for the traditional Batman, but think of how rarely this dynamic was explored.  It’s obvious early on that Azrael is a poor replacement for Batman because he lacks even fundamental integrity, but the stories rarely made a point deeper than that.  And even if the creators didn’t want to veer too far into meta-commentary, which is understandable, Jean-Paul as a character never developed into much of a leading man.  As I said before, I can genuinely feel for the Punisher when written properly, but this lunatic is often just insufferable.  I don’t know how well O’Neil fleshed the character out in the initial Sword of Azrael miniseries, but his work in this issue shows that there’s at least some potential for Azrael.  (I make no claims of quality for the upcoming Azrael ongoing series.  I remember the reviews on that one.)

Humanizing Azrael and getting him in position to willingly give up the cowl is the obvious mission of the issue, but O’Neil also does a lot of work getting inside Bruce’s head.  I think most people are now familiar with the chestnut about Batman being the “real” identity and Bruce Wayne is the pose.  (O’Neil’s own work with the character might even be the genesis for this thinking.)  O’Neil has Bruce himself question if this is true, as he realizes that he has perhaps been leaning on the Batman identity as a crutch just as much as Jean-Paul.  When Azrael screams, “If I’m not Batman I’m nothing!” Bruce is forced to look at his own life and ask if this is true.  The use of purifying light in the story is a bit “on the nose” of course, but I think it’s interesting to have Bruce also look towards the light and question what place it has in his life.  You would hope that after this lengthy storyline DC could’ve firmly decided just what percentage of “dark” they wanted in their Batman comics.  This issue leads you to believe that we’re going to be seeing a more well-balanced Bruce Wayne in future, and that the dark, obsessive Batman that the fans claimed to want has been displaced.  That might’ve been the plan, but by the end of the decade, we’ll see a Batman that’s even more of a Frank Miller parody than ever.  And then Frank Miller actually does return, and…well, we don’t need to get into that.