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Today, we look at the strange team-up between Batman and the Vigilante, who is currently having a bit of a moment as a cast member on HBO Max’s hit TV series, Peacemaker.
This is “When We Meet,” a feature about spotlighting team-ups that I find peculiar, interesting or otherwise worth sharing with you all.
This must be one of my oddest features, as I started it in 2013, didn’t do a second one until 2018, did two a year until 2020 and none for almost two years. I guess it was due!
WHY DID BATMAN TEAM UP WITH A GUY LIKE VIGILNATE, WHOSE WHOLE DEAL IS KILLING PEOPLE WITH GUNS?
I sort of like the idea that unsuspecting people turn to this post thinking they’re going to get a simple discussion of a weird team-up between Batman and Vigilante and instead, get the latest installment in…the journey of Harry Stein!
As I noted when I discussed the introduction of the Post-Crisis version of Peacemaker (the version who ultimately was used by James Gunn in Suicide Squad and now the excellent Peacemaker HBO Max series) in the pages of Vigilante (a book about a judge, Adrian Chase, who is secretly the killer vigilante known as, well, you know, the Vigilante. Sort of like how X-Factor named the ship that they took from Apocalypse as “Ship”), the last year or so of that series really served as more of a set-up for writer Paul Kupperberg’s next DC series, the spy book known as Checkmate, than anything else and one of the major characters in that regard was Harry Stein.
Stein had been a New York police lieutenant who was in charge of an Anti-Vigilante task force and was also part of the team that arrested Adrian Chase for the suspected murder of a cop. During the trial, with Chase seemingly sunk, Stein finally determined that Chase WAS the Vigilante (although Chase had retired at the time, with his former bailiff taking over the role while Chase was on trial) and having seen the man work for so long, Stein decided that he was doing real good out there, so Stein perjured himself on the witness stand and got all of his evidence thrown out, leading to Chase being acquitted of all charges. Stein was fired, of course, but he was then recruited by the spymaster, Valentina Vostok (who was formerly a member of the Doom Patrol as Negative Woman), to become Vigilante’s handler as the Agency decided that it could occasionally use Vigilante’s skills as a government agent (by this time, Chase had returned to the role after his successor was killed trying to stop a terrorist hijacking of a plane that Chase was on as a passenger. Tragically, the other Vigilante was killed not by one of the terrorists, but by Peacemaker, who had also shown up to take down the terrorists).
Stein quickly proved himself an asset to the Agency, even when Peacemaker decided that Harry was secretly a Middle Eastern undercover agent and tried to kill him. Vigilante traveled down to Washington D.C. to help Stein defeat Peacemaker as Stein rose to becoming the #2 man at the Agency. After helping Stein break up a drug ring in D.C., Vigilante returned to New York City, where he was arrested again for a cop that he accidentally killed during his time as Vigilante. Meanwhile, Gotham City’s Harvey Bullock was sent down to D.C. for a conference on drugs and he met and befriended Harry (the two men were a lot of like. They never quite fit in with their respective police departments) and decided to work together on a drug case.
As part of the case, Stein got Vigilante released from prison to work for him and Harvey. They took him to Gotham City where they began their work on the drug ring there. One night, Vigilante was out on the rooftops when Batman showed up. You might imagine Batman’s reaction to being around a killer like Vigilante (from Vigilante #47 by Paul Kupperberg, Tod Smith and Rick Burchett)…
After a long fight (where Batman was clearly getting the best of him), Bullock luckily broke things up and asked Batman to trust him enough to let the case go forward and maybe even work with them and Batman agreed…for now…
This was in a weird period in the mid to late 1980s where Batman would often seem to almost be out of his element when he was working with government agencies, like they were operating on a whole other plane than him. It’s fascinating to see an era where Batman was actually occasionally shown to be out of his element and that was typically the case whenever the Dark Knight found himself working with the CIA or groups like that.
HOW DID THIS WEIRD TEAM-UP OF BATMAN AND VIGILANTE WORK OUT?
The villain in this story was Katia, a former KGB agent that was introduced in the Doug Moench run of Batman and here, she is selling out American secrets while pretending to be selling antiques with the mob. Batman and Vigilante attack Katia’s meeting with a mob boss and steal the tape that proves what she was doing…
Katia hunted the Vigilante down and even killed her mob associate when he learned that he was working with a Russian spy (he was none too pleased. The ol’ “I’m a criminal, but I’m still an American!” shtick that people liked to do all the time). She confronted Vigilante, but he got the drop on her…
She is then killed by the government agencies who showed up, but Vigilante was in the line of fire, as well!
That’s how Stein and Bullock got Batman to not try to arrest Chase, as Chase was presumed dead after being shot (of course he was not actually dead)…
Of course, things did not go well for the Vigilante after this, which I’ll address soon.
Okay, that’s it for this installment of this feature! I know you all have suggestions for future installments, so be sure to let me know by e-mailing me at brianc@cbr.com! Maybe the next installment will be this year instead of two years from now!
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