| Super Name: | Angel |
| Real Name: | Liam |
| Aliases: |
Liam Angelus The Scourge of Europe Deadboy The Vampire with a Soul The World's Champion Captain Forehead Great Poof Puppy (Wishverse) Dark Avenger The One with the Angelic Face |
| Publisher: | IDW Publishing |
| Gender: | Male |
| Character Type: | Human |
| 1st Appearance: | # |
| Appears in: | 100 issues |
| Birthday: | |
| Died: |
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Wolverine ( 88 - 262 ) |
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Demitri Maximoff ( 73 - 24 ) |
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Spike ( 72 - 29 ) |
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Dracula ( 70 - 85 ) |
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Batman ( 62 - 96 ) |
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Morbius ( 59 - 12 ) |
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Mr. Majestic ( 54 - 3 ) |
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Jason Todd ( 46 - 21 ) |
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Alucard ( 38 - 37 ) |
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Taskmaster ( 37 - 29 ) |
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Spider-Man 2099 ( 34 - 17 ) |
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Nightwing ( 26 - 72 ) |
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Once perhaps the most evil vampire in the world, Angel regained his soul after being cursed by gypsies for killing one of their young women, and set out to redeem himself by helping others. Edit
Television back story
Origins
Much of Angel's past life is revealed through various flashbacks during both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel's spin off series. Angel was born with the name of Liam. Liam led an unremarkable life, a failure to his parents and a drunk. Everything changed for him after he met and was sired a vampire by Darla. He then adopted a new name, Angelus. He became one of the most notorious vampires in the world. But one day he killed the wrong girl, a gypsy girl. The gypsy family curses Angelus with a soul (something removed from a human being after they are sired). The weight of his actions hits him but he attempts to continue to to live his life with Darla. He is unsuccessful in this, however, and leaves for America. Generally while in America he keeps to himself, and by the last few decades of the 1900's he was homeless and living off rats. He was then visited by a demon Whistler, who sent him to go watch over the new vampire slayer, Buffy.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
He begins his role in the Buffyverse by observing the young Slayer fighting the good fight. Inspired by her actions he introduces himself as a friend and begins helping Buffy on numerous occasions. A romance soon sparks between the two. Even after Buffy finds out that Angel is a vampire, she still is interested in him. The gypsy's curse that burdens Angel with a soul shall be lifted if he is to experience one true moment of complete happiness. When Buffy and Angel have sex in the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this moment of happiness occurs and thus Angelus, the murderous beast returns.
Angelus uses Angel's relationship to the slayer against her, as well as bringing pain to her friends. He even tortures her watcher Giles, and kills Giles' girlfriend Jenny Calendar. He killed Jenny both because she was working on a way to put his soul back and because she was a decedent of the gypsy family cursed him. Buffy's friend Willow finds what Jenny was working on and realizes she was attempting to give him his soul back. Meanwhile, Angelus has decided to destroy the world. Buffy goes to stop him, and during their fight Willow restores his soul. Confused and bewildered, Angel looks at Buffy unsure of whats going on. Unfortunately, Angelus had already opened the portal to destroy the world, and this process can only be stopped by finishing off Angel. So Buffy kisses Angel and then must stab him.
Angel spends a hundred years in a hell dimension until he is brought back for initially unknown reasons (later revealed to be the First Evil). Due to the harsh environment of a hell dimension, Angel returns wild and feral. Buffy helps him him recover from this state, and while the two intend to have some sort of relationship, but the burden of knowing that they can never be happy together without causing Angelus to return again is too great for them and Angel decides it would be best to leave town (much to the heartache of Buffy). Angel then embarks on his own supernatural adventures in LA on his own spin-off series, Angel.
Angel Season One
Angel moves to Los Angeles to allow Buffy to rebuild a new life without him and he begins his wild adventures as leader of the private eye agency: Angel Investigations. The first members of Angel Investigations were Cordelia Chase and the half-demon Doyle. Cordelia was a girl that Buffy went to high school with, and she comes into Angel's employ after unsuccessfully trying to start an acting career. Doyle, sent by the Powers That Be, comes to Angel to help get him started on his path. Doyle receives visions from the Powers That Be of people in need of help, Angel searches them out, and helps them.
