Maxwell Lord - Criticism

Criticism

How Lord recovered his original human body and received a different variation of his telepathic powers has not been revealed, and fans have criticized this reboot of the character, especially after interviews where prominent DC comics administrators revealed they knew about the continuity problems but decided to ignore them (see next paragraph). In-story, it is possible to explain the various continuity errors as one of the side-effects of Superboy Prime "punching" the universe and changing history (see Continuity changes during Infinite Crisis for more details). This may also explain his character's change from hero to villain, or he might have been influenced by Alexander Luthor and/or the Psycho-Pirate. While it was probably the writer's intent to suggest that Lord's previous heroic behavior was simply a part he played to ingratiate himself with the heroes before his intended plan of betrayal, this is contradicted by his various thought-bubbles over the years.

At the "Crisis Counseling" panel at Wizard World Chicago, Dan DiDio explained DC's reasoning in using Lord's character in Infinite Crisis. After going through several possible characters who could be the "new leader for the offshoot of Checkmate", Maxwell Lord was suggested. Many of the editors thought that the idea made sense, as Lord had been shown to have a mean streak and to have killed previously. The idea was dropped due to the continuity errors, such as him being a cyborg, but they went back to it later after deciding none of the other possible characters were suitable. "We thought about that aspect of the story some more," DiDio explained. "And then asked, 'Did anyone read it?' No. 'Did anyone like the idea?' No. So we moved ahead with Max as being a human, and having been a human, and not letting that small part of the past stand in the way of this story. We wanted what was best for Countdown, and for us, that meant that Max had to be a human."

A further retcon placed the cyberization of Maxwell Lord in a brief period, after which he used his connections with Cadmus Labs, Checkmate and Project M to reverse the changes made to him by the Kilg%re and get back into a healthy human body. The narrative captions that explain this also imply that, despite previous suggestions to the contrary, his reformation during JLI was genuine, and only following his cyberization and restoration (and presumably Sue Dibny's death) did he acquire the hatred of metahumans that defined his role in Infinite Crisis. A further retcon plays on this sentiment, introducing Lord as distrusting of every authoritative figure and pressured by his mother at first and by the dramatic event of the Death of Superman later, to shift his mistrust and hatred on the metahuman community, guilty of being distant and uncaring about human suffering.

This has been revealed to be the case even in the current DC Universe (Booster Gold's events were set in a timeline diverging from the Countdown to Infinite Crisis events to present). However, the cyborg body owned by Maxwell Lord is no longer the one owned by the mechanical clone of Lord Havok, but a New Genesis-built automaton. Discarded after the restoration of his biological form, the body was abandoned in a basement at the Castle, Checkmate's current headquarters, and retooled to host the current iteration of the G.I. Robot.