Waaay back in 1988 I wrote a miniseries for DC Comics starring the Joe Gill/Pat Boyette-created character,
Peacemaker.
Peacemaker was originally published by Charlton Comics in 1966 as part of editor Dick Giordano's "Action Hero Line" and lasted only a couple of years. Years later, DC acquired the rights to the Charlton Comics heroes (nearly losing them to Alan Moore's whim in the 1980s, had his
Watchmen gone as originally conceived), and I have managed, happily, to be involved with many of these characters over the year as both writer and editor.
I got my shot at Peacemaker in the pages of
Vigilante, where he was portrayed as a dangerous psycho who listened to the voices of the people he had killed who spoke to him via his helmet. In 1988, I spun him off in the aforementioned miniseries (with artists Tod Smith and Pablo Marcos), which was a total psychotic, blood-spattered romp against international terrorism. The voice in his head/helmet now belonged to his deceased and unrepentant Nazi father, and my editor's marching orders to me had been to push the envelope on crazy and violent.
DC has just posted the entire 4-issue
Peacemaker miniseries online for download at .99¢ each via it's DC Comics app for the iPhone and Android devices, as well as at
Comixology.com.
It was, someone in DC Digital told me the other day, sick enough that it was "a book that had to wait for the market sensibility to catch up with it."
Not shabby for a guy who writes
Archie and
Scooby Doo, huh?
