#Things You Didn’t Know About DC’s Maxwell Lord

Even after Max Lord was mind-controlled, possessed, and downloaded into a robot copy of a supervillain, the “Justice Riders” one-shot of 1997, published under DC Comics’ “Elseworlds” imprint (think Marvel’s “What If…?”), was an anomaly for portraying him as unambiguously evil.

In this Wild West steampunk reimagining, Sheriff Diana Prince (Wonder Woman) leads a superpowered posse against railroad baron Maxwell Lord, who operates a steam locomotive robot suit as “Lord Havoc.” And yet, fans were still shocked when Max stood revealed as “The Black King” of Checkmate in “Countdown to Infinite Crisis” in May of 2005.

Max’s unplanned heel turn wasn’t particularly well-executed on the back end, in terms of the consistency of its or Max’s character development. Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire’s sequel to their “Formerly Known as the Justice League” miniseries, which ran for six issues from September of 2003 through February of 2004, was finally published as “I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League” in “JLA Classified” #4-9, which ran from April through August of 2005. So, to review, the same spring and summer months that saw Max and Ted trading sitcom quips and “BWA-HA-HA” laughs as “Super Buddies” also showed Max executing Ted in cold blood. 

Incidentally, Max flummoxed Diana in another alternate reality, as the modern human guise for Ares, the Olympian god of war, in the graphic novel “Wonder Woman: Earth One” #3, in May of 2021.