And By the Flaming Sword You Shall Know Him

SPOILERS for last night's episode of Gotham, "Scarification"

Well, that was unexpected. I had my own theories about exactly who Theo Galavan was. I know a lot of people were thinking Ra's al Ghul or someone with connections to the League of Assassins. I never went that way. With all his talk about the founding of Gotham, my money had been on him being a new grandmaster of the Court of Owls, since the Owls are fresh in people's minds, but I had also considered a member of the Arkham family, or even someone connected with the Religion of Crime. But no, no, it's connected to something even more deeply entrenched and completely insane in the Batman mythos (which works beautifully as Gotham embraces its Burtonian insanity), The Sacred Order of St. Dumas. If you're curious about the comic book history of the group who are making their debut on Gotham, read on.

The Order of St. Dumas made it's first appearance on Batman: The Sword of Azrael #1, written by legendary Bat scribe Denny O'Neil with art by Joe Quesada, a mini-series designed to introduce a new character into the Batman mythos for a very specific purpose we'll get to shortly. They were not connected in any way to the founding of Gotham as on the show, although the list of founding familes given in Gotham do include three of the four well established founding families of Gotham: The Waynes (Batman's paternal family), the Elliots (family of Batman's nemesis, Hush, who appeared in Gotham as the kid Bruce beat down with his father's watch in season one), and the Kanes (Batman's maternal family, and also the family of Batwoman). The fourth name mentioned, Crowne, has certain ties to the Court of Owls, but is probably the least of the names, and not listed in the comics as a founding family. The comics have a fourth founding family, the Cobblepots, Penguin's family, but the continuity of Gotham clearly precludes that.

The Order of St. Dumas are a splinter group from the Knights Templar, because what fictional universe doesn't have at least one group whose origins lie with the Crusades and the Templars? Led by a knight named Dumas (who wasn't a saint by anyone's reckoning except his order), the Order was able to escape the purge of the Templars and went underground, slowly building up wealth and influence over the centuries. They remained secret by having a champion, and assassin called Azrael, programmed from birth via something they called The System to guarantee his loyalty and to provide the training needed to be their deadly angel, who would eliminate any member who stepped out of line.

When it first appeared, the Order appeared to be in decline, a small group of the richest men in the world who stuck together more for their mutual benefit than any real religious affiliation. One of them, Carlton LeHah, had betrayed the others and begun siphoning off the Order's money, and when Azrael was sent to kill him, he was prepared and shot Azrael with armor piercing bullets. Azrael, dying, found his son, a student in Gotham City named Jean-Paul Valley, and passed the mantle on to him, while LeHah took up the name and guise of the Demon Biis, St. Dumas's great enemy, to wipe out the remains of the Order. The murders drew the attention of Batman, and Batman joined forces with Jean-Paul, the new Azrael, to stop LeHah.

With LeHah defeated and what seemed the rest of the Order wiped out, Azrael became a new apprentice of Batman to try to beat The System and use his abilities for good. The story of Azrael becoming a temporary Batman after Bruce's crippling at the hands of Bane is one of the seminal Batman stories of the past twenty-five years, the Knightfall epic. Throughout the story, Jean-Paul continues to see visions of St. Dumas brought about by The System, and when Bruce finally is healed and returns, Azrael wanders off, disgraced.

But Azrael soon discovered the Order was not what he had thought. There was actually still a more traditional religious order in existence, headed by a man called Brother Rollo, who had an ice cathedral in the Swiss Alps (I love sentences like that), and with the aid of Sister Lilley, one of the Order's own nuns who had grown disenchanted, Azrael spent the first twenty-five issues of his own series fighting the Order. Along the way, readers found out that the Order had a history with the League of Assassins and had a group of troll-like servants, one of whom, named Nomoz (pictured above), we had met in Sword of Azrael. They went as far as unleashing a plague on Gotham as part of a plan to cleanse Earth of non-believers, which was the first of the major catastrophes that would lead to "No Man's Land."

Azrael did eventually triumph over the Order and destroyed them and their cathedral, but it turned out there were more splinters of the Order. Lilley joined with one in Asia and tried to resurrect the Order, but failed. One was revealed, saying that it was in fact the original Order, with Brother Rollo's faction that created the Azraels being a splinter itself, and tried to recruit Mark Shaw, the international man of mystery who had once taken up the names Manhunter and Dumas, to be their new agent (a clear retcon in the last few issues of Manhunter, but a clever tie to the Dumas alias from the 80s and the Order). And another became known as the Order of Purity, and were central to the last Azrael series, feauring Michael Lane, a former GCPD officer, taking up the mantle of Azrael and a cursed suit of armor called the Suit of Sorrows. And that was the last we heard of any part of the Order before Flahspoint rearranged DC history.

