Issue #39 ("Mommy Said Never Talk to Strangers...!"): Ricky Rizolli, seeking to be inducted into the traffickers' organization, kidnaps several young girls from the street to sell them to white slavers from the Middle East. Having already subjected four girls to this horrific fate, Ricky then kidnaps Jenny Chiminski, raping her himself while he has her in captivity. When this angers the slavers, Ricky agrees to kidnap another, leading to a chase with Vigilante where he slashes the throat of Jenny's father while chasing his sixth victim.
Issue #40 ("God Save The Children!"): David R. Vaughn is the leader of the trafficking organization in America. Ordering the kidnapping of the young girls to traffick them to the Middle East, Vaughn also throws parties where the young girls participate in Snuff Films without telling any of the participants. When Vigilante attacks his operation, Vaughn uses one of the young girls as a Human Shield, taking sadistic pleasure in the knowledge that all of the girls he's already sent away are condemned to a hellish life that will eventually break them.
Vol. 2: Edward Aaron Culkins is a sadistic mass murderer with a specific fondness for targeting children. In the past, Culkins murdered six children in a summer camp with an ax, including splitting one child's head in half, before hunting down the seventh, intending to kill him as well; the survivor was so traumatized that they developed a Split Personality. Surviving prison by manipulating Karl "Killer" Kort into killing other inmates if they attacked him, Culkins is released on parole when he gives information on several other children he murdered, provoking a fight with Vigilante that leads to a car accident and attempting to kill his Love Interest when he discovers that Vigilante is the survivor of his previous attack.
Vol. 3: The Crossdress Killer is a manipulative murderer who gains their name from their MO: crossdressing the corpses of their victims. Gaining six victims before arriving in New York, one of which was a twelve-year-old boy, the killer quickly kills three more people, gaining a fourth victim after becoming interested in Vigilante; said victim is mutilated before being hung from a tree. When said interest in Vigilante leads to them almost disrupting their plans, they kidnap J.J. Davis and trick the FBI into arresting him, intending to dress their next victim as Vigilante.
Do Not Do This Cool Thing: While the first volume does a great job demonstrating the many reasons why Adrian Chase is not someone to be emulated, the other titles instead go the other direction and spend so much time showing their Vigilantes as unstoppable badasses that they come off looking awesome instead of detestable. The result is multiple versions of the same character all being simultaneously vilified and glorified, creating a very awkward and contradictory message that helped ensure that no Vigilante after Adrian would have the same effect as he did.
First Installment Wins: It's rather telling that DC has tried multiple times to copy Adrian Chase's template when making new bearers of the Vigilante name, yet none have stuck around or gained an audience compared to Greg Saunders. The last version to have copied Chase's style (Donald Fairchild) had his series cancelled just after three issues. Meanwhile, Greg Saunders hasn't had any Legacy Characters compared to Adrian, note As stated earlier, there have been multiple Legacy Characters imitating his style, which were about five in total but Saunders has consistently remained as a part of the DC universe for decades. It certainly helps that Greg's animated debut in Justice League Unlimited has made him an Ensemble Dark Horse who's loved for his quirks and the Odd Friendship between him and Shining Knight. The surge in his popularity allowed Greg to return to television in Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
Adrian officially crosses the line when he kills a cop in issue #37. Before then, while he would attack police officers if they attacked first, he would at least not do so with lethal measures, but the moment he kills a police officer, it becomes clear that he has officially lost any sense of heroism he once had.
The second Vigilante, Alan Welles, crosses the line when he murders his target's girlfriend just because she happened to be there. He could've easily left her alive, yet he murders her too in cold blood just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, which cements just how insane he is.
