Who is Maxwell Lord? What does he do? Why was Wonder Woman pissed enough at him to break his neck? What’s his story?
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So Maxwell Lord started out working with the Justice League International, giving them funding and general business ideas. He was kind of a smarmy businessman, but not actually evil. He was mostly a comedic character who was occasionally given a serious beat or two. Then, in the lead up to Infinite Crisis, it’s revealed that Lord works as the Black King of Check Mate, and has been manipulating the superhero community the entire time. When Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle, stumbles upon this information, Lord shoots and kills him. He then uses his mind manipulation abilities to take over Superman. Wonder Woman, realizing there’s no other way to stop Superman from basically killing anyone Lord wants dead, kills Max.
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Max was also far more interesting before he was evil (and would have to be lying in his thought bubbles and able to fool a detailed mental probe by the Martian Manhunter in order to have actually been evil all along like Countdown to Infinite Crisis suggests), and if they aren’t going to fix that stupidity, I really wish they would just leave the poor guy alone.
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Well. Guess that’s covered? lol. I was gonna drop some science but it’s been dropped.
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Fun Fact! Maxwell Lord was going to be the villian of George Miller’s cancelled film, Justice League: Mortal, and would have been played by Jay Baruchel.
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I would highly suggest getting the reading order & reading The Omac storyline on here. A lot of what’s been mentioned ties into that, but it stretches thru & keeps going. The WW neck snap etc. all involved in the Omac stuff. It’s truly awesome. Even involves Bruce Wayne murderer & fugitive & Sasha Bordeaux big time. Get to see her whole story from bodyguard to an Omac.
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I hate that Max has become cemented as a bad guy in other media. I was hoping we’d have the real guy back someday.
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Maxwell lord was the manager and financial backer of the Justice League who had a troubling beginning before he became conventionally good and even heroic member of the team. During his best years, he was the normal guy among a group of dysfunctional yet extraordinary people.
He was characterized as the duplicitous businessman who grew to care for the Justice League that he even gained the respect from heroes like Martian Manhunter.
He got recton to be a villain outright in Infinite crisis and say that he intentionally made a weak Justice League on purpose.
It’s at best a contradiction but at worst it’s character assassin. What’s worse is that their really isn’t a grey to his morality anymore, Maxwell lord is just a straight up evil guy whose so unremarkable, he became a parody of better villains like Lex Luthor.
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I agree with the idea that Max shouldn’t have been made a villain again (he’d been on previously…but he got better)
And the idea that he’d purposefully kept the JLI ineffectual was one Geoff Johns retcon I could never agree with (Well, that and making Luthor the human DNA of Superboy, but that’s an entirely different rant)
Max was an interesting character until he suddenly wasn’t.
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I was never a fan of Max Lord, but I’ve also never read a comic with him in it. Now I feel like I should lol
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That was my biggest problem with Max becoming a villain. I didn’t so much mind the idea of him going corrupt or the like. But their claim that he was sabotaging the JLI the entire time added an insidious undertone to the past stories that clearly was not intended when the stories were originally published.
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Another issue with the retcon is that… if he was trying to keep the JLI ineffectual, he did a rather poor job of it. It was a comedic series (originally—Max continued to be involved in later, more serious runs), so they and the threats they faced were frequently kind of silly, but they also dealt with major heavy-hitters like Despero with some regularity.
The 2000s in general and Johns in particular had this weird trend towards trying to erase or belittle comedic books and characters. The JLI caught the worst of it (RIP Ted Kord and Sue Dibny, too), but Johns’ Teen Titans also liked to write off the original Young Justice title and overhaul its characters’ personalities and backstories (after lifting half the lineup). Bart had way more and better development in the Impulse title than he ever did afterwards, and yet 2000s books act like he didn’t change at all until he became Kid Flash.
Or Brad Meltzer apparently finding Wolfman-era New Teen Titans and Ostrander/Yale-era Suicide Squad’s comedic handling of Doctor Light so offensive that he, uh… well, did Identity Crisis.
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DC has been allergic to comedic characters for so long it’s really annoying, and they keep trying to make the popular comedic characters less comedic. Like they found a spot in the new 52 for several war comics no one wanted but they couldn’t fit a single comedy book in until 2013? They’ve worked hard to murder every member of the JLI they can unless they can completely strip them of the connection. Even when they can’t make you forget about the JLI they try to ensure you take the characters as seriously as possible to avoid the connection (and don’t get me started on their long history of trying to make us take Captain Marvel as seriously as possible). At this point the only comedic characters left are Plastic Man and Blue & Gold.
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