The Official Checkmate thread

I stopped reading after #25. I saw Greg Rucka was leaving and Bruce Jones was replacing him and I figured, "What's the point?"
 
Yeah, Checkmate doesn't exsist for me anymore.
 
It isn't great or anything, but I'm not sure it's as antithetical to Rucka's run as people are saying. Rucka's Checkmate was not a band of happy-go-lucky hero types. The ouster of Alan Scott was Rucka making that perfectly clear. They tended toward the side of the angels, but they were not above some dirty deeds. Yes, the series ended with Checkmate sparing the Kobra babies, but Checkmate was also very close to killing the Kobra babies, and the people we've seen approving of the Chimera monstrosity are not the ones we saw ordering that the Kobra babies be spared.

Rucka's Checkmate was not a monolith, and was far from perfect, in terms of ethics and morality. Jones' plot is uninspired, and his dialogue is hackneyed, but he hasn't missed the mark on these characters as much as some of you are saying he has.
 
You should reread that. Alan Scott was ousted by Waller in cahoots with outside US pressure working to wrest more control for the Americans in this UN organization. He was not dismissed by anyone within Checkmate itself, and everyone but Waller in fact worked very well and closely with Mr. Terrific who Alan himself chose as his replacement.

Exactly what ethics and morality do you think that Checkmate hasn't been upholding, before Jones came aboard? Nothing they have done even comes close to nonconsensual biological rape on their own soldiers. To quote Waller herself: "Max. Lord." That is the word-for-word, pitch-perfect, exact sort of callous experimentation that Rucka's Checkmate was specifically designed to prohibit.

Not to mention, even if one Royal decided that it was okay -- which is unlikely -- it should have come forth before the other Royals to authorize as well. Checks and balances: the entire soul of Rucka's Checkmate. Not only was this sort of decision not made in consensus between the Royals, apparently it went ahead before even one Royal had authorized it!

Ridiculous.
 
Well, I can't comment since I'm not reading Checkmate anymore, but BW makes it sound pretty bad. I don't recall Rucka's Checkmate ever being outright villainous in any way, though. They were more lax with casualties under Terrific than they were under Alan but the core of their moral righteousness was pretty closely maintained.

No, they weren't perfect, and yes, they did discuss the possibility of killing the Kobra babies, but Rucka knew what he was doing when he placed someone like Mr. Terrific in the Royals' ranks--the reader could rest easy knowing that even if they discussed it to kingdom come, Terrific is not the kind of man who would ever allow a decision like that to stand. There was just enough doubt about that to create good drama, but there was still an underlying sense that Rucka understood the rules and wouldn't really go through with it. Rucka's Checkmate wouldn't stand for that sort of thing; if they did, they would no longer exist because the real heroes, like the very same Superman they deputized, would've torn them apart brick by brick eventually. That's exactly the sort of thing Max stood for and Waller was trying to push Checkmate back to, and it's exactly the sort of thing that pulled the other Royals together and made them oust Waller.
 
OK, BW and Corp, I concede. This is pretty bad mischaracterization.
 

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