I wanted to deconstruct the clichés of superhero comics and their fight scenes in a long form narrative... To that end, I put together the idea of a law abiding district attorney named Adrian Chase, who was really good at his job, but kept having his court victories overturned on minor technicalities due to a corrupt legal system.

In an origin story that he related to his associates Jonathan "J.J." Davis and Theresa "Terry" Gomez, Chase claimed that Lynn drove him West in a van and forced him to walk for four days through the desert.

In a cavern underneath the desert sands, he was greeted by three spirits — "victims of evil who were not content to gracefully die" — named Bloody Knee, Chaka, and Chastity.

"[7] Chase was initially shown as taking pains to make sure he did not kill his enemies (unlike Marvel's the Punisher) and would regularly use non-lethal weapons to disable his opponents.

Seeking revenge on Peacemaker, the out-of-shape Adrian gets beaten in a fight and unmasked on live TV, thereby ending Chase's secret identity and forcing him even further into the Vigilante role.

He also becomes increasingly mentally unstable — alternating between bouts of enraged violence, paranoia and terrible remorse for his actions, even resorting to murdering innocent police officers who get in his way.

When the crisis concluded with Jordan assuming the Spectre mantle, Jim Corrigan appeared briefly on Earth, stating that the efforts of Chase and other heroes in Purgatory had earned an appeal in the shining city.

Not only had readers seen endless iterations of the theme (such as the Black Hood, the Blue Beetle and the Woman in Red) — it had also become recognized, even within that simplistic, action-oriented genre, that greater injustice results when such restraints are removed.

[14]Markstein continued: Writer... Wolfman... and artist... Pérez... were fully aware of the ramifications when they introduced the character.... That's why Vigilante was the first such character in which the true consequences of such behavior were explored.... Vigilante meted out a great deal of justice — but also, through his ruthless disregard for the legal safeguards that protect us all, innocent and guilty, from simply being railroaded into prison whenever authorities suspect we may have committed a crime — a great deal of the opposite.