Bring Me The Head of Maxwell Lord

Okay, so I'm going to engage in some crazy speculation here. I'm undoubtedly wrong, but I'm going to lay it out just in case I'm right so I can point to this post and say: "I was right!" Because I'm petty that way.

My train of thought began when I read an interview with Kurt Busiek on the upcoming Trinity. There, Mr. Busiek talks about the villains that he intends to put up against Wonder Woman, Superman, and Batman:

"We wanted to build a counter-trinity on grounds other than "the most famous enemies," and use some characters that we could do striking and different things with. So our villains come from the world of myth, the world of SF adventure and the world of crime, but they're not the guys the heroes would immediately see coming, and what they appear to be up to isn't necessarily how things will turn out."

This immediately intrigued me, as Kurt Busiek is one of those writers who likes to "adopt" minor, third-string characters that have been in limbo for a while and then reimagine them. This annoys some people, but I love it when he does that. So I figured that that's what he'd do here: take some old villains of the Big Three that haven't been used in a while and reinvigorate them.

Without mentioning any specifics, he goes on to say that Luthor and the Joker will be featured. Then he says what -- to me -- is the money quote:

"I will say that the skull of Maxwell Lord plays a part..."

That certainly threw me for a loop. The skull of Maxwell Lord? How exactly could Max Lord's cranium play into things?

Then I got to thinking... What did happen to Max Lord's body after Wonder Woman killed him? For the life of me, I couldn't remember. And nobody I asked seemed to know either. So where is Max Lord's skull?

From there, my mind turned to Mr. Busiek's Superman run. I began to think about some of the other third-stringers that Mr. Busiek has adopted and modified. The one that immediately popped into my head was the Atomic Skull.

Now, I'm sure you all see where I'm going with this... But bear with me. Busiek first mentions this new Atomic Skull in his "Camelot Falls" story arc. In the dystopian future it's mentioned that various villains have seized control of huge chunks of the Earth's territory. And one of them was the Atomic Skull.

The original Atomic Skulls (there have been Pre- and Post-Crisis versions) aren't the sort that would be capable of that. Neither have been particularly impressive as villains. So it was safe to assume at the time that this was a new Atomic Skull.

This was borne out by a later Busiek penned comic, Action #852. Here, we get our first glimpse of the new Atomic Skull when an escaped Kryptonite Man contacts a group of major figures in the criminal world:

In the company of movers and shakers like Tobias Whale and the Calculator (as well as rarely used Busiek adoptee Doctor Cyber) we see the new Atomic Skull. His look bears little resemblance to the old ones, and to be in such storied company this Atomic Skull has to be much more than simply a thug with delusions of grandeur.

And the Kryptonite Man treats him as such. This new Atomic Skull is undoubtedly someone of stature and prestige in the criminal underworld. He clearly has resources as well, as the Kryptonite Man has gone to him and the others for financial backing.

So who the hell is this new Atomic Skull? He comes out of nowhere and appears right off the bat to be a major player in supervillainy. Still, when I originally read that comic I didn't give it much thought. The Atomic Skull vanished from my mind. Until I read that Trinity interview.

You see, when Kurt Busiek "adopts" characters they tend to recur in his comic books. Sometimes years later. So when I heard that Mr. Busiek was going to be using lesser villains in his "counter-trinity" the image of the Atomic Skull briefly flitted through my mind. And when I saw "the skull of Maxwell Lord" my eyes bugged out of my head.

Is it possible that the Atomic Skull will be one of the villains that opposes the Big Three in Trinity? And is it also possible that the Atomic Skull is none other than the villainous Maxwell Lord, returned from the grave?

In comics, anything is possible...