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  1. #16
    Astonishing Member phantom1592's Avatar
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    The costume.

    Something about that feathered helmet the open chest and the wings just looks so COOL! I think once they start delving too much into the reincarnation and the ultra violence, upping his strength levels and above all 'modernizing' the costume.... I like him less and less. But old school JSA/Satellite era Hawkman… Carter OR Katar, he was always a favorite mid/low tier hero of mine.

    Last edited by phantom1592; 06-13-2018 at 09:34 PM.

  2. #17
    Astonishing Member BatmanJones's Avatar
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    When Kubert drew him he probably had the best look of any superhero around. Those pages made him a real bad ass. And like Dr. Fate his costume (mostly helmet) just makes him a bad ass.

    I also like him just because he has such deep roots in a mythology I love (two actually: JSA and JLA). And as a kid I freaking loved the GA/Hawkman conflict in JLA. I always preferred Katar and Shayera to Carter/Shiera though I prefer Carter to the mashup version, which is only needlessly confusing. It's like trying to mash up the Ray Palmer and Al Pratt Atoms. It can't be done without a lot of uncomfortable shoehorning. It's also like that in that, why would you want to?

    A comic book is only as good as its writer and artist though and while Hitch is always a pleasure Vendetti wasn't the guy to turn a new generation onto a hero with a checkered continuity/popularity. I didn't think anything could make me drop a title about the first 4 earth GL's but Vendetti's run put me to sleep. And his Hawkman #1 didn't much change my opinion. I should have known better than to look forward to this as much as I did.

  3. #18
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    Ordinarily, the first stories of a super-hero aren't the best, but in my mind when it comes to Katar Hol and Shayera Thal, the original Gardner Fox/Joe Kubert stories from THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD 34 - 36 & 42 - 44 have never been topped.

  4. #19
    Ultimate Member Lee Stone's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DragonsChi View Post
    Good write up!

    Like Moon Knight....hmmm....

    Does he too have a split personality at times?
    The 'Fist of Khonshu' era was before writers turned Moon Knight into a basket case. He had aliases he'd use to get information, much like Batman's Marches Malone identity, but they were just disguises.

    What are some of your favorite Hawkman stories?
    I was one of the few people that actually liked the 1986 Hawkman series. Especially the first several issues by Isabella.

    And I liked Rann/Thanagar War. The first one. I never got around to reading Holy War or the Special.

    I also liked the Palmiotti/Gray run that occurred around the same time.
    And the Ostrander issues of the 1993 series.
    And the Messner-Loebs issues around the time of Zero Hour, particularly #0.

    And the GA Hawkman story in All-Star Comics #3.
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  5. #20
    Father Son Kamehameha < Kuwagaton's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by protege View Post
    Where were all these from?
    Convergence Hawkman #2, Hawkworld (the mini series), and Action Comics #600. Oddly, all of those being outside of his regular comics from the 60s and 80s, which were also pretty cool for their respective times.

    One of the biggest draws for me was despite other legends like Moldoff and Murphy Anderson also drawing him, Joe Kubert did some of his earlier silver age stuff back when he had the weirder helmet.

    https://www.cbr.com/your-wednesday-s...berts-hawkman/

  6. #21
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    Like the OP, I'm someone whose never understood the appeal of Hawkman so I was curious to see what people had to say. And reading through all of these responses, I notice that almost none of them bring up his personality. Nothing about Carter/Katar, just Hawkman. People like his look (I think it's decent), people think his backstory (s) give great potential for stories (Egyptian mythology is very cool), people like his abilities (Honestly, despite having read the JSA's first adventures and knowing he was the original chairman, I was SO confused when reading 'JSA' by why Jay, Alan and Ted all revered the guy so much) and that's all fine, but those aspects factor into my judgement of a character very little.

    And while I'm sure the few bits of personality traits people have mentioned here do appear in books, pretty much all of my exposure to the character can be summed up as "Short-Tempered Republican' or 'Short-Tempered Creepy Stalker.'

