"The End" Week: Vigilante #50!

I knew where this was going ahead of time, and had been looking for it for quite a while. Now I think I've found it three times this year...from 1988, Vigilante #50, "A Life!" Written by Paul Kupperberg, pencils by Steve Erwin, inks by Jack Torrance.

I also don't have cause to do this often, but this one's going after the break: WARNING: Suicide.

This version of the Vigilante is probably the closest DC would ever come to a Punisher-style character, even to this day: gangsters had attempted to bomb District Attorney Adrian Chase, but only got his wife and kids, leaving him to take up guns and a mask. It hadn't gone especially well for him: recently, he had abandoned the so-called 'homeless avenger' to get beat to death by a mob. That was after beating up his girlfriend/fellow vigilante Black Thorn to keep her from killing said homeless avenger. Thorn's ready to get back at him, but Adrian slaps her down and heads out. (Black Thorn is supposed to be a hardened crimefighter herself, but in a bathrobe and sporting a black eye, it makes Adrian look really bad.)

Meanwhile, police Captain Hall was still searching the streets for the Vigilante, even though he was reported killed in Gotham. He's got 30 days to find him or give up, but he's not going to have to wait. At a movie, Adrian is plagued by flashbacks, of those who died before and after he began his crusade. He then proceeds to beat the crap out of some punks, which he finds a bit excessive but can't stop himself. Black Thorn meets with Harry Stein (a cop who had been hunting Adrian, but seems to be on his side here) and they both worry about him.

Hitting the streets in costume, Adrian comes across an alarming number of crimes, and shoots them up. A scumbag in an apartment-turned "opium den" takes a potshot at him while he's on the fire escape--not because it was the Vigilante, because there was some nut on his fire escape!--starting a fire fight that ends with multiple goons and junkies killed. Adrian is also having flashbacks to two associates who took the Vigilante mantle when he wasn't using it, one of whom was killed by Peacemaker. The cops have set a trap for Vigilante, who returns fire, not realizing they were cops: he shoots Captain Hall, presumably killing him.

Black Thorn gets a ride from Harry back to her apartment, as upstairs Adrian decides he was the only one that could do this for him, and shoots himself moments before she arrives. At the funeral, Harry gives Thorn the ashes, suggesting "nothing's ever so bad that being dead's gonna make it better--but sometimes it's gonna look that way to some people." Which seems a half-hearted rebuttal: there's no way this one would be told like this today, and it would probably be crammed full of PSA's and warnings if a character even considered it.

The editorial page mentions the Checkmate series, which would feature Harry Stein, Black Thorn, and Peacemaker. A new Vigilante would appear in 1992's Deathstroke the Terminator #10. (Nine out of ten superhero outfits look better on a woman; but this one...maybe without the vest.) Most surprising of all, Vigilante would get a DC Universe Classics action figure in 2009! I paid $6.99 for him, which seems cheap as hell even for then.