Crisis on Infinite Earths may have been an exercise in inventory-taking masked by an unwieldy tangle of plot points, but the 1985 maxi-series did excel at giving many of DC’s z-listers a moment to shine, if only as a prelude to an unceremonious demise two panels later. The creative team of Marv Wolfman and George Perez did an exceptional job presenting the syncretistic tapestry of DC’s shared multiverse in all its rich, goofy glory…and my younger self couldn’t get enough of it.

This elevation of the mediocre and obscure was something of a double-edged sword, however. It’s one thing for a pair of top-notch creators to tackle a character like Arion, Lord of Atlantis and make him interesting to masses. The problem was when those masses acted on their newly-awakened enthusiasm and decided to check out the character in his considerably less inspired native habitat.

Such was the case with Peacemaker, one of the 1960s “action-heroes” acquired by DC from Charlton and integrated into the DC Multiverse (via “Earth-4″) over the course of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Getting George Perez to sketch a z-lister is the ultimate in bait-and-switch, and neither the pre- nor post-Crisis incarnations of the character managed to live up to that tantalizing teaser.

Peacemaker made his debut in Charlton’s Fightin’ 5 #40 (Nov. 1966) before migrating into his own short-lived title a couple months later. Though he wore the nominal trappings of a superhero, the stories in his five issue hew closer to the then-popular superspy genre.

Christopher Smith is an American diplomat so commited to world peace that he is “willing to fight fight for it” by dressing up like Lester Lightbulb’s paramilitary cousin and blowing shit up. This might strike you as a something of a paradox, but it was very much in tune with the spirit of Cold War liberalism, hawkish and mawkish in equal measure.

Smith, who operates out of a chateau named the “Peace Palace” (complete with a well-stocked arsenal of hi-tech weaponry), is a hands-on type of diplomat. Rather than engage in fruitless negotiations with an intractable (and presumably Eastern Bloc) power, Chase prefers to slip into his deathtrap of a costume…

…strap on some “less than lethal” armaments (like guided missiles and laser beams), and systematically destroy the other nation’s infrastructure until they decided to slink back to the negotiating table.

While the old Charlton stories are quaintly bland in an off-brand 60s superhero comics kind of way, DC’s post-Crisis reintroduction of Peacemaker took the character into darker and sillier territory. Out went the Scott Ritter by way of James Bond pastiche and in came a hero more befitting the Age of Ronnie and Rambo.

The character’s preference for nominally non-lethal force was also dispense with in favor of something more in tune with the antihero-heavy times. “Fight for peace?” Hah! This radical new Peacemaker was willing to KILL for it, brother. None of that namby-pamby Robert McNamara stuff here, just Uzis akimbo and a unhinged sociopath driven by hallucinations of his Nazi war criminal father and the machinations of a shadowy black ops organization.

How’s that for edgy, fanboy?

Smith went on to meet his demise during Eclipso’s z-lister apocalypse, and his role was subsequently assumed by a couple other forgettable characters (and, in Kingdom Come, by Alex Ross’s painting of a Boba Fett action figure).

As an uninspired and poorly used character whose only real claim to fame was being the rough template for an amoral yet far more interesting monster, Peacemaker has won the honor of being this week’s Nobody’s Favorite.

Related posts:

  1. Nobody’s Favorites: Crisis management
  2. Nobody’s Favorites: Dork knight
  3. A time of fire and price