Azazel

Origin

Azazel is a mutant from biblical times and the ruler of the Neyaphem (a race of demonic looking mutants). He claims that the Earth and everything on it belongs to him. He sees humanity as a cancer on his world. In his time, he enslaves and kills humans in order to impose his rule and dominion. Another group of mutants, the Cheyarafim or “angels” banish him to the Brimstone Dimension that Nightcrawler uses when he teleports. He is only able to leave for short periods of time so he fathers numerous children in order to have one with the power to free him permanently from his prison. Nightcrawler was one of his children as a result of his time spent with a young Mystique who was married to Mr. Wagner. Around this time, he also fathered the mutants Abyss and Kiwi Black among others. Azazel bides his time and waited for his children’s power to mature and grant him freedom.

Creation

Azazel was created by Chuck Austen and Sean Phillips and made his first appearance in Uncanny X-Men #428 in 2003.

Major Story Arcs

Freedom

Azazel uses his mental link to his children to call dozens of them to one spot, the spot where he was banished, in order to use their powers to come to our world. Nightcrawler is pulled along with his other brothers and sisters and had started a ritual to open a portal to the Brimstone dimension. The X-Men followed Nightcrawler and get in a fight with Azazel and his followers resulting in them all being trapped back in his dimension. After a coordinated effort from Polaris in the real world and Abyss in the Brimstone dimension, everyone but Azazel escaped back into the real world. Azazel’s current status is unknown and if M-Day had any impact on him.

Amazing X-Men

Azazel was the first enemy in the series. He rallies a demon-horde to take control of the after-life. Azazel finds himself in a swashbuckling battle against his son, Nightcrawler and his fellow X-Men. Eventually he is overthrown by his children (Nightcrawler and numerous Bamfs).

Powers and Abilities

Azazel possesses all of his son, Nightcrawler’s powers, but to a much greater degree. This includes teleportation, superhuman reflexes, agility, night vision, a flexible bone structure allowing Azazel to remain in a crouched position for a long time and perform contortionist type feats without causing any damage to his spine, micro suction discs that Azazel can stick to objects with the surface of his hands and feet due to the natural micro-suction discs over them that enables him to scale and climb the surfaces of walls, a prehensile tail that is strong enough to grab onto objects with relative ease and can even surpport his own weight, and limited camouflaging abilities in dark areas.

Azazel is able to psionically transport himself, his clothing, and any other additional mass across inter-dimensional distances by opening a portal into another dimension, traveling through it at high speed, and being able to return through another portal back to his originating dimension. Azazel’s teleportation powers are clearly greater than Nightcrawler’s as Azazel does not suffer from the same limitation that Nightcrawler does, such as needing to see or know where he is going before Azazel transports. While Nightcrawler has the ability to teleport by jumping into the Brimstone dimension, traveling through it at high speed, and hopping back out at a different location, Azazel has the inverse of these powers as he can jump into the real world for stints of time. Azazel can hold this for much longer periods than Nightcrawler, staying in the real world for up to over a day at a time through intense concentration. The distance of how far Azazel can teleport is currently unknown, however Nightcrawler has even stated that Azazel is the world’s most powerful teleporter.

Azazel generate and project streams or bolts of paralyzing energy from his hands towards others which can last for about 10 minutes at the most. Azazel can also shot streams of destructive energy attacks as well which can also wound others and even cause a form of disintegration towards normal humans and has limited shape shifting abilities allowing Azazel to disguise his appearance through some unknown means and Azazel has shown to be able to gain the appearance of a normal human changing his eye pigmentation, skin colour, and body type allowing him to appear as a normal human, which he has generally used to seduce and impregnate women and Azazel can also disguise himself as other people as well. Azazel possesses limited telepathic abilities and has a slight telepathic influence over those around him giving him hypnosis and empathetic abilities. Azazel’s bodily tissue is somewhat harder, tougher, and more resistant to all forms of physical injury than that of the bodily tissues of a normal human being able to withstand blunt force trauma with mild to moderate discomfort and much less physical injury to that of what a normal human would receive. Azazel also has a healing factor allowing him to be able to regenerate and heal from large amounts of damaged or even destroyed bodily tissue that could be near-fatal towards normal humans within much less time, and has a much long life span possibly being immortal due to the absorption of energy from the “Brimstone Dimensionas itself as Azazel is one of the first and oldest known mutants who have ever been born as he has been alive since biblical times and has claimed that he’s been alive since 9,000 BC

