Peacemaker: Disturbing the Peace #1

History

The one-shot was timed to coincide with DC's broader January 2022 promotional push around the HBO Max Peacemaker series, which included a coordinated wave of Peacemaker-themed variant covers across the publisher's monthly line. Garth Ennis and artist Garry Brown were paired for the project, with Ennis treating Christopher Smith in much the same unflinching manner he had previously applied to Frank Castle in his celebrated Punisher MAX run — earnest war-comic gravity rather than satirical deflation. The issue was lettered by Rob Steen and colored by Lee Loughridge, and it shipped with multiple variant covers, including a main cover by Juan Ferreyra, a Simon Bisley variant, and additional covers by Garry Brown, Ryan Brown, and Amanda Conner. It was published under the DC Black Label imprint, DC's mature-readers line, which gave Ennis the creative latitude to explore Smith's darkest backstory without the constraints of in-continuity DC publishing.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published January 25, 2022 by DC Comics under the DC Black Label mature-readers imprint; cover-dated March 2022.
• Written by Garth Ennis (co-creator of The Boys and celebrated for his Punisher MAX run), with interior art by Garry Brown, colors by Lee Loughridge, and letters by Rob Steen.
• Structured as a standalone 40-page prestige-format one-shot — not an ongoing series or a limited series — making it a single-issue narrative complete in itself.
• Presents a new origin for Christopher Smith (Peacemaker): a psychiatrist named Dr. Sedgewick evaluates him in a military cemetery, and through their conversation Smith's childhood (including the death of his parents) and military history are revealed in flashback.
• Main cover by Juan Ferreyra; variant covers by Simon Bisley, Garry Brown, Ryan Brown, and Amanda Conner — the Bisley variant in particular drew collector attention given his association with iconic DC prestige-format work.
• Intentionally diverges in tone from the concurrently airing HBO Max Peacemaker series (premiered January 13, 2022): where the Gunn/Cena show is darkly comedic, Ennis's version is a grim, serious war-comic character study.
• Marked the first time Peacemaker headlined a DC Black Label one-shot, establishing the imprint as a subsequent home for the character — the Black Label line later published the six-issue Peacemaker Tries Hard! series.
• The character's origin as depicted by Ennis differs from the TV continuity: rather than being raised by a racist supervillain father (as in the Gunn series), Ennis's Smith is the sole survivor of a parental murder-suicide, subsequently raised by criminal foster parents — a version that alludes stylistically to the film Natural Born Killers.

Full credits

Variants (3)