happy birthday adrian chase. vigilante 1983 long post time. going to put most of this under a read more since it is gonna be long, and it is going to go into adrians spiral from the beginning of vig 83 to the end. note that all the panels cited are in order by issue, but not necessarily within the issue since some of these are pulled from notes id taken on discord instead of the issue itself
Basically right after becoming Vigilante, Adrian is trying to do his best to avoid actually thinking about his family whenever he can. When thinking about his history with this theme park, the only memory he really dwells on is one from his childhood. he doesnt think too hard about memories that were likely with his wife & kids, just the one that seems like it happened alone or long before he ever knew Doris. He resents the fact that his actions as vigilante are infecting his memories of his family.
This is the first time Adrian tries to quit being Vigilante, and it tells us a lot about how Adrian's mission started and the viewpoint he has when he first starts being Vigilante vs what we'll see later after more and more tragedy affects him. He immediately tries to push away the only people close to him because of his mistake, thinking he needs to be Vigilante to have them. Further, this single bit of mistaken judgement absolutely horrifies Adrian. He thinks he's gotten in too deep, and is realizing he can't act as judge, jury, and executioner. At this point, he doesn't feel he has the right to do so. He then calls becoming Vigilante a "Holy Vow" meaning he feels this is an implicit duty granted to him, which it is, and that means he needs to hold himself to a higher standard than ever before when making his decisions and taking action. This Adrian is a man who is still firmly rooted in the legal system and the moral systems of right and wrong. This Adrian is a man who can still see the path ahead of him, and sees it as well lit. This version of Adrian is doing this for the greater good, not for his own personal goals.
The Adrian we've come to know so far is a man of principles, who absolutely refuses to let the guilty go. And yet, because of his failure as Vigilante, he feels that he can't take on that role anymore. He feels he has no right to, and that that right must only go to a judge. So, it's almost as a punishment to himself that he takes the defense attorney job he's loathed the idea of for years. This is probably the first act of self destruction we see him engage in, even if it is just forcing himself to go against his morals.
But this Adrian can't stand to go against his moral code for very long. And seeing his options as either "becoming judge jury and executioner" or "helping the people who hurt people like him" he sees only one real option. This is also the beginning of a vicious cycle that proves Adrian cannot escape Vigilante, no matter what his reasons to leave are.
What Adrian says here says two things about his character. First, that even after his foley in issue two, he still sees Vigilante as a mission he must complete, no matter how much he hates it and what it's done to the man he once was. Second, that he already knows he's dying. He already knows that Vigilante will kill him, and that he has willingly entered his own death spiral. However, he has entered that death spiral with intent. And that intent is to take down as many criminals as he can with him.
At this point in time, Adrian believes what he is doing is for the greater good and the best for everyone. He also is very intentional with his use of lethal force, he doesn't enjoy killing nor does he rely on it. So far, he has only killed when he absolutely needed to. He believes that his actions are all necessary evils for the betterment of everyone.
This statement towards Adrian reflects on two things. The first being the fact that Adrian has always based his sense of morality on the legal system, he is not a religious man and he was entrenched in the legal system and the law for the entirety of his adult life and likely much of his childhood given his father's career. And because of his reliance on the legal system, he has also become extremely jaded towards it. He has spent his whole adult life seeing it be manipulated. Despite the court being so important to him, he no longer trusts it. He sees himself as the sole true arbiter of the law and the only person who can get it "right." And that is why he does what he does.
At only issue three, Adrian already feels that there is something inherently wrong with him in a way that is going to come back later.
Adrian doesn't end up killing Stryker, something he wouldn't have even thought twice about later on in the series. At this point in the series, most of his cases are still revenge. He's taking specific cases that he's seen where things went against his view of the law and doing what he believes he has to do to rectify them. But he still struggles to kill, he can't fully see himself as above the law. He doesn't want to become just another criminal. He doesn't want that for himself, or for JJ.
This early in the series, Adrian still wants to live. As we see in Issue 3, we know he sees his death as Vigilante as inevitable, but he is actively trying to prevent it. He's wary of his limits and his opponents, trying to keep to what he knows won't kill him.
Adrian at this point is trying to move on, move on from his wife's death especially, and he sees Marcia as a potential way to move on. He still believes it possible for him to move on and live a normal life and not be held back by his grief and by Vigilante.
And this early on, it seems he still is capable of moving on. Of becoming more than a shell of grief molded into a force for justice and vengeance. And for a minute it seems wholy possible that he will.
Further, he is still very intent on not killing. It is not something he is seeking out opportunity to do.
This is the first time we see one of Adrian's many mirrors. Electrocutioner and Vigilante have the same goals, they're only divided by their methodology. At this point, Adrian rejects Electrocutioner's methods. But this will not last forever. But for now, he sees himself as better than Electrocutioner. And because of that, he sees him as another criminal to be taken down.
And this is where we see the very first domino fall. At this point, Adrian has people around him. He has friends, he has JJ and Terry and Alan and Marcia. But here he loses again, for the first time since he lost his family. The family he's built since is falling apart. And this time, it is directly because of the Vigilante. He has lost because of his actions, all over again, but instead of it being because of his ambition, it is because of who he has become.
He shuts down. He doesn't speak to JJ's family, he doesn't talk to Terry. Not until he decides how he's going to take action. And he has decided that he is going to take revenge, that he is going to make sure that the people who hurt the people important to him suffer.
And he pushes Terry away. He pushes her away because he can't risk having anyone stop him from doing what he feels he needs to. And he pushes her away because he can't risk her getting hurt. He's pushed away who Adrian Chase is, refusing to even call Terry by the name we've gotten used to. He just calls her Theresa. And that is the second domino. He has isolated himself. Everyone who understood, who actually knew what he was doing, is gone. He now has no one.
With JJ dead, Adrian has returned to the active grief-death spiral. He is actively putting himself in danger knowing what he's doing is incredibly reckless and potentially deadly for both himself and others because he doesn't care. JJ is dead and so his own safety doesn't matter anymore. JJ is dead so it doesn't matter if other people die.
A long time ago? The time he's referencing, when he was so sure, was only a few issues ago. He's already seeing the time when he had things kind of in order and when he had people like JJ as a long time ago, he's already seperating himself from the Adrian Chase of days before.
Though it may seem so, Adrian not killing the Controller is not an act of mercy. It would have been mercy to kill him. But instead, he leaves the controller to suffer. Even if he lives, he will know tremendous pain. If he dies, it is slow and miserable. This is what Adrian wants. He wants the man who killed JJ to suffer. But all the same, at this point, he couldn't bring himself to kill him outright.
Even though just a few issues earlier, we see JJ express that he's grateful Adrian didn't kill Stryker, Adrian still feels he owed JJ killing the controller, and that he failed him. Adrian couldn't kill the controller, he's still too steady in his morals for that, but he also thinks that he should have. He thinks that is what JJ would have wanted, but it outright isn't.
andddd that's where I hit the image limit. So i will continue this in the reblogs because I only made it a fifth of the way through this post. dont know when exactly the continuation will be done but this whole longpost will be done before adrians birthday is over!!!
