The Bat-Family's Most Dangerous Member is Also Their Most Underrated
Warning! Spoilers for Arkham City: The Order of the World ahead!
The DC Comics miniseries Arkham City: The Order of the World shows how hallucinations and a flaming sword make Azrael the most dangerous member of the Bat-Family. Throughout the series, Jean-Paul Valley aka Azrael follows the orders of what he believes to be an angel sent to guide him on his quest to restore order to the city after the Joker's A-Day attack on Arkham Asylum.
These elements call back to Azrael's past as the brainwashed assassin of the Christian cult known as the Order of Saint Dumas. Batman saved Azrael from that path, and even let the scarlet crusader act as his replacement after Bane broke his back in the classic 1993 storyline Batman: Knightfall. However, Azrael was much more violent than Batman and suffered from hallucinations of his father and Saint Dumas. This behavior led to him becoming increasingly unhinged until the original Batman was able to return and stop him. He has since been an ally of the Bat-Family, although he is not as well-known as other members.
Arkham City: The Order of the World by Dan Watters and Dani sees Professor Pyg exploiting Azrael's tendency for delusions. Pyg uses No-Face to trick Jean-Paul into hunting down other escaped inmates with a ghostly disguise. Eventually, Azrael is captured by Pyg and placed into a makeshift asylum with those he has fought before. After getting free from his cell, Azrael manages to take down Pyg, No-Face, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, Doctor Double-X, Ratcatcher, Doctor Phosphorous, and Nocturna all on his own. Through a determination born from religious fervor instead of a childhood promise, Azrael is more dangerous than Batman. That, combined with his willingness to mutilate his foes, makes him a bigger threat to Gotham's villains than any of his allies.
Azrael shows how he stacks up against other members of the Bat-Family in 2017's Detective Comics #961 by James Tynion IV and Alvaro Martinez. After his programming by the Order of Saint Dumas reasserts itself, Jean-Paul forgets who he is and seeks to carry out the Order's wishes. He attacks other members of the Bat-Family, and is able to singlehandedly take on Batwoman, Orphan and Batwing all at once. He is only defeated when Batman and Zatanna show up and put him to sleep with magic. Yet even with such stories speaking to the power contained within him, Azrael remains an often overlooked, even second-tier ally to the Bat-Family.
Although Batman has been in the asylum as both himself and as Bruce Wayne in the past, no other allies of his can still make that claim. This makes Azrael uniquely unpredictable, and means that the other members of the Bat-Family should keep a closer eye on him in the future. As is now made official in Arkham City: The Order of the World by a certified Arkham doctor observing Azrael, "You—the real you—would be institutionalized."