Only one month apart, Boba Fett will star in his own Disney+ series, building on the success of The Mandalorian right before Peacemaker receives a HBO Max spin-off from his appearance in The Suicide Squad. Although the fan-favorite anti-heroes will never cross each other's paths, the franchises have a surprising link, as seen in the first issue of DC Entertainment's 1996 epic, Kingdom Come.
Written by Mark Waid and painted by Alex Ross, Kingdom Come tells the story of a possible future of the DC Universe (later assigned the designate Earth-22) in which 'traditional' superheroes have been mostly surpassed by a new generation of hyper-violent and irresponsible vigilantes. A new anti-hero, Magog, changed the world after executing the Joker for killing Lois Lane and the staff of the Daily Planet (the inspiration for the Injustice video game series.) At the beginning of the story, Superman has retired following the widespread public support for these new, more vicious crime-fighters - including a version of Peacemaker who looks remarkably like a certain bounty hunter from a galaxy far, far away.
Armed with a rifle, chrome body armor and a rounded helmet with a narrow visor, one would be forgiven for thinking that a Mandalorian briefly landed in the wrong franchise. However, while Alex Ross obviously drew inspiration from Boba Fett (Din Djarin was still but a twinkle in Jon Favreau's eye in 1996), the similarities between the characters are more than cosmetic. Like the galaxy's greatest bounty hunter, Peacemaker also wears a jetpack to aid his covert missions, was taught how to fly a fighter plane by his father, and is notably ruthless when it comes to achieving his goals. However, Disney's infamously ruthless attitude to its intellectual property means that fans will never get to see Peacemaker's Star Wars-inspired costume on the big or small screen.
Although the Peacemaker of Earth-22 doesn't have any lines in his few appearances, this version of the character is present in an important moment in this universe's history. As a key member of Magog's violent Justice Battalion, he is present when a fight between Captain Atom and the energy-absorbing Parasite unleashes a massive amount of quantum energy which annihilates the entirety of Kansas, thrusting the United States into an economic crisis.
Consisting primarily of characters that DC inherited from Charlton Comics (such as Captain Atom, Blue Beetle and The Question), the Justice Battalion lineup is most likely a reference to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen limited series, which revolutionized comic book storytelling with its emphasis on mature themes, moral ambiguity and political allegory. In the series, the violent and unstable Comedian, whose murder is the catalyst for a conspiracy against superheroes, was based on the Peacemaker. The success of Watchmen inspired comic book publishers to 'deconstruct' their heroes and the values they were previously associated with, leading to a wave of bizarre, extreme and hyper-violent characters in the 1980s and 1990s - the very movement that Ross and Waid were reacting against.
While fans may never get to see Peacemaker's Mandalorian-esque armor in his upcoming HBO Max series, Mark Waid and Alex Ross offered a crossover that fans never expected - then again, no-one in 1996 would ever have imagined that both Peacemaker and Boba Fett would star in their own series, let alone at the same time.
from ScreenRant - Feed https://ift.tt/3uZ35EI
0 Comments