Deadman
42 years ago - Boston Brand is born.
26 years ago - 16-year-old Boston begins to train as an acrobat under the flying Graysons.
18 years ago - 24-year-old Boston leaves Haley's Circus to begin his own act.
15 years ago - 27-year-old Boston is killed. The goddess Rama-Karushna keeps him on earth as a ghost as he tries to solve his own murder.
13 years ago - Boston helps Alec Holland navigate the realm of the dead as he searches for Abigail Cable's soul.
9 years ago - Boston finds his own killer & brings him to justice, but still isn't permitted to move on.
7 years ago - Boston find his way to Namba Parbat, the lost city of Rama-Karushna. Here, he begins his devotion to the goddess.
3 years ago - Boston begins working with the Shadowpact.
1 year ago - Deadman participates in the 5th Shadowpact, forging the spells that allowed Mageddon to manifest in our reality where he can be stopped by the collected heroes of Earth. With her team disbanded, he returns to Namba Parbat.
Deadman is a fantastic example of just how far great design work can take a character. Ultimately, he's a ghost. He's a ghost with a cool mystery to solve, but there's very little original about the character. What makes him stand out is the incredible design work of Carmine Infantino and Neal Adams. He has a fantastic look, and when you couple that with the tried and true ideas of a good ghost story, he becomes an absolutely unique character within the larger DC mythos.
He's been a recurring character for decades. While he's had several limited series all his own, he's often at his best popping in and out of other series, perpetually depicted as a transient passenger of the world. After he solved his own murder, he's had several variant stories in all sorts of nooks and crannies of DC, even interacting with the Forever People. Our favorite place for him is in Namba Parbat, devoting himself to the goddess Rama, so that's where we chose to utilize him. Also, his career as an acrobat was tied into Nightwing's origins by suggesting that he once worked with the Flying Graysons. It was a clever way to explain where Dick Grayson got his costume when he became Nightwing, that it was a variant on the costumes worn by his parents and Boston. Deadman was never a member of the Shadowpact, but was a member of the New 52 team Justice League Dark. We're not fans of that comic, as it's made up almost entirely of characters that have no business being on a superhero team, but Deadman being incorperated into Shadowpact makes a lot of sense, and so we've made him one of the team's founding members. |