Batman: Sword of Azrael: Book Two #2 (November 1992)

Whose blood is Batman covered in?

I understand the blood coming out of Batman's mouth and dripping down his chin and flowing away on the ground. But what about all that other blood?! Does Batman's cape and cowl have capillaries? Maybe the weird blood in rivulets all over Batman is meant to distract purchasers of this fine art/word media mash-up from noticing how motherfucking huge Azrael's forearms and fists are?

I felt like I didn't get too many chances last issue to truly hate the Cousin Oliveresque character that will become Azrael. In my mind, I hate him so much that all I have to do is look at him now and I'm filled with an internal rage. The question I'm left with is this: is there an actual reason for that internal rage? Do I hate him so much now just because I remember hating him so much back then? Did I hate him so much back then simply because he looked like Cousin Oliver? Did I hate him because he's obviously unworthy to be this amazing, kick-ass assassin (three asses in a row!) and was angry because DC knew he wasn't worthy of the role so they had to add the whole post-hypnotic suggestion shit to the guy's childhood? Maybe I hate him because he's not just Cousin Oliver but he's Cousin Oliver to the fucking Robins! And Robin, no matter which one, is just the absolute worst part of Batman, if you're trying to take Batman seriously (which maybe you shouldn't since he's a comic book character). Obviously Robin makes no sense in the totality of the idea of a man with a criminal vengeance boner who goes out at night in the dark fighting dangerous madmen. To bring a boy in a bright outfit along is madness and/or criminal exploitation. But DC felt they needed a kid insert so kids could read the thing and think, "I could do what Batman does too!" Is that it? So Cousin Oliver/Azrael is for college STEM nerds in the same way Robin was for children?

I guess I don't absolutely fucking despise Kyle Rayner because he didn't look like a stupid Brady Bunch character and also he was an artist and not a science geek. Although, to be absolutely transparent, I never really liked him much. At all. Although now that I bring it up, it's possible he filled me with incomprehensible rage as well. There must be a reason why I absolutely loved the Omega Men Convergence short story where it looks like he gets his head cut off.

Last issue ended with the arms dealer LeHah, the man Daddy Azrael tried to kill and the man Batman has been tracking, blowing the absolute motherloving shit out of The Order of St. Dumas's headquarters. Bruce and Alfred were in a Batcopter above the scene which was blown out of the sky and sent tumbling into a nearby pine tree. Nomoz and Cousin Oliver survived by hiding in a bunker underneath the chalet when they heard the helicopter approach. Afterward, five million tons of snow crashed down the mountain, obliterating every trace of everything that just happened. So can I stop reading here and pretend they're all dead? It's tempting!

Page 1: The end!

Cousin Oliver and Nomoz become trapped in the basement bunker under tons of snow so Nomoz immediately cracks open a tin of beans and begins eating them cold. Like Rorschach does! Is eating directly out of a cold tin of beans shorthand for "crazy person"? It must be because why the fuck is Nomoz immediately hungry when they've only just become trapped? Bruce and Alfred survive hanging upside down in their helicopter. LeHah and his henchman escape in their helicopter by outrunning the avalanche. All of that takes up about the first half of the comic book. Or maybe it was just a few pages but it felt like half a comic book. I did begin reading this week's ago and just haven't been able to muster the energy to continue to read about — ugh — Azrael.

Turns out Lehah and his henchman don't fully escape. Their helicopter is damaged by falling debris and it eventually crashes. Both survive the crash although the henchman doesn't survive LeHah's break with reality as he begins communing with a demon named Biis.

I guess if I'm a demon, at the absolute limit, I'll accept a human head carved from a body as tribute. But you'd better get to the virgins pretty quick or we're fucking quits, man.

As Bruce and Alfred, stuck halfway up the Alps, begin their long hike back to civilization, a massive hovercraft explodes out of the snow in a spray of fire and flames. Alfred is all, "Is it a volcano?" And Batman is all, "Idiot! Wrong geography for volcanoes! The Alps were formed by folding tectonic plates and not by, um, whatever tectonic movement causes volcanoes! You know, the other kind of tectonic action. The hot kind? Frottage, I think it's called." Later back in Gotham, Alfred begins slipping Bruce saltpeter in his tea. "Embarrass me, will you? Wait until your next date with Catwoman! Batman? More like Can't-Get-It-Up-Man!" Then the intercom will crack into life and Bruce will say, "Talking to yourself, old man? You know I've wired this entire house for sound, right, Alfred? By the way, it's a myth that saltpeter causes impotence. You know what doesn't cause impotence? Selina's massive tits!"

