When I bought a loose DCUC Wave 16 Azrael Batman on eBay last winter, he looked completely alien to me (a little more on that later in this post). The Knightfall series came out after I was well into college, and I just wasn't paying attention to comics anymore. I only bought the action figure because I thought it looked far out, and so when I happened upon this killer Detective Comics # 676 with an foil embossed cover at Bam's Labor Day sale, I had to pick one up!
Jean-Paul Valley was a Gotham University graduate student who fought alongside Batman as a superhero-in-training, Azrael. When Bane breaks Bruce Wayne's back, Azrael takes up the mantle of Gotham's Dark Knight, and hunts the villain down against Wayne's orders.The enhanced body armor he designed to defeat Bane is what the DC Universe figure above was modeled after. Eventually, Azrael's previous conditioning as assassin loyal to The Order of St. Dumas begins to conflict with his role as Batman, manifesting itself in increasingly violent tendencies toward his enemies, as well as Robin, who was banned from the Batcave & Wayne Manor alike. When Robin (Tim Drake) alerts Wayne to the situation, he resolves to reclaim his place as the Batman.
Jean-Paul is testing out his his new Bat-Suit in this issue, villain Gunhawk nearly getting the upper hand on him and the police, who nearly kill them both inadvertently. Gunhawk had taken a hostage at the local hospital when told to get in line to receive medical attention to his injured girlfriend. Jean-Paul's new suit holds up to Gunhawk's regular fire, but catches a lucky break when Gunhawk's anti-armor rounds jam up. Jean-Paul tackles him down a flight of stairs, hiding up in the stairwell while Montoya & Bullock read him his rights- lucky for Gunhawk, as Jean-Paul already let mass-murderer Abbattoir fall to his death at this point, setting in motion a downward spiral for this would-be hero.
While Azrael's Batsuit underwent some changes throughout this story arc, the evolution evident among the odd issues I was able to pick up, I was surprised upon seeing the cover for #675- the toy really resembled the character! Yo Go Re over at OAFE.Net claimed this DCUC AzBats should be red instead of blue, but according to this comic, he's wrong. There's a little detective work from me :)
More Later- Keep It FUN!
I always liked the look of that suit as it was just different for a Batman at the time.
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At the end of the Knightquest/fall/end/whatevs storyline, the Batmobile explodes with Az-Bats inside (don't recall why exactly, but I think it was during battle with Nightwing and Robin) and when AzBats emerges the costume is red/gold instead of blue/grey. It would have made a great figure variant, but the blue/greys here are preferable...wish I could have found this one at retail!
Anyways, I still have all this series stored away, I really need to gather them up and re-read it in it's entirety again!