Azrael #62 : The first day of the rest of your life
Writer : Dennis O'Neil
Penciller : Roger Robinson
Inker : James Pascoe
Colourist : Rob Ro & Alex Bleyaert
Seperations : Rob Ro & Alex Bleyaert
Letterer : Ken Bruzenak
Assistant Editor : None Credited (poss Harvey Richards)
Editor : Mike Carlin

Synopsis :

Jean-Paul is Out of hospital and trying to get his bearings, but he had no life before NML and has no where to go now. He comes across Brian being beaten up by gangs because he was a Deezee and left the city before NML. After saving brian he enfranchises his and leslies aid in starting another free clinic. she agrees but only if he agrees not to hurt anyone when the thugs turn up again and assault Brian and invade the church. Azrael persuades them to give up and clean the church. the next day one of Brians Patients comes to visit, and surprises Jean-Paul.

Review :

Obviously this is a "new start" issue, the opening monologue and artistic layout are familiar, infact in many ways the layouts on these pages seem repeats of issue #31. The general theme of the comic seems newness new city, new story, new start. It is perhaps in this manner that the issue tries to recreate the first issue of the seires, The group of thugs preying on the homeless, the coincidental meeting between Jean-Paul and Brian, the assault on "home" by the thugs, the cliff hanger. Themeatically things are similar to tthe first issue but some crucial differances

There's an immediately obvious change in Azrael's first page, The lettering style on the captions has changed, the illuminati - esque initial letter has been replaced with one on a shield the boxes themselves have been changed from parchment to torn Journal. I had to check Ken was till doing Letters. To be honest I don't really like the new Style as much as I did the old. Maybe it's the shock of the new.

Nice inkwork this issue but nothing outstanding on the art side of things. The Cover was really quite awful Boring uninteresting generally bad at advertising. I wish that the art team would go abstract on the covers representationalism is boring and awful at grabbing attention. This months cover is a nice break from the two guys slugging it out.

Rant :

The surprise ending is actually surprising and it's nice to have a cliffhanger when there are so few of them in the title. There did feel like there was a good deal of recycling going on though. I feel I'm able to accept the extreme unlikelyhood of Brian and JP's meeting because it seems to fit with the theme of fresh starts, In general the issue is well paced and that sort of fits in. I think A lot oof my attention was focused on the beginning of the issue but I tend to find myself more drawn toward the ending hhich has some great moments like Brian's opinion of the costume and such.

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