You know whom I miss?
The Vigilante--"
two-fisted cowboy on a motorcycle!"
It always makes me sad to think that modern comics has no place for
this guy. Well, at least modern
DC comics!
I mean, holy moly, just
look at that!
Greg Sanders was a country singer, son of a murdered Wyoming sheriff who took on the costumed identity to avenge his father.
He debuted in
Action Comics back in
1941, for heaven's sakes, which is a pretty fine pedigree, acting as a back-up to
Superman stories. His strip ran there for 13 years!!
He was also a founding member of
The Seven Soldiers Of Victory, a.k.a.
The Law's Legionnaires, essentially DC's second banana
JSA.
And come the
Silver and
Bronze Age...
...he's hanging around with the
actual Justice League!!
Now, it turns out that there were
Earth-2 AND Earth-1 versions of
Vigilante, a la
Green Arrow, so yeah, there can be confusion. Perhaps
that's why DC changed his name from Greg Sanders to Greg
Saunders in the
1990s?
Anyway, it can hardly be more confusing than dealing with the history of the
modern Vigilante.
Did you know that eight--yes,
EIGHT--different people have held the modern Vigilante identity? [For completists,
Adrian Chase, Alan Welles, Dave Winston, Pat Trayce, Adeline Kane, Justin Powell, Dorian Chase, and Donald Fairchild...so far]. I mean, please don't try and tell me today's audiences who be confused by the fact that there used to be two different versions of Sander/Saunders, when for the past 35 years you've passed the modern Vigilante's identity like a bad STD!
Now, maybe the modern guy has made the name too
freighted with negative connotations to be a viable identity for our ersatz Western hero. After all, the term "
vigilante" often has negative implications, and is usually used to call into question the very
raison d'etre of costumed heroes. So, if you're really gun shy about that, DC, just give him a
new name.
But if ou think a two-fisted cowboy on a motorcycle can't cut it in a modern super-hero world, allow me to point out the time that
HE SAVED SUPERMAN FROM A WEREWOLF:
THAT REALLY HAPPENED!!
And, if you need someone to jump start your faltering
DCEU movie-verse, well, someone has already been there:
Looks good to me!!
I mean, geez,
look at the guy!! How could you not want to read comics with him starring?
And did I mention--
he has a motorcycle?!?
DC Rebirth was
supposed to be about legacy, until
Geoff Johns decided that no one got to use any of the actual legacy characters until he was done crapping all over them by mixing them in with deconstructionist post-modern anti-superhero comics just to piss off
Alan Moore. Two years later and
still no JSA, still no
Legion Of Super-Heroes...but at least you turned
Jor-El into a murderous villain, and
Supergirl's father into a murderous villain, and...
hey, Rebirth was all a lie!!!!!!!
Sorry, got distracted there. Anyway, if DC is all about legacy, well,
here's a legacy character that hasn't been used since
2008. Are you listening, DC?