    If anyone does want to go into more detail about what they like about Hawkman's personality, things that have nothing to do with superheroing, I'm not snarking, I really am all ears.

  7. #22
    Black Belt in Bad Ideas Robanker's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Assam View Post
    Like the OP, I'm someone whose never understood the appeal of Hawkman so I was curious to see what people had to say. And reading through all of these responses, I notice that almost none of them bring up his personality. Nothing about Carter/Katar, just Hawkman. People like his look (I think it's decent), people think his backstory (s) give great potential for stories (Egyptian mythology is very cool), people like his abilities (Honestly, despite having read the JSA's first adventures and knowing he was the original chairman, I was SO confused when reading 'JSA' by why Jay, Alan and Ted all revered the guy so much) and that's all fine, but those aspects factor into my judgement of a character very little.

    And while I'm sure the few bits of personality traits people have mentioned here do appear in book, pretty much all of my exposure to the character can be summed up as "Short-Tempered Republican' or 'Short-Tempered Creepy Stalker.'

    If anyone does want to go into more detail about what they like about Hawkman's personality, things that have nothing to do with superheroing, I'm not snarking, I really am all ears.
    I say this as a liberal, but Hawkman has the unfortunate honor of being a mouthpiece for strawman politics. It always feels like left leaning writers putting words in his mouth to make him still wrong and push their point instead of offering discussion. This isn't specific to Hawkman, though. There's all kinds of liberals in comics, but we tend to paint the conservatives much more broadly and I do find political discussion poorer for it.

    He has lived countless lives, doubtlessly on either side of several different political systems. He'd have a more understanding approach than most, but again, there needs to be a strawman to burn and angry conservatives are an easy target.
    Last edited by Robanker; 06-14-2018 at 06:47 AM.

  8. #23
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    Classic DC heroes were never character forward like the Marvel Age characters. But I don't look on that as a bad thing. To me, writing should be more subtle than what Stan Lee was doing. Real people, with few exceptions, don't tell you all about themselves--you have to figure them out from little outward evidence. And comic books are visual--so rather than dialogue it should be the art that telegraphs the character. And if you look at the great artists who have worked on Hawkman, you can see his character in his appearance.

    That being said, the 1960s Hawkman had some prominent character details. He was married and devoted to his wife, unlike most super-heroes at the time. But in his secret identity as Carter Hall, museum curator, he was susceptible to the wiles of Mavis Trent. Flame-haired Shiera Hall (Shayera Thal) saw right through Mavis, but she didn't get into a cat fight with Mavis every time the raven-haired temptress made a move on her man. Shiera would instead make witty comments to her husband--seeming to delight in his discomfort. Carter and Shiera were both fish out of water, who were trying to understand and deal with the way of life on Earth. Toward that end, they had used the Absorbascon to absorb all knowledge of the planet--and they had to meditate together, in a dark room, when they wanted to access this global information.

    I think what has muddied the waters with both Hawkmen is that they were conflated into one character--and it's hard to reconcile the two, one black haired and the other blond. Khufu-Carter using weapons of the past reflects the fact that he's reincarnated and his memories stretch back over eons. Whereas, Katar-Carter using Earth weapons of the past suggests an almost fanboyish love for Earthling kitsch. When Green Arrow and Hawkman had beef in the satellite Justice League, it was the social-conscious Oliver Queen baiting the law and order policeman Katar Hol. If you retcon Hawkman into being a new age Shirley MacLaine reincarnationist, it's not the same character and the difference of opinion doesn't make as much sense.

  9. #24
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    I usually approach these things as a writer, now, so my opinion is filtered through that lens.

    There IS no Carter Hall, not really. Or perhaps it's more precise to say there is a core Carter Hall - a respect bordering on obsession for the past, a hope for the future, a 'big picture' adventurer - and over that constant core are accretions of lives, shells that span millenia and galaxies. These stay with him, rings on the tree, and he explores and uncovers himself through exploration of those pasts. He might suddenly start speaking in the long dead dialect of an ancient