History ComicBook / Aztek

He was created by Creator/GrantMorrison and Creator/MarkMillar, and debuted in 1996, at the tail end of UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks -- against which he stands as a reaction. Aztek is TheCape: brightly dressed, noble to a fault, the kind of superhero who will happily take the time to search for a lost pet or fly halfway across the country to persuade a sick child's favourite celebrity to come and visit.[[note]]Actual examples from the series. --[[ClueFromEd Ed.]][[/note]] By way of contrast, ''Aztek: The Ultimate Man'' drops him into the kind of violent, crime-ridden urban setting one would expect to see a NinetiesAntiHero striding through. (It does, in fact, have a NinetiesAntiHero striding through it -- up until halfway through issue 1, when he gets blown up by one of his many enemies.) Much [[PlayingWithATrope trope-juggling]] ensues.

''Aztek: The Ultimate Man'' lasted only ten issues before being wiped out in UsefulNotes/TheGreatComicsCrashOf1996, but by then Aztek had already been established as a serious enough player to be invited into the ComicBook/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica, and his story continued in ''ComicBook/JLA1997'' (which, not entirely coincidentally, was being written at the time by Aztek's co-creator Grant Morrison). In the pages of ''JLA'', Morrison finished out the string-pulling subplot, and ultimately had Aztek, the Justice League, and every other superpowered person on Earth unite against a world-threatening menace which was identified as the fulfillment of the Tezcatlipoca prophecy.

* DistaffCounterpart: In issue 8 there's a female training to be Aztek's "backup". She never appears again in regular continuity, but has a guest appearance in the BadFuture of the "[[ComicBook/{{JusticeLeagueOfAmericaRockOfAges}} Rock of Ages]]" storyline featured in Grant Morrison's run on ''ComicBook/JLA1997''.