Unfortunately one of these adventures led them into a situation where Angel was needed to sacrifice himself. Instead of allowing him to do so, Doyle knocked Angel out and sacrificed himself instead. This affected Angel and Cordelia greatly emotionally, though they were about to get a new addition to the team. Wesley Wyndam-Price (a recurring character in the third season of Buffy) came to town, a former Watcher who was now calling himself a "rogue demon hunter." The visions now being given to Cordelia, the trio continues the work together. The evil law firm Wolfram and Heart had bigger plans in mind for Angel. They resurrected Darla (who was killed by Angel during the first season of Buffy) at the close of the first season.
Angel Season Two
Season 2 initially feels much like season one, though they gain a new member to Angel Investigations, Charles Gunn (originally introduced towards the end of season one). Gunn is a street kid who has fought vampires his whole life, but joins the team after seeing the good they were doing. The season begins to take a different turn when Angel sees that Darla has been resurrected by Wolfram and Heart, not as a vampire, but as a human. Because she is a human now Angel wants to help her, but Wolfram and Heart decides to bring Druisilla, a vampire sired by Angelus, in to re-sire Darla.
Angel's character becomes much darker here, and his mission changes from helping the helpless to attacking the guilty. He also fires Gunn, Wesley, and Cordelia from Angel Investigations (though they restart the agency elsewhere, with the intention of changing the name). Angel chooses not to stop Darla and Druisilla from killing an entire room full of Wolfram and Heart lawyers. He then tracks Darla and Druisilla down and sets them on fire (though they both survive). Angel comes to the realization though that there will always be evil in the world, and he will never be able to stop it. Depressed and angry, Angel has sex with Darla in an attempt to loose his soul.
The result is different than he expected. Rather than being a moment of perfect happiness, it is perfect despair, and helps Angel realize the incorrect direction he was moving in. The next episode (appropriately titled, "Epiphany") chronicled Angel's attempts to win back his friends. Realizing how betrayed they must feel, Angel asks to work for them (as an employee) instead of asking them to come back to work for him. The adjustment to have Wesley now be the leader instead of him is difficult for Angel, but he accepts it as what he must do to win back their forgiveness. Wesley would continue to be the boss of the agency up until towards the end of season three.
The season finale was essentially a four part episode, during the first of which Cordelia was sucked into a portal to a demon dimension. This demon dimension was called Pylea, the home dimension of local demon bar owner Lorne, who reluctantly agrees to go with them. The last three episodes chronicled Angel, Gunn, Lorne, and Wesley's journey to save Cordelia. This finale included Cordelia becoming a princess, her forced marriage to the Hercules-like 'Groosalugg', finding a girl named Winifred who had also been transported there, and a rebellion against an evil demon government. Upon returning from Pylea (bringing Fred back with them), Angel is informed by Buffy's best friend Willow that Buffy had been killed.
Angel Season Three
Angel spends time at a monastery in Sri Lanka to recover from Buffy's death. Angel realizes that all the monks that live there are demons and is forced to kill all of them. Afterwords, Angel remarks that he should have taken Gunn's advice and gone to Vegas. Angel then returns to LA to get back into action with Angel Investigations. Angel's past comes back to get him in a big way during season three in the form of a man named Daniel Holtz. Holtz was a vampire hunter that tracked Angelus and Darla during their rampage in Europe. To get back at Holtz for his constant pursuit of them, Angelus and Darla killed Holtz's family. After this event Holtz swears revenge upon Angel and later makes a deal with a demon name Shajhan. The deal brought Holtz to the 21st century so he can once again hunt down Angel.
Meanwhile, Darla has returned to LA, pregnant. Evidently the night they slept together bore a child between the two vampires, but this is a strange event because vampires are unable to have children. During labor Darla, realizing that the child won't survive, stakes herself leaving the child behind in the dust. Angel takes the child but quickly realizes that nearly every force would be after the child. Unlike the other groups, Holtz chose to wait to go after the child. They were able to defeat the groups after the child, and Angel names him Connor. Wesley finds a prophecy that tales of the father killing the son. In an attempt to save the lifte of Connor from both Angel and Holtz, Wesley kidnaps him. Wesley plans were stopped when he is attacked and Holtz escapes into a demon dimension with Connor. Angel goes to Wesley (who is in the hospital with a slit throat) and attempts to kill him by smothering him with a pillow.
