A Vigilante Died Last Night...

[mrosa]

Several years ago I read a few Deathstroke: The Terminator backissues and came across this speech by Batman to a woman, Pat Treyce, who had just become the new Vigilante:



Although it impressed me, at the time I barely knew the DCU so I had no idea what he meant. But I recently reread these issues and decided to look up just what happened to this previous Vigilante...

... and boy, it wasn't pretty!

Vigilante started in 1983, written by Marv Wolfman, and I suppose he was one of the many, well, vigilantes who began blood-splattering the backalleys of major metropoles with small arsenals in the wake of The Punisher's popularity. The first Vigilante was a man called Adrian Chase, whose origin story closely resembled Frank Castle's. Wolfman didn't stay long, though, and soon Paul Kupperberg took over. Later Watchmen came along, influencing comics in all sorts of ways. Vigilante began boasting of a "Suggested for Mature Readers" warning in issue #39, and deserved it.

Kupperberg, to his merit, differed from other Punisher knock-offs by exploring the toll of vigilantism on a person's psyche, and he slowly chronicled Adrian Chase's plunge into insanity, insecurity, paranoia, abusive behavior, and suicide. Chase wrestled with his conscience about his killings; he felt conflicted and guilty. As the series went on, though, he turned more callous and began losing his sense of right and wrong. The series reached a pioneering climax in issue #50.

Around this time, Chase was dating Black Thorn (from Kupperberg's Checkmate series). In #49 both had fought each other because of a new vigilante called The Homeless Avenger (seriously), a well-meaning but ordinary guy who went around protecting the homeless from violent thugs who beat them up for fun. Because The Avenger was killing his victims, Thorn wanted to take him out; Chase defended him from her and took her down in combat. Then he left with her, allowing The Avenger to stand alone to fight around 30 thugs (that's what The Avenger's asked Vigilante to do, since it was his fight.)

As Chase gets next day's morning newspaper, though, he reads the shocking news:



Shortly afterwards, a bruised Thorn shows up to console him, since he's now blaming himself for not having stayed around to help. She can see that he's obviously cracking up:



As Chase runs away to do some vigilanting, Thorn looks around for ways of helping him. Meanwhile, Captain Arthur Hall is dead set on capturing Chase since he's gone on a killing spree in previous issues. Finally his team corners Vigilante, who's too insane to realize he's fighting cops this time:







Back in his apartment, Adrian Chase confronts himself and takes a decision...







... And this is where Paul Kupperberg earns his place in superhero comic book history: the first time a series ends because the character commits suicide.





Batman wasn't kidding!

This is the legacy of Watchmen, that much reviled legacy; but I confess that I found the last issues of this forgotten series remarkable for their tension, characterisation, exploration of vigilantism, and grounded approach to costumed heroes.

And ending on a happier note:

Comments

[leoboiko]

I'm positively surprised there even *was* a homeless avenger, given the classist subtext of Punisher-style "clean the scum from the streets" types.

[mrosa]

I think that kind of language refers to criminals, pimps, dealers, etc. I don't recall Frank Castle despising the homeless; I think he even helped them once in a while.

I'll post more about The Homeless Avenger tomorrow; issue #49 is remarkable too.

[leoboiko]

Not overtly, of course. And yet the criminals in general have an uncanny tendency to look like poor people, homeless, minorities etc., while the vigilantes have this statistical tendency to clean-cut white middle class...

[reveen]

Suicide, socioeconomic disparity, and debates about lethal force that don't devolve into mudslinging? I continue to be surprised by just how much mature storytelling there was going on in the bronze age.

[bradygirl_12]

You're right, the Bronze Age was pretty good.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Well....

There were a few...questionable scenes. I remember Chase throwing down with a bunch of teenagers, who're violent criminals because 'their playing of video games left them unable to tel right from wrong' and how some middle eastern countries were importing drugs becaus they hate America.

So there was some 80s reactionary stuff, mixed in with Chase's failing mental state.

[bradygirl_12]

Seems like this Adrian Chase and the one on the CW's Arrow have insanity in common, and a lot more (I won't go into it because of spoilers for the finale).

[mrosa]

Vigilante deserves a standalone TV show without silly links to superheroes. It could be a sober, realistic, grounded exploration of costumed vigilantism. They could even go on switching the protagonist from time to time, like Chase giving up for a while and David Winston taking over, only to be killed in action, and Chase adopting the role again, only to finally crack up and kill himself, allowing Patricia Trayce to replace him.

What better way of showing how fucked up being a vigilante is than having each person keep the costume only for a while, before it just becomes too much to handle?

Imagine halfway through a season Chase blowing his brains out, after some careful foreshadowing, and Trayce carrying on the rest of the season as she slowly finds reasons to become the next Vigilante. That could be revolutionary as far as current generic superhero TV shows go, like Daredevil, Flash, Arrow, and Iron Fist, which just play it by the numbers.

Well, it's nice to dream...

[q99]

-This is the legacy of Watchmen, that much reviled legacy; but I confess that I found the last issues of this forgotten series remarkable for their tension, characterisation, exploration of vigilantism, and grounded approach to costumed heroes.-

Not all of the legacy was bad, even if it often went to bad places.

This one, well, is a good story!

[mrosa]

I've always thought that Watchmen, on the whole, has left a remarkable legacy.

I don't understand why some sensitive souls nowadays feign so much outrage and surprise at how dark comics have gone... did they never read pre-1986 comic books? Did they stop in 1960 or something? Comics have been getting progressively "darker" since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Marvel Universe and added realism and continuity to storytelling. Since then writers have regularly pushed "realism" towards more refined stages.

