Backstage Pass #59 (Patreon)

This will be the final catchup Backstage Pass as we return to a bi-weekly schedule. The next one will come September 26th! On this edition of Backstage Pass, I'll be talking about...

The original fate of Azrael! Everyone's favorite Smeargle could've had a much worse death than a bad date night.

If you just read that and thought "who the hell is Azrael?", allow me to give a quick refresher!

A blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance in the finalized version of the comic, he was my recruit from Foggy Forest when I revisited it after the expedition arc in-game. I've mentioned his fate in the gameplay numerous times, where he was the first death of the run after getting hit with Vice Grip by a Pinsir and never even making it out of the dungeon to see the light of day. Being the first death, I was already admittedly a bit too excited thinking about how to incorporate him in the comic and, ultimately, kill him. So let's talk about those plans! And what changed.

To start, I pretty much always had plans to pair Azrael and Yohann together. And in these early sketches, I initially had plans to make it so Smeargles didn't have those little beret-shaped fur tufts on their heads, and that across the species they just liked wearing hats.

Azrael and Yohann were planned to meet one another via Azrael getting a hat from Yohann's shop, and their relationship continuing from there. In the comic, they probably would've already been a couple, though they were far from having the healthiest relationship in the world. The two of them had rather dry personalities that tended to clash, Azrael being a bit down on his luck while Yohann was flourishing in his career.

The in-betweens for their arc were largely not fleshed out, but I did know how I wanted it to end. Azrael and Yohann would've had a pretty big argument, before having a talk to help resolve things between the two of them, with a glimmer of hope shining on their relationship. Azrael would join the team on a mission to Azelf's Lake to protect the Time Gear... but Grovyle would end up dispatching the team and manage to steal it anyway. Azrael would sacrifice himself to throw Yohann into the radius of Azelf's teleportation as the flow of time threatened to trap them there, and he would be stuck, trapped in the lake arena with no escape.

Back when I was considering this idea, time "stopping" was more like a big bubble forming around an area that stopped the environment, but not the pokemon inside. Pokemon would be unable to enter or leave the barrier, so essentially Azrael would've been locked in with no way to get food or water, and he would slowly starve to death.

The most tragic part of this for the team would be knowing that he was still alive with no way to get to him in time- something I based off of irl failed cave rescue missions.

However, as time went on and I started actually writing further into the comic, I found I didn't really feel strongly about Azrael's character. There were already a good amount of dry, slightly apathetic moods on the team, and while I liked the idea of Azrael and Yohann's arc, I found I wanted to focus on other relationships and interactions among the cast instead. That, and something more... interesting, happened in the gameplay around the Crystal Cave arc that I wanted to focus on instead. Finally, it felt a little weird putting so much focus on this particular death when in the gameplay he wasn't really a significant character. I know that I can do whatever I want since it's my story, but I dunno, it just felt weird hehe. Slowly I started joking with my partner about how I was just slowly butting him out of the story.

Woo — 06/23/2018 12:41 PM
i forget azrael exists sometimes

he just kinda floats around in a pot waiting for character seasoning and yohann and malachi are eating it all up

In the end I wrote him out of the comic entirely... until I wrote him back in for his brief appearance! My special little secret is that his role in the story now is to be the setup for a joke that you won't see the punchline to until Chapter 10. In the meantime, he's probably off blissfully unaware his horrible, horrible original fate.