That Jean-Paul Valley should still be swinging his flaming sword some 30 years after the character first made the scene, and in a new Sword of Azrael miniseries no less, is one of those wonderful reminders that nothing ever really goes away in comics.

Writer Dan Watters' Batman: Urban Legends series on Azrael was great, buffeted by the art of Nikola Cizmesija; Watters' next work with Azrael, Arkham City: The Order of the World, with art by Dani, is a horror masterpiece that I highly recommend. In comparison, Sword is neither so new nor so scary, delivering mostly what we’ve seen in the previous and sometimes stretching to fill all its pages.

That said, Watters is not only bringing together disparate DC pieces from a variety of places, he also ties Azrael for the first time to the core of the DC Universe in very smart ways. If perhaps we might also look at this and think Azrael hasn’t changed much in 30 years, we can also see ways in which Watters is updating the concept for the next 30 years.