Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

As Grant Morrison continues to drop hints about “Batman RIP” being “the end of Bruce Wayne as Batman”, it’s worth remembering that - whatever happens in that story - it wouldn’t be the first time that DC have stuck somebody else under the mask. In 1993 and ‘94, the controversial Knightfall storyline saw Bruce’s back broken by the villain Bane, and he - somewhat strangely - chose to entrust the mantle of the Bat to Jean-Paul Valley, a brainwashed nutjob who was the latest incarnation of “Azrael”, a lineage of bloodthirsty “avenging angel” type vigilantes.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see exactly what DC were trying to do (not just with Batman, either, but with Superman) - amid accusations that these characters had become stale and old-fashioned in the wake of the Image boom of the early ’90s, they came up with two almost-parallel storylines that saw the Big Two replaced with almost parodic versions of the sort of “muscles, guns and pouches” characters that Liefeld and co. had made popular, only to prove that such characters could never carry these titles with any kind of weight. It was a canny way of making people appreciate what they had in Supes and Bats by taking them away - but it has to be said that devoid of this context, the Azrael Batman stories in particular can make for a difficult read.

AzBats himself, after all, has absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever. He’s violent - borderline sociopathic, in fact - and driven by the voices in his head that result from his brainwashing. As a supporting character, this might not be so problematic - but having to take over as the “hero”, his stilted speech patterns and general arseholeness just make him irritating, particularly whenever he narrates. This issue, for example, opens with the resumption of a cliffhanger - AzBats, having discovered a secret disused rail line under the Batcave, and a ready-made “subway rocket”, is hurtling down the track at speed towards a hapless subway train. If we actually cared in any way about this character, it might be a pretty neat and tense cliffhanger - as it is, though, there’s a part of the reader that almost wishes he’d just smash into the damned train and have done with it.

As for that whole “subway rocket” thing - well, while it’s a pretty neat little toy in and of itself (I wanted one as a kid), it leads to perhaps one of the worst examples of “oh so convenient plot setup” that I’ve ever seen. For you see, just as Batman has found himself a train-cum-car that can speed around subway tracks… what should be the plan of the newly-formed villain pair the Trigger Twins (and oh, God, the Trigger Twins - two separated-at-birth red-haired twins who dress and talk like cowboys… no words, frankly)? Why, to carry out a mail train heist! And the mail train uses the subway! Fancy that!

This being a Chuck Dixon book, meanwhile, there’s quite a strong focus on Tim Drake’s Robin - in fact, much of the issue serves as a launchpad for his own series, with the closing tagline declaring, amusingly, “Continued in Robin #1! Will there be a Robin #2?”, building up towards his leaving the cave and striking out on his own. Unfortunately, aside from the climactic cave-set scene, Tim’s pages are pretty weak - at this point, the character felt like wish-fulfilment material for teenage readers (”Wow! Not only is he Batman’s sidekick, but he’s allowed to drive even though he’s only 15, and he’s got his own car with his logo on it!”), and was a bit of a goody-two-shoes; and in particular the scene with his curiously-accented housekeeper (I think she’s meant to be British?) is fairly cringey.

I’ve sounded quite negative so far, but I have to admit that - as with many of the early/mid ’90s Batman books - this isn’t actually that bad a read. It relies a little too heavily on its own internal continuity (something that was a real problem if you read these stories in trade - after the two parts of Knightfall, the KnightQuest story that covered most of Valley’s tenure as Batman, and of which this issue is a part, was never collected; making for a jarring jump to the closing KnightsEnd, which referred to some quite significant events and had by then featured further drastic changes to AzBats’ costume and general demeanour) in order for the reader to get a real handle on what’s going on, but it does at least pack a fair bit of story into its page count - we cover not only the initial subway escape, the setup of the mail robbery and Tim’s breaking into the cave, but there’s also a brief seed planted for a subsequent storyline involving the Joker. Graham Nolan’s solid and clear artwork helps it to rattle along at a fair old pace, too.

Indeed, for all the controversy that surrounds both this story and the equivalent Death and Return of Superman, the comics themselves don’t tend to stand up all that badly to a re-read nowadays. Batman comics have, of course, been a hell of a lot better than this, it’s true - but they’ve also been a hell of a lot worse…