While Connor was in the different dimension time flew there but in the real world time seemed to barely move at all. Connor and Holtz return back shortly after Holtz had kidnapped Connor, but Connor is now an eighteen year old and Holtz is an old man. While in the demon dimension, Holtz had trained Connor to hate Angel. Despite this, Angel tries to show this teenage Connor that he is not who Holtz has made him out to be. In a final act of hatred and revenge, Holtz kills himself and makes it look like Angel's doing. Connor kidnaps Angel and puts him into a large box. Angel's last words to Connor before he was sealed away was "Connor! Never forget that I'm your father, and I love you!"
Angel Season Four
The last shot of season three is Connor dropping Angel to the bottom of the ocean in a locked box. Season 4 of Angel kicked off with the rescue of Angel from his deep sea prison by none other than Wesley. After reuniting with Gunn & Fred, he kicks Connor around a bit, gives him a lecture, and effectively "kicks him out of the house". Angel continues to watch over Connor as he lives on the streets, and thanks Wesley for helping him (informing him he is no longer angry with him). Everything begins to get worst as "The Beast" appears in LA. The Beast rains fire down upon the city and blacks out the sun, turning LA into a vampire and demon paradise. The crew realizes that Angelus once had contact with the Beast, so they make the regrettable decision to purposely remove Angel's soul.
Ultimately Angelus kills the Beast, which also ends up restoring the sun (something Angelus likely didn't expect). Wesley recruits rogue Vampire Slayer Faith out of prison to help take down Angelus. Faith does something extremely dangerous to do this: she spikes her own blood. Angelus didn't see this coming and the drugged blood puts both him and Faith into a comma. Faith and Angelus relive Angel's memories, and the dream experience climaxes between a fight between Angel and Angelus. Angel is the one to wake from the comma.
Despite the death of the Beast and the restoring of Angel's soul, Angel had another problem to deal with. Cordelia (unkown to the other characters at this time) was possessed by a goddess known as Jasmine and seemingly pregnant with Connor's child (who she seduced). Cordelia essentially gives birth to Jasmine's corporeal body (a full grown, beautiful woman) and falls into a comma. Angel is the first to see Jasmine and falls into immediate adoration for her (a spell Jasmine works on those who see her). Soon everyone begins to fall in love with Jasmine. Eventually however, the Angel Investigations team is freed from her spell and stops her. Connor, shaken from everything that happens to him, becomes unstable and self-destructive. In order to help him, Angel is forced to accept an offer from Wolfram and Heart to become the new CEO of the LA branch of the law firm.
Angel Season Five
Angel begins act strangely during their time at Wolfram and Heart. Angel's friends believe that he has joined the Circle of Black Thorns, a secrety society devoted to being the Senior Parter's instruments on earth. While he had joined the society, Angel reveals to his friends that he has done this to get close to them, figure out their plans, and unleash his own plan upon them and Wolfram and Heart. Angel knew his plan would be dangerous, and didn't force any of his team to help, though they all were willing to help.
Angel's plan was to have each of them take out a specific member of the Circle of Black Thorn and meet back up for the final battle against Wolfram and Heart. The only ones to arrive at the meeting spot was Angel, Illyria (Fred waspossesed by this an ancient creature earlier in the season), Spike and Gunn (who was mortally wounded). Wesley was dead and Lorne disapeared. An army sent by the Senior Partners of Wolfram and Heart converged upon them. This concluded the TV series Angel.
In canonical comics
Angel in After the Fall Angel: After the Fall
In 2007 IDW began publishing a canonical continuation of Angel's story being written by Brian Lynch under the supervision of Buffy and Angel creator Joss Whedon. After the Fall picks up after the ending of Angel Season Five. As a punishment for his actions at the end of the TV show's final season, the evil Senior Partners of the law firm Wolfram and Heart have sent LA to hell. Angel also was punished directly for his actions and, in addition to torture, was changed into a human. Angel, now under the guilt of everything that happened to LA, must fight back against all the evil to reclaim it while simply only a human.
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