The Journal of Angela Ashby: The Angel of Death

A weathered skull stands out in a sea of decay.

I couldn’t resist going with a something spooky for Halloween. The Angel of Death, Azrael, Abaddon, the Angel of Dark and Light, the Destroying Angel — there are many names for the winged and cloaked form representing death. If you see the hands or face of this figure, it is usually depicted as a skeleton, so bones and no flesh.

One of my first brushes with the concept of an Angel of Death was in the holiday classic by Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. Every Christmas Eve, I’d wait up to watch with chilling anticipation for the silent, scary, Spirit of Christmas Future. The frightening thing about this spirit for me was the refusal to speak and the cloak covering everything except the outstretched bony finger when it directed Scrooge’s attention. Far more fearsome than the other two spirits because of the unassailable silence. Does the Grim Reaper always move so silently?

Sam Shearon did an excellent job of capturing the reaper for the brief moment it appears in The Journal of Angela Ashby. The work in progress, The Star Warriors and the Secret of the Red Key also deals, much more in depth, with the concept and personification of the Angel of Death. It should be a fun topic to grapple with.

In the middle of the layout, the Ace of Spades drew me in. Smoke from the candles created a foggy layer and the image wavered and morphed into a winged hooded figure carrying a scythe through a graveyard. The angel of death. I blinked and ran a hand over my eyes. Once I lowered my hand, the card showed the black spade and letter ‘A’. Nothing else. Not even a gravestone.

During this scene, Angela went back and forth from being freaked out to thinking Madame Vadoma was a fraud. But this moment Angela knew was no trickery by the mysterious fortune-teller … but what did it mean???

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