Peacemaker's New Comic Origin is Even More Ridiculous Than The TV Show
Warning! The preview pages for Peacemaker: Disturbing the Peace #1 contain graphic imagery and visuals of suicide.
While fans of the Peacemaker television series are reeling from discovering the character's tragic origins, a new comic is revealing even more outlandish and violent beginnings for Christopher Smith in DC Comics. Sworn to protect peace at any cost, the ultraviolent superhero has recently found himself in the spotlight after starring in James Gunn's The Suicide Squad as well as receiving his own spin-off show. Capitalizing on the attention, DC has prepared a new series that looks back at how Smith got started on his brutal mission to achieve peace.
Created by Joe Gill and Pat Boyette, Peacemaker was first introduced in Charlton Comics' Fightin' 5 #40. After being bought out by DC, the character was introduced to a larger superhero world in his own self-titled miniseries by Paul Kupperberg, Tod Smith, and Pablo Marcos. Peacemaker remained a relatively obscure character until he was added to the cast of The Suicide Squad, where he was portrayed by John Cena. With his recent spin-off show making waves among fans, a new comic is hitting the shelves that will take readers into Christopher Smith's past to showcase his unsettling early days.
Peacemaker: Disturbing the Peace #1 by Garth Ennis, Garry Brown, Lee Loughridge and Rob Steen wastes no time in getting right into the violence expected with such a character. Christopher Smith meets with a psychiatrist to determine if he is mentally fit to join a new special forces unit. Smith details the day that changed his life forever; the day he came home from school only to find his mother and stepfather having committed suicide after murdering his siblings. The doctor can only recoil in horror as Peacemaker continues with his origin, detailing an event where he is inadvertently kidnapped by a pair of bank robbers who stole his foster father's car after shooting him.
This disturbing beginning is a far cry from the recent developments made in HBOMax's Peacemaker program, where Smith was revealed to have been trained to kill from childhood by his father, the white supremacist supervillain known as White Dragon. While nonetheless unsettling, this new origin seems to be aiming for the same result, asking the reader what would cause someone to develop the ideology of wanting to protect peace. Such a traumatic event may be recalled with little to no emotion by the adult Peacemaker, but it's clear such unfortunate circumstances robbed the young Christopher of a peaceful childhood. From the death of his siblings to the shooting of his foster parent, Smith was forced to come face to face with the worst sides of humanity. It stands to reason that Peacemaker is determined to achieve peace by any means necessary as a way of compensating for his tragic past.
Fans can read all about Christopher Smith's bloody genesis in Peacemaker: Disturbing the Peace #1 on January 25th.