Ichabod Azrael, the protagonist of The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in his Wake) was a gunslinger in the Wild West before he was himself shot and killed. After death he was determined to return to the mortal realm so he could be with Zoe, the love of his life. Then he discovered that Zoe was a fiction invented by Charon the ferryman, who was fed up of his job and wanted to give Azrael "a reason to return to the coloured world, breaking them both free of Purgatory in the process." Azrael was furious and killed Charon. This meant that he had damaged the ecology of the afterlife so badly that reality itself would break and all living souls would be annihilated, but Azrael was so angry that he didn't care. He set off across the Styx in his stolen ferry to find and kill God, aided on the far side of the river by a talking horse who took him to the town of Atonement. The horse assured him that one of the people in the town was God, but it didn't know which one because it was only a horse.
After some complicated post-mortem post-modern shenanigans, which apparently involved Ichabod dying again, he was finally reunited with his wife and their baby daughter in the coloured lands (or a convincing facsimile thereof). The horse came too.
- There were three series of The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in his Wake):
- The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in his Wake) by Rob Williams and Dom Reardon, 2000 AD progs 1677 to 1688
- Manhunt by the same team, progs 1789 to 1799 (last three parts drawn by Antonio Fuso)
- One Last Bullet by Rob Williams and Michael Dowling, progs 1901 to 1910.
- Nick Percival drew a Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in his Wake) cover for 2000 AD prog 1901.
- Dave Kendall drew a Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in his Wake) cover for 2000 AD prog 1905.
- Glenn Fabry drew a Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in his Wake) cover for 2000 AD prog 1910.
- Ichabod eventually made an unlikely return in the Judge Dredd series in June 2020.