top of page

Black Thorn, The Vigilante Spin-off That Never Was


ree
VIGILANTE and CHECKMATE artist Steve Erwin's 1988 Black Thorn sketch.

From July 1985 to February 1988 I wrote Vigilante (#19 - #50) for DC Comics. When that title ended with Adrian Chase/Vigilante's suicide death, I followed it up with Checkmate!, which carried over several of the previous series's supporting characters and ran for 33 issues, from April 1988 to January 1991. One of the transported characters was Black Thorn, Vigilante's female counterpart, co-created by me and Tod Smith and introduced in Vigilante #45 (September 1987). After Checkmate ran its course, I thought I'd try to go for three in a row and keep the thread going with an ongoing Black Thorn series.


ree
VIGILANTE #45 (September 1987), art by Tod Smith and Rick Burchett

It didn't happen. But if it had, it might have read something like this...


ree

ree

ree

ree

ree

ree

ree

ree

ree

ree

The Unpublished Comic Book Scripts of Paul Kupperberg
Buy Now

Son of the Unpublished Comic Book Scripts of Paul Kupperberg
Buy Now

2 Comments


Delmo Walters Jr.
Delmo Walters Jr.
Aug 04, 2023

What did you think of the Arrowverse version of Vigilante?

Like
Paul Kupperberg
Paul Kupperberg
Aug 05, 2023
Replying to

I never watched enough of the show to form an opinion.

Like

Sign Up For My Latest

Thanks for submitting!

Collabs

For PR and commercial enquiries please contact: 

info@mysite.com

You can also reach out directly to me

Thanks for submitting!

© 2023 by Max Kupperberg

bottom of page