In the dimension where he was exiled, Azazel appears to be able to manipulate the Brimstone Dimension itself allowing him to open small viewing portals to Earth that can allow him to see what is happening in certain places on the Earth plane or generate devastating energy blasts and is a master of the Dark Arts and has a vast amount of knowledge over dark magic or black sorcery as some of his powers could be through magic. Azazel is a knowledgeable sorcerer taping into the power of blood sacrifice and energy from the Brimstone Dimension itself for spells involving portals, summoning, and scrying and has tutored Margali Szardos for some time in some of her magical studies.

Azazel possesses a gifted intellect as Azazel is a gifted leader, and master of manipulation. Azazel is also well aware of history and academic disciplines, and has managed to muster enough skill to build a tower in the strange Brimstone dimension.

Azazel is also a master swordsman and a skilled athlete with a somewhat twisted code of honor and ethics as Azazel’s long lifespan has allowed him the time to studied swordsmanship to such a degree that he has become a near unparalleled master with bladed weapons as well as many other academic studies. Azazel has shown that his swordsman skills are likely easily on par and maybe even greater than Nightcrawler’s in his kick heavy fighting style.

It has been rumoured that Azazel could actually be demon, or is at least holds the blood of one as many mystical beings such as Mephisto, Blackheart, Hela, Satannish, and Dormammu have all made slight references that the leader of the Neyaphem is a being much more than he seems to be and has had a strange set of ‘ties’ to mortals. Mephisto has openly stated that Azazel possesses a great strength and a power unattainable by some true demons and Azazel has even claimed that he once battled Mephisto and others for the title of “Satan”. Much of the full extent of Azazel’s powers are unknown. Azazel has display a number of superhuman powers during his appearances some of which could possibly be through dark magic or through his possible demon hierarchy including, but not limited to:

Azazel was anchored to the Brimstone Dimension itself, and he can only stay in the real world for brief stints of time in order to perform acts such as seduction or manipulation. The longer Azazel stays in our world, the more time he must take to recover. Azazel can only manifest in the real world for more than a day if a mystical practitioner is willing to anchor him. So Azazel can only spend a limited amount of time on the Earth without the assistance of his children. That however changed as Nightcrawler allowed him to stay on the Earth plane in order to trap him and keep him from trying to take over the after life.

Azazel along with all the other Neyaphem are negatively affected by the blood of mutants that are related to the angelic clan of Cheyarafim which is caustic to them and begins to cause their bodies to breakdown despite its regenerative properties in others. The only known versions of this mutation as of right now are Jamie Guthrie (Icarus) and Warren Worthington (Angel). However, it is likely that Logan’s (Wolverine) healing factor may also be caustic, given his relationship with Baal and the Hand of God. However Azazel appears to have knowledge of a way to reverse that curse.

Physical Characteristics

• Gender: Male
• Height: 5′ 10″
• Weight: 150 lbs
• Eyes: Black with Yellow pupils
• Hair: Black
• Skin: Red
• Nationality: Unknown, potentially ancient Roman
• Unique Traits: Unlike his son Nightcrawler, he has five fingers and toes. However they share a prehensile tail, pointed ears, fang-like canine teeth, and his body is coated with red-colored fur.

Other Media

Films

X-Men: First Class

Azazel appears in the film X-Men: First Class, portrayed by British actor Jason Flemyng. In this depiction, he is apparently Russian (as evidenced by his voice and use of Russian words), and is a member of Sebastian Shaw’s Hellfire Club. He is shown to be able to teleport over extremely long distances. He becomes a founding member of the Brotherhood of Mutants after the death of Shaw.

X-Men: Days of future past

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Azazel is shown dead in Bolivar Trask´s secret files, those photos were taken after the scientist made terrible experiments on him in order to take advantage of his powers. He is just one of many mutants that were slaughtered.