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled comic book about the greatest impotence pill ever invented: Azrael. Normally when I read a comic book, it's boner city! But reading an Azrael comic book, my penis is all, "How deep inside you do you think I can retract before it begins to get painful?"

Batman leaps aboard the hovercraft which is seen as a hostile act by the people within. That's reasonable, right?

I bet Bruce is rethinking his costume choices now. Maybe he should have gone for the green bikini briefs and a yellow cape.

Before jumping on the hovercraft, Bruce mentioned how his Bat outfit is lined with battery operated heating filaments. Does that explain the cover? It's not blood; it's overheating heating filaments!

Speaking of Batman's outfit, what the fuck is going on here?

Were these shoulder horns a '90s thing or just a Joe Quesada thing? Or part of his snow costume? Or did he just need to look more like a demon for this script?

Batman and Azrael engage in fisticuffs and you've got to hand it to Batman because he realizes Azrael is just a huge fucking nerd underneath the scary religious costume right away. Azrael may have been hypnotically trained in several martial forms of battle but you can't hypnotize away the way a nerd moves or throws a punch.

Batman should have been all, "Don't make me drop your britches and spank your little bottom blue!"

Maybe I shouldn't suggest Batman quote some blowhard who gets himself killed after giving up his weapon to some nobody who turns out to be Billy the Kid. Especially when I just suggested Batman was good at identifying what kind of person he's battling and that guy Billy kills in Young Guns who said the little bottom blue line has no ability to assess how dangerous the person he's interacting with actually is.

Batman, thigh deep in the snow, tells Azrael he can't fight properly in the snow because he isn't wearing snowshoes. There may have been some miscommunication between Denny and Joe on the script. Unless Joe Quesada believes snowshoes help moving in the snow even when you're halfway buried in it.

Whatever the case, it doesn't matter because Batman's prophecy about Azrael not hitting him twice comes true and Batman defeats the idiot. But then Nomoz gets his one hit on Batman with his weapon: the hovercraft. While Batman heals from the broken spine and internal injuries caused by being run down by a hovercraft, Nomoz and Azrael get away although Azrael loses his magic flaming sword in the process.

Batman winds up unhurt from the collision. He mentions that his cowl absorbed most of the impact which, once again, must have been a miscommunication between Denny and Joe because the hovercraft did not hit Batman in the head.

I bet this is why Bane was able to break Batman's back so easily. It was halfway there already.

Batman and Alfred explore the crater from whence the hovercraft came while Nomoz and Azrael flee. But not before Nomoz depresses the button on a detonator that will destroy the bunker and those within. How many times does Denny O'Neil think he can fool me into believing Batman's dead in just two issues? How many more times will he try in the next two? Did Denny forget he was writing mostly to adult children by 1992 and not to children children with no ability to think past the words being fed them in the story?!

LeHah makes it back to civilization where the first thing he does is create a costume to represent his new lord, the demon Biis. Cousin Oliver also gets a new Azrael outfit, one with better bullet proofing than the one his father wore. It also includes built-in flaming swords so he doesn't lose another one.

I will never buy into that being the head of a hero. I just want to stick it in a toilet bowl and flush!

Biis just looks like fat Skeletor. He needs two full belts to hold up those pants!

Cousin Oliver learns a little history of the organization but he's not the type to question any of it, even though he's supposedly a college student. Nomoz explains how the organization is an off-shoot of the Templars and they made themselves rich by investing the loot taken during the Crusades. Cousin Oliver does not question that he's working for a white supremacist, religious fundamentalist, imperialist organization based on racism, pillaging, and looting. He's just all, "Oh, we're angels of vengeance serving our lord Azrael. No, no, I don't need to know anything about this Azrael. And I'm not worried about how our vengeance is saved for our own members who decide to leave the group and never used against anybody else. It's not like this is Scientology, right?! I trust you, you toothless, ruthless, little gnome of a man!"

