Vigilante
68 years ago - Adrian Chase is born in Connecticut to the wealthy Chase family.
50 years ago - 18-year-old Adrian Chase goes to Cornell for his undergrad study.
46 years ago - 22-year-old Adrian Chase begins at Cornell Law School.
45 years ago - 23-year-old Adrian Chase marries Doris Brinkley.
43 years ago - 25-year-old Adrian Chase becomes an ADA in New York City. His son Adam is born.
41 years ago - 27-year-old Adrian Chase's daughter Drew is born
40 years ago - 28-year-old Adrian Chase begins collecting evidence against the Scarapelli crime family.
39 years ago - 29-year-old Adrian Chase starts secretly working with Laurel Drake, the vigilante Black Canary.
37 years ago - 31-year-old Adrian Chase's home is bombed by the Scarapelli crime family. He survives, but his wife and children are killed. He disappears, going into northern Alaska where he spends 18 months training as a martial artist & marksman.
36 years ago - 32-year-old Adrian Chase returns to New York, living in an advanced trailer outside the city, taking out the members of the Scarapelli family responsible for the death of his family.
35 years ago - 33-year-old Adrian Chase travels to New Orleans to dismantle a drug-smuggling organization.
34 years ago - 34-year-old Adrian Chase is pursued by Laurel Drake, trying to stop him from killing several criminals in police custody.
33 years ago - 35-year-old Adrian Chase hunts serial killer Charles Davis across the city, crossing moral lines he never thought he'd cross.
32 years ago - 36-year-old Adrian Chase attempts to set aside his role as Vigilante, but a copycat begins gunning down criminals all over the city. He has to work with Laurel Drake to track down the copycat Allan Welles, who forces Adrian to kill him.
31 years ago - 37-year-old Adrian Chase, losing himself to near-constant psychological trauma and PTSD, accidentally kills an innocent cop in a shootout. Unable to reconcile his downward spiral of guilt and mental instability, takes his own life.
Vigilante is an extremely deep legacy in DC Comics. While almost all of the versions of the characters are variations on the one we're adapting here, there is also Greg Saunders, a classic backup character from Action Comics from the early 40s who is remembered even today as a member of the Seven Soldiers of Victory. He was the son of a famous sherif and grandson of an indian fighter, working as a modern day (in 1941) troubador who rode a motorcycle and was still an expert with his dad's six-shooters and lasso. He manages to cut a unique heroic shilouette and holds a pretty unique space in DC's pantheon. We might figure him out someday.
Other thant Greg, however, pretty much every version of Vigilante is drawing back to Adrian Chase. He comes from a very particular era of pop culture, and fills a very particular niche within the larger mythology of comic book superheroes that DC might be kind of behind on without him. The specific story we actually got for Adrian might actually be a unique take on that niche, which hopefully will become clear as we get into it.
Other thant Greg, however, pretty much every version of Vigilante is drawing back to Adrian Chase. He comes from a very particular era of pop culture, and fills a very particular niche within the larger mythology of comic book superheroes that DC might be kind of behind on without him. The specific story we actually got for Adrian might actually be a unique take on that niche, which hopefully will become clear as we get into it.
Vigilante's Comic HistoryAdrian Chase appeared for the first time as an uncostumed DA in Teen Titans #23, by Marv Wolfman & George Perez. He continued to appear for several issues until finally putting on his costume in issue #35 and starring in their their 1983 annual. We learn that Adrian was a crusading DA with a strong sense of justice whose entire family was killed in a mob bombing... which is an origin I'm sure a lot of people immediately recognize from the Punisher, but it's also an echo of something you see a lot starting in the mid seventies as a lot of contemporary action films were adapting traditional western themes. Characters motivated by revenge and versions of the whole "good guy with a gun" fantasy made popular by Charles Bronson, Dirty Harry, and Fox News.
In the early issues of Vigilante, Adrian was depicted as incredibly moral, as if his work executing people was a natural extension of his work as a DA in his pursuit of Justice, just cutting out the problematic red tape that kept preventing bad people from getting their just deserts. The book was making it very clear that this was a line in the sand. The people being killed by Adrian were career murderers, human traffickers, and almost ALWAYS people who had sexually victimized women. (The book brought up sexual assault CONSTANTLY, almost as a sort of moral currency. I believe this was ALSO pretty common of this type of storytelling, and while I get what they're doing, As a modern reader it does feel really excessive) |
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Vigilante would absolutely have just been remembered as DC's Punisher, but something very interesting happened. In issue #21, Marv Wolfman handed over writing duties to Paul Kupperberg. From that point forward, the book took on a very different viewpoint on the way it depicted violence and on the heroic idea of the good guy with the gun. While Marv Wolfman (who let's not forget, created and wrote Deathstroke) clearly intended Adrian to be the moral center of his story, Kupperberg continually created stories that chipped away at the morality of his position. It was very much like Denny O'Neil's take on the Question functioning as a response to Steve Ditko's orginal take on the character, but all happening withing the same series. Adrian would try multiple times to quit being Vigilante, only to watch other people take on the mantle only for it to slowly tear them apart. He slowly lost his moral high ground, hurting innocent people or cops, essentially falling until he could no longer differentiate himself from the people who deserved his vengeance.
Which finally culminated in issue #50, where we see him finally fully unravel... and take his own life. It's brutal, and in the letter column editor Mike Gold explained that this was the end the series had been building toward since Kupperberg came aboard. The series had essentially made a thesis that this sort of character, or at least this sort of character WORLDVIEW was ultimately self-destructive, and at the very least was incompatible with traditional child's-power-fantasy superhero storytelling. |
Vigilante's CostumeAs I said, there are quite a few alternate takes on Vigilante that have come up in the decades since this series ended. Even within it, there were at least a few other characters who wore the SAME costume. Patricia Trayce, A Deathstroke supporting character, would wear an update version of this costume, as would Slade's ex-wife Adeline Kane. Later, there were several subsequent series that introduced new characters taking up the Vigilante mantle, and we'd see several takes on the concept.
Most audiences, of course, are familiar with the version of Adrien depicted in the very fun Peacemaker tv series, where he's reimagined as essentially Deadpool, where he's played by an absolutely fantastic Freddie Stroma. The costume here is much sleeker and cooler, showing a character with an almost cartoonish relationship with violence. This is a great costume, but I think if you're going to lean into the original Dirty Harry take on the character, Adrian's original sort of -full-body-skimask costume really does the character the most justice. |
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Our Vigilante StoryThis is a character that is, on the surface, very easy to include. His story is self contained, has a clear arc and, notably, actually has a full conclusion that successfully wraps up the story being told. The challenge here is actually to work out how to integrate this into the larger world of DC, because this isn't a traditional quote unquote "Comic" story. He's not a superhero, and in fact that's sort of the whole point of the character? He needs to sort of unravel on himself even as his story is unfolding.
First, we chose to move him pretty far back into the timeline. He's operating at the same time as the All-Star Squadron, between 30-40 years ago. (As I write this, that's the late 80s & early 90s... and that will only continue to move forward, but we can sort of collectively imagine a generic time in the past that is thematically similar to the late 70s early 80s landscape this character came from). We've specifically made him a character associated with Laurel Drake, the original Black Canary. He can be a sort-of supporting character, sort-of villain. By not trying to make him the hero of his own story, I think we manage to give him space to experience his own moral bankruptcy without trying to make him a comic book superhero. There are of course more modern takes on Vigilante, which makes sense; this is an interesting character perspective to pit against a lot of modern characters. If we're going to do an IDEAL version of Vigilante, though, I think that means we just do Adrian and his very particular story. |