Scans_Daily

(They'd come in through the door.)

They saw the Stag - the Stags, the many that the Shadow'd thought were one for years - laying waste to the place.

(The Joker was also there.)

( There was burning and bodies. )

(He'd been caught by surprise.)

The Joker and the Stag had him rigged up.

Before an audience of Gotham's other terrors, the Joker exposited.

( Batman strained. )

He'd found him in the place of Henri Ducard.

They fenced, wooden sword to wooden sword.

Batman wanted him for the death of Lamont Cranston.

" Why kill your descendant? "

" Cranston is but one of many faces I've worn over the centuries. " said the Shadow.

He went on, ascribing the modern-day Cranston's death to another: " The Stag has come for Gotham's best, Bruce. Reason will not defeat him. "

" Convenient alibi. But I won't play your game. "

" This is no game. It is a glimpse of the world you've found.. "

( The Shadow exposited to Batman.  )

It would've been written by Mark Waid and Robert Loren Fleming.

(One wonders what allusions/jabs it would've had, a couple years out from Watchmen #12.)

Dick Giordano, who'd previously been at Charlton, got Peter Cannon's creator Pete Morisi to do a Secret Origins story for the character.

That story wasn't published as intended - Secret Origins ended before it could be.

(The planned series didn't make it out, either - the 90s Peter Cannon was its own thing.)

It was published, though - in 2012, as part of Dynamite's first Peter Cannon series.

( It was in the back of issue #1. )

They faced each other in her apartment.

The enemy faced the hero.

" What is this all about? "

" What it has always been about, Peter Cannon-

" Power. "

( Her lips curved. )

He had overt ones, like the guy who tried to kill him with a dragon.

He had ones less so, like the Hooded One and Princess Evila.

They were working behind the scenes.

( Their plans were less immediate. )

Peter Cannon was the dragon he'd saved the world from.

There were those in the world who knew the dragon as a monster and hated it.

There were those who also hated the effects of the dragon.

( They sat together. )

It's an ongoing, written by Greg Pak and drawn by Marc Laming.

It's starting off with Bond and a modern take on one of his well-known antagonists.

That character's not the one with the shoe or the one with the teeth.

( They're the one with the hat. )

Out of one man, he'd stepped into another.

He'd gone from the streets to a room, a stubbed-out cigarette trailing smoke and a glass half-drunk.

There was a problem before him, on a desk with a lamp on.

( He went to the window, looked out into the night. )

His journey'd begun in 1939, after the breaking up of a Nazi rally.

He and Margo Lane drove away from their work, Moe Shrevnitz at the wheel.

She wondered if they'd hurt any of the women and children down there.

" I'd never have set the charges if I'd known. And you blasting away with your .45s.. you can't be sure.. "

( He looked at her. )