Warning: contains spoilers for Peacemaker: Disturbing the Peace #1!
DC's origin of the character's seemingly incongruous name.
Peacemaker first appeared in comics in 1966, with his own solo series appearing the following year. Christopher Smith was introduced as "...a man who loves peace so much that he is willing to fight for it!" While the Silver Age version of the character used a variety of non-lethal devices, the rebooted version's origin after Crisis on Infinite Earths took a darker tone; Christopher Smith believed the souls of the people he killed were trapped inside his helmet, and realized that he suffers intense trauma as a result of his painful upbringing...and the suicide of his entire family. Exposed to violence and death from a very early age, he eventually ed the military and became a supreme instrument of death.
In the new DC Comics Peacemaker black label book Peacemaker: Disturbing the Peace #1 revolves around Doctor Sedgewick's efforts to interview Smith and ask him some very pointed questions concerning his history. In particular, nearly every mission that Smith has undertaken resulted in friendly-fire incidents. Smith reveals he bears full responsibility for those incidents - the soldiers involved were either hideously corrupt, murderers, traffickers, morally-bankrupt criminals or all of the above. Moreover, the military allows Peacemaker to execute his fellow soldiers while on-mission; better for criminal soldiers to die on a mission than for the military to acknowledge their crimes at all.
Smith even killed his own foster parents after the criminal couple were caught in a shootout with police. When Sedgewick presses him, he answers "They couldn't find peace. I helped them find it." Suddenly, the reasoning behind Peacemaker's name becomes clear. For Christopher Smith, who has lived a life of pain, suffering and trauma, death would obviously be seen as a twisted sort of "peace."
Peacemaker's new adventures strike a tone that's a far cry from James Gunn's The Suicide Squad iteration of the character. Smith talks about violence as if killing people is an everyday occurrence, worthy of as much discussion as the weather. Peacemaker's life has hardly been peaceful, and his mental health suffers as a result, but despite his tragic life he's still ultimately a hero.
