Peacemaker Tries Hard!

It’s not easy being Christopher “Peacemaker” Smith these days.  Sure, he may have earned his release from the Suicide Squad, but his former comrades think he’s a degenerate weirdo and don’t want to hang out with him.  He doesn’t have any friends, and the only normal interactions he has with the public involve his surprisingly upbeat parole officer.  So it’s something of a relief when Amanda Waller calls him up one evening to have him go bust up a terrorist cell operating in his city.  That’s no problem for him, but the real win for Peacemaker is the adorably dapper dog he finds while doing it that he names Bruce Wayne.  He thinks he’s finally found a friend, so it’d sure be a shame if a human brain in a jar and a talking French ape decided to kidnap him and force the title character to do their bidding.

More than anything, “Peacemaker Tries Hard!” is one big excuse for writer Kyle Starks to unleash his wonderfully weird comic sensibilities onto the DCU.  Which he does in great fashion as Peacemaker’s unparalleled arrogance and situation-specific cluelessness is a lot of fun to read.  Starks also delves deep into the mustier corners of the DCU here to drag up some oddballs that are both winning and amusingly wacko.  Did you forget that there’s a supervillain who gets his powers from snorting cocaine?  The writer has not and there are even more characters like that for you to encounter in this story.

Steve Pugh illustrates this miniseries and he’s very much in sync with Starks’ sensibilities.  A lot of what he’s called on to do here is have Peacemaker look like a big dumb idiot (in a fun way) while he says whatever comes to his mind, like honey being bee poop, and sell it on the page.  Pugh does this incredibly well while also getting to draw a fair amount of superhero action along the way and even some *gasp* actual drama!  In short, the artist is called on to do a lot here and he delivers on pretty much every page.

The only real catch here (assuming that the creative team of Starks and Pugh isn’t enough to get you to pick this up in hardcover) isn’t really the miniseries’ fault.  No, it’d be the live-action “Peacemaker” series that came out at the start of 2022.  It’s also a series about Peacemaker trying to be a better person and one that’s arguably more successful in portraying the character’s personal growth and with surprising the audience with its plot twists.  I’m not saying that there can’t be room for two series about Christopher Smith’s self-actualization, but I couldn’t quite shake the nagging feeling that I would’ve enjoyed this more if I hadn’t seen the TV series.