Each era, after all, has its own notions of what "realism" is, and what seems realistic in one era, in another one will look heavily stylized. The comic book realism of the 1970s had nothing to do with that of the 1960s, and the daring of the 1980s make the 1970s seem less brave than creators at the time thought they were being.

Watchmen led this wave for higher realism, and Moore did it better than everybody else at the time. But a lot of his pioneering has roots in comics from the decade's earlier years. And even without it, things would have continued to move towards the infamous "grimdark" tendency that gave us so many excellent and intelligent comics in the 1980s. Moore just loves to say that he ruined comics with his one comic book because that's another form of self-aggrandizing, and he's always been good at blowing his own horn. I don't have problems with his self-delusions; I just find it pathetic that people who supposedly have read the same comics I have, believe in that simplistic narrative.

[q99]

-I don't understand why some sensitive souls nowadays feign so much outrage and surprise at how dark comics have gone..-

It's not so much outrage and surprise, as weariness. It happens enough that I tend to sigh and move on, leaving books when they, too, dip into the well.

Most of the complainers I know, myself included, get somewhat annoyed that people conflate the dark parts of watchman (and Dark Knight Returns and similar) with what make it good (like, they don't pay attention to the intricate craftmanship, symbolism, or similar. Or how to make an off-his-prime character like Nite Owl the center of a story and those aspects), and lean overly heavy on them to the detriment of the story- also overlooking the difference in format between a stand-alone and an ongoing.

I mean, I'm not saying there aren't plenty of stories who've done it well, and there's definitely good parts of the legacy too (there *are* writers who learned the good lessons), but there are sooo many who learned the wrong lessons and derailed good ongoing plots with dark parts they don't actually have a good followup on and lack a resolution.

Like this? This is a resolution, a good one.

But, say, Infinite Crisis, the central conflict between the Trinity that broke up the Justice League, Wonder Woman being willing to kill vs Batman and Superman not? Remember how they resolved that fairly dark, but realistic and interesting conflict?

That's right: A big punchy enemy showed up and they decided to stop talking about it. It even got referenced later on in individual books with the characters retaining their stances, Wonder Woman was still willing to kill, just never around each other.

It's not that the story was dark that was the problem- I'm on team WW there really. It's that they went with a dark moral conflict and then didn't come up with a way to resolve it that fit anything to satisfaction in an ongoing serial format, so they simply didn't. And that's common, because people want to do stories about bringing out tough, dark moral decisions without actually playing it out.

Also, Batman just quietly forgave the leaguers involved in the Identity Crisis mind control thing too.... big serious moral conflict, ended with people whistling and not looking at it.

Or to tap other universes, an interesting thing to do with Watchman is, "What if the shocking squid moment happens, and you follow up with it rather than end the story there?". Cool idea, right? So, Ultimates did that. And then they did it again. And then again. Then the universe ended because they'd blown up too much of the world for the reasons to care. This has happened to multiple universes, Wildstorm did it too.


Then don't get me started as death-as-drama and dark-as-drama. Suffice to say, it has driven multiple Teen Titans runs into the ground, and on it's own killing people don't make drama, it makes someone I was interested in not around.

So yea, the trend existed before Watchman and The Dark Knight, but people often go back to those two specifically, and a half-assed dark as drama storyline does a much harder number on the following writers and the general flow of a character and story than a half-assed heroic as drama storyline.

[mrosa]

I sympathise with you; it's a fact that too many writers have taken a lazy approach at interiorizing the innovations of Alan Moore and Frank Miller. However, in every age most creators will misread or water down the best their peers did for profit or from ignorance and/or cowardice, and dreck will prevail. The Silver Age is not better just because it didn't have grimdark; it was awful in lots of different other ways than grim-and-gritty comics are. For instance, I can't understand anybody taking pleasure year in, year out reading static characters whose continuity is reset at the end of 7-page stories, as if nothing had consequences, just like the pointless deaths and rebirths of the modern age. Comics, regardless of a wily PR machine thundering otherwise, haen't changed that much since 1956.

I don't worry too much about the prevalence of bad comics; I just accept that they're the natural order of the world - I guess that's the Stoic in me - and avoid them, and don't care about them unless one of them comes my way, in which case I mercilessly mock it and those who consume it - I guess that's the Menippean Satirist in me. I prefer to discover and celebrate the few good comics the grim 1980 produced, like Vigilante, which was unknown to me until a week ago. If I can use Scans Daily to spread and celebrate its beauty and intelligence, so much the better.

[q99]

-However, in every age most creators will misread or water down the best their peers did for profit or from ignorance and/or cowardice, and dreck will prevail. The Silver Age is not better just because it didn't have grimdark; it was awful in lots of different other ways than grim-and-gritty comics are.-

Oh yea, definitely. My favorite age of comics are recent ones.

There's basically a course correction effect- someone adds something new, it goes overboard, eventually people learn from it and manage to incorporate it in a better mix.. IMO comics *have* changed, and largely for the better, and I view the strong turn towards 'gritty' and people handling it wrong as growing pains... ones I'd hoped the writers who aim for dark would've assimilated better by now. Still, the number of good dark books now almost certainly outpaces the number in the past. I don't think I'd have books like Lazarus and Monstress if it wasn't for Watchman and such.

-I don't worry too much about the prevalence of bad comics; I just accept that they're the natural order of the world-

Yea, that's true. It doesn't matter how many bad ones we have, just how many good.