Meanwhile, Biis stands naked in front of a mirror declaring himself to be Supernatural Punisher.

Is it an old person thing to stand around naked in the dark? Or is it another crazy thing? Did Rorschach ever do it? Or is standing or sitting around naked in the dark just a Samuel Beckett character thing? Since I've done it more than I ought, I'm going with the Beckett option.

Batman and Alfred were surprisingly not blown up. They owe their lives to stupid random luck that a wire fell away from the bomb during all the ruckus. While Batman searches for clues and a way to track all the living members of the Order of St. Dumas, Alfred whips up some spinach fajitas. I like this version of Alfred where he's always Bruce's manservant and not some extraordinary British military hero who also moonlights as a butler. This Alfred doesn't try to examine the scene because he's too busy doing manservant things like making spinach fajitas and then getting his feelings hurt when Batman doesn't finish his spinach fajita.

Cousin Oliver eventually asks Nomoz about the theology behind the Order of St. Dumas and Nomoz's answer is "I'm not going to tell it to a college student who will pick it apart with logic and rational thought!" So Cousin Oliver just drops it. Nobody reading this cares about the theology! They just want a cool costume and an easy to understand mission. And what could be easier than "Kill the guy who's going to kill all the other members of your Order"? Too bad DC also constantly thinks, "Readers want to read about characters that are exactly like them! And college kids read our shit now, right? We need a huge nerd as the next Batman!"

Batman figures out where all the members of The Order of St. Dumas are located by tracing their use of satellite relays. While he's doing that, Biis goes after the nearest member of the Order in a hospital nearby. Nomoz also knows about this member so he and Cousin Oliver head on over to protect him.

Oh. Sorry. I mean "to avenge him."

Does that mean that Azrael has to wait outside the member's room until Biis kills him before he's allowed to act? Is this some kind of Libertarian shit?

If you're a Libertarian and you didn't understand what I meant by that, which you probably didn't because Libertarians are less about understanding things and more about spewing semantic bullshit that lets them do whatever the fuck they want to do, no matter who it hurts, then I'm not going to explain myself. Get smarter.

No wonder Batman and Azrael can't seem to maintain a healthy relationship. Batman wants to protect; Azrael wants to avenge. I wonder why Jason Todd didn't take up the mantle of Azrael when he came back to life instead of adopting the Red Hood persona? Why take a name associated with the madman who killed you? Oh, wait. I think I finally understand Jason and Bruce's relationship. Just another butthurt teenager trying to make their parent angry by doing stupid shit. I don't know why he couldn't have been like the rest of us and just went the roller rink every weekend where he hardly ever put our feet in roller skates but sometimes were allowed to put our fingers in vaginas.

The issue ends with Cousin Oliver forgetting to put on his Azrael costume before entering the room of the freshly-murdered-by-Biis member of the Order of St. Dumas. That leads to a slight problem and also another moment for Denny to think, "Ha ha! I'm going to really screw with the emotions of the young kids reading this funny book!"

That "To Be Continued" box is really fucking pissing me off. This should have been the end!

Batman: Sword of Azrael: Book Two #2 Rating: C. This series feels like the 1992 version of The Court of Owls but poorly thought out. Batman discovers a secret organization exists who control a superhuman killer used to protect the organization. I mean avenge the organization? But it lacks all the shit that made The Court of Owls so interesting. Like how they secretly ruled Gotham and the psychological impact they had on Batman when he discovered he never knew about them and he's supposed to have been such a great detective. Plus Bruce feels like he's in control of Gotham and then he learns that Gotham actually prefers to be controlled by these other people who fuck it so much better than he's ever fucked it. And also owls prey on bats! Plus the masks were cool and, I guess, they also served the purpose of allowing any major character to be discovered as a member at any time. We all thought Commissioner Gordon was going to be one, didn't we? Or was he? I bet The Joker was a member! Man, my memory fucking sucks. Anyway, my point still stands: Azrael is a far worse Talon working for a far worse Court of Owls. The Order of St. Dumas should be for more nefarious than "We have a lot of money and just want to force our members to remain members." Come on, Denny! You could have workshopped this a bit longer.

Of course, there are still two issues left in this series! Maybe I'll be surprised by how elaborate the Order of St. Dumas and their machinations actually are!