I know that original Azrael armor gets a lot of heat for being the most '90s of '90s comic book costumes, and damn it is, but I have a soft spot for it and all it's Joe Quesada designed flare.. The Order of St. Dumas has been absent from DC continuity since the Flashpoint reboot, but Azrael is too cool a concept to keep away, and in the solicitations released yesterday, DC announced it will be collecting Sword of Azrael and the first six issues of the original Azrael series in a new trade, so I can only expect that the return of Azrael and the Order is closer than I had imagined before yesterday.

Animated Discussions: Batman Vs. Robin

In July of 2013, Warner Bros. Animation made a change to the way they were handling the DC Comics direct to DVD movie program. Instead of a series of one off stories, they were going to start making most of the animated features fit into a cohesive universe based loosely on the New 52. You haven't seen me talking about this new program thus far because I felt it met with mixed results. There was a feeling to me that they were pushing the boundaries of blood and violence simply because they could. But each none has gotten progressively better, and I would have written up the previous entry, Justice League: Throne of Atlantis, if not for want of time. But last week, Batman Vs. Robin was released, and I enjoyed it so much that I felt I had to write it up, despite being a bit behind the curve, putting the review up a week after release.

The plot revolves around two conflicts, one external to Batman's family, and one internal, that come together in the end. The external conflict is Batman dealing with the appearance of the Court of Owls, a secret society that has shaped Gotham City's history for centuries. The internal conflict is Batman dealing with his son, Damian, who came to live with him in an earlier film, Son of Batman, and who, having been trained by his maternal grandfather, Ra's al Ghul, to be a master assassin, is having a hard time fitting in with Batman's more strict morality. As the Court makes its play to not only destroy Batman and win Brcue Wayne to its side, Damian is wooed by Talon, the Court's assassin, to become his apprentice and abandon Batman.

This story isn't a direct adaption of any one story, but actually draws it's main inspirations from two, and neither of those is the Grant Morrison story, "Batman Vs. Robin." The first story is obviously Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's "Court of Owls," the very popular inaugural arc of the current volume of Batman. The Court and their Talon are the main antagonists of the film. The second story is the first arc of the second volume of Batman and Robin, "Born to Kill," by Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason. The stories are blended together well, having the Talon take the place of Nobody, the villain of the latter story, who was trying to win Robin away from Batman.

With a screenplay from comic book writer J.M. DeMatteis (who also wrote a handful of episodes of Justice League Unlimited and Batman: The Brave and the Bold), this is one of the best written of the DC animated movies. DeMatteis gets to the heart of Batman and Robin's relationship, and establishes the conflict between them well; it's not just that Damian is a brat with a chip on his shoulder, it's that Bruce doesn't know how to be a father. Nightwing and Alfred both appear, giving their own opinions on how Batman should be dealing with this, but they are used sparingly, allowing the conflict between father and son to keep the central place in the narrative.

By removing Lincoln March, the central villain of the initial Court of Owls story, the movie allows the Talon to take center stage as the villain. That Talon remains unnamed throughout the story, but his background is revealed, and he is not one of the Talons that we've met in the comics. His background is not a direct parallel for Batman's, making him another anti-Bat, but with his training and his being raised by a criminal father he betrays to the police, it's clear that he is meant to understand Damian and what it's like to have a father who doesn't understand and love you, allowing for a logical conflict between Batman and Talon for Damian's loyalty.

The new animated style is also starting to grow on me. While it's not as clean as the classic Bruce Timm style, it has a great sense of fluidity and lends itself to more detail. The designs for the Talons, and the creepy way they move and heal, was a highlight of the movie. The characters in costume look great, but the one place I feel still needs a little work is some of the more sedate moments. This style is very action oriented, so the faces when not masked or in motion can occasionally look a bit off model, with oddly flat faces.

Jason O'Mara, now in his fourth outing voicing Batman, has grown well into the role. It's always hard to hear a new Batman, since Kevin Conroy has inhabited the role for so long, both in screen and in my head, but O'Mara is finding a nice balance, making his voice gruff but understandable. Stuart Allan also does a good job as Damian; it's not often that an actual kid voices a kid in an animated feature, but Allan is a professional, and his Damian can sound both haughty and tragically young at the appropriate times. Jeremy Sisto, who once voiced Batman in the Justice League: The New Frontier feature, voices Talon, and is well suited for the villain. Because it's a Batman project, do keep your ears open for the requisite Kevin Conroy cameo, this time as Bruce's father, Thomas, who gets to read the Court of Owls nursery rhyme. And listen for a brief appearance by an almost unrecognizable Weird Al Yankovic as this world's version of the Dollmaker, who combines the version from the pre-Flashpoint continuity with the current version, giving him an interesting and creepy tie to classic Superman villain, Toyman

I know there has been some grumbling from various internet corners about Warner adapting these new stories when there are so many classics to still be adapted. But for the reason that they're new and can be changed, versus something like Killing Joke that is etched in stone after twenty plus years of being regarded as a classic, it makes sense to me. While I too would love to see Kingdom Come on my TV, this is anew bit of universe building. And if Batman Vs. Robin is any indication, this new program is moving in the right direction.