On our anti-hero spotlight today, we introduce a man who inherited the cape... and nearly destroyed the legacy. Meet Jean-Paul Valley, the first Azrael!

A seemingly ordinary computer science student, Jean-Paul was secretly the heir to an ancient religious cult known as the Order of St. Dumas, conditioned since birth as their brutal assassin. When a broken Bruce Wayne chose him to temporarily replace Batman during the "Knightfall" saga, his violent conditioning—"The System"—took over. He ditched Bruce's rules, upgraded the Batsuit into a razor-sharp armored nightmare, and turned Batman into a merciless, crime-shattering vigilante. He proved that sometimes, the most dangerous threat to Batman is the man wearing his own mask.