Denny’s stories from around this time all seem to run together. Sword of Azrael was first pitched as a story in Legends of the Dark Knight, and it feels a whole lot like the LOTDK stories that O’Neil had recently written. We have an obsessive cultist as the villain (this time seeming like a send-up of Cable and the Punisher), just like in Shaman. We have Bruce and Alfred getting stranded in an unfamiliar locale after their aircraft is shot down, just like in Venom. (And even though Denny didn’t write Prey, it’s still notable that we get both a violent vigilante and a villain donning Batman’s costume here as we did there.) O’Neil would soon replicate much of the globetrotting stuff from this story in Knightquest: The Search.
In short, Sword of Azrael is just meh. The titular character has an arc that largely gets lost in the shuffle as the story turns its focus to Batman and LeHah (the latter of whom gets the best moment in the story when he starts doing a voiceover narration for the sake of the readers and gets called out for it). Azrael’s costume feels like a 90s-ized version of the Year Two Reaper design by Alan Davis, but it works well enough. Speaking of which, Joe Quesada’s art is probably the biggest selling point for the book. He gives us an early version of Spiky Shoulders Batman. He also seems to draw Bruce’s cold breath as if it were cigarette smoke, and when that’s combined wit hthe sunglasses, it really starts to evoke Matches Malone. If I seem to be rambling, it’s because there’s really not much to say about this book.
Vengeance of Bane, on the other hand, is superb. Knightfall may have been a big gimmick, but it’s a gimmick with a great villain, and this issue sets him up perfectly. It’s just too bad that Sword of Azrael drops the ball. The result is that Knightfall becomes kinda boring after Bane breaks Bruce. A fantastic bad guy gets taken down by a boring protagonist, all while Tim Drake shakes his finger in disapproval. Oh well. At least we have Vengeance of Bane and Broken Bat.