Just to be absolutely (see what I did there) perfectly clear: I am NOT writing Absolute Azrael. I imagine Scott has plans for him, but since I love the Absolute Universe and Azrael, I’m going to fan fic it a little. Which is probably unprofessional but hey, we’re all friends here. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully?
Anyway, part of what this newsletter is going to be doing is me telling you stories. About my career, about my books, but also about my ideas. Sometimes my own stuff, sometimes a ‘what if I were allowed to write thing”.
The point, of course, being to get you interested in my actual work and, you know, give me money. Which is a flawless segue into the business portion of this newsletter: I have a store.
You can buy my books from me, signed, here:
Caveat: I am still figuring this out, so you’re kinda test subjects for this, but still, if you want to read my stuff and directly support me, this is probably the best way. We’ll be adding more books in the coming….er….indeterminate time period.
I ALSO have an Amazon Associates account, which means if you click this link and buy my books (or, actually, anything for the next 24 hours after the click) I get a tiny percentage.
Alright, onto the cool stuff.
So Azrael is a DC character, largely in the Batverse, who has a bomb ass design and a cool concept. Seriously, look at this Joe Quesada design:
The gist being that Azrael is an assassin for a rogue group of Knights Templar,the Order of Saint Dumas who have survived into the modern day, essentially an immensely wealthy cult. The Azrael persona is passed from father to son, and involves being indoctrinated with something called The System, a layer of psychological conditioning that creates something of a secondary personality with a bunch of skills and capabilities.
Jean Paul Valley is the latest, although he doesn’t know this until his father is killed and he gets pressed into the position. With Batman’s help, he eventually becomes a hero until he is chosen to replace Batman after Bane breaks Bruce’s back. Unfortunately the stress of this interacting with The System causes him to go kinda nuts.
But he eventually gets better, etc. This is a very Cliff Notes version of the original iteration of the character. There’s been a lot more and other Azraels through the various iterations of the DC universe in the last 30 odd years, but this is the OG. He’s essentially an assassin with an angel of death/vengeance motif in a story that kind of has Jason Bourne and, of all things, Da Vinci Code vibes.
(To be clear, Az predates DaVinci Code and the movie version of Bourne, so it’s not like, ripping those off)
So how do we Absolute that up?
Well, first, see those flaming blades from his gauntlets? In my version, those are the literal reforged sword of an angel, and they’re actually implanted in Valley’s form arms, Wolverine style.
Because what the Order has done is trapped an angel and, essentially, stripped it for parts. So Valley has been implanted with the angel’s eyes, the sword, and it’s blood. I want to note the angel is still alive, which will be a plot point, but more on that in a bit.
So the blades burn when he manifests them because that’s what angel blood DOES. Something something about the fire of heaven. It also enhances Valley’s abilities - he’s stronger and faster and harder to kill because of the blood, but he’s not invulnerable. In particular, bleeding enough of the blood will definitely kill him, which is what happened to Jean Paul' s father this time.
The eyes, though, allow Valley to see the world through, well, the eyes of an angel. And having written that, a terrible song is now playing in my head. And maybe yours. Sorry.
Anyway, Angelvision allows him to see the sins people have committed, amongst other things. In the Absolute Universe, this is interesting, I think, because that universe is tainted from the start, where evil permeates the whole universe as a base principle. So what happens when you can literally see evil.
Azrael’s armor is, in part, made from the angel’s wings. So they’ve mutilated a thing of goodness and made their own monster from it. Which I think is cool, and worth exploring. It’s NOT, though, a story.
The story, I think, would be Jean Paul waking up one day to find he’s lost a month, he’s now got these superpowers, and he’s just killed a bunch of people and he doesn’t know why.
So the story would be Jean Paul trying to pull apart what happened to him and his own memories, while various forces try to either kill him or control him. This version, I think, was rescued from the Order when he was a kid, and has largely suppressed the memories.
What he finds out is that during the process of very involuntarily being turned into the new Azrael, the angel was able to escape, doing tremendous damage to the order. And indeed, the Order is being torn apart by the angel, who has gone deeply insane from centuries of humans using it as a blood bank and resource.
There might also be a group of people conditioned to THINK they’re demonically possessed, trying them into essentially depraved suicide assassins, also going after Azrael and the Order.
There’s something in there about the angel being dangerous to people other than the Order. Not sure in this fan ficcing what it is, aside from the idea that if the angel retrieves everything stolen from it might kill everyone.
If that’s the case, then we’d find out that it is basically ignoring Azrael at first because it needs to kill the order members who can rebind it. Or something. But it needs to be a threat on it’s own.
All of which I think works. There’s a neat mystery, some cool stuff that feels Absolute appropriate, and I think some good thematic stuff. Essentially, we’d be looking at nature versus nurture, I think - Jean Paul is, despite everything, a good person. Whereas the angel is broken by the world to the point where it becomes evil. I think there’s also space in there to examine the notion if sin and virtue in a world that is OBJECTIVELY evil.
Anyway, that’s my Absolute Azrael fan fic. Since I am astonishingly unlikely to get to actually write it, don’t be surprised to see bits of this strip mined for parts (heh, like the angel was) in my future works.
Speaking of….
The Week That Was
Pretty productive. I did 30 pages of the Frostpunk GN. Normally, I like to do more like 20 pages a week, but I’m moving a little faster on this. It’s going well; it’s been several years since I wrote a GN, as in, not serialized as issues, and doing so is both liberating and kinda scary.
As always, I’m trying to refine my working process, and I’ve got a flow that I think works. And in this one, I am really feeling the characters and central mystery so while the work is still, you know, WORK, I am having fun. This is sadly not always the case so I am enjoying it while it lasts.
Paid Newsletter
Oh man, did you make it this far? That’s awesome.
At some point fairly soon, I’m going to turn on the paid newsletter aspect. Most of this will still be free (so, for instance, this newsletter you’re reading right now would be identical until this point) but I am thinking two paid tiers.
- For nine bucks a month you’d get digital copies of whatever comics I CAN send you, and I caveat this because I’d need publisher permission for some, scripts from my old stuff (and probably for whatever digital copy I sent) and access to the raw feed, which would be more about stuff I’m working on or noodling with.
- For fifty bucks a month you’d get all that, AND I’d mail you whatever comics I put out. To be clear, this is not a good deal, really, it’s there for people who really want to support what I do.
Dunno, thoughts?
Also, hey, if you want to learn how to make comics, check out my company:
Until next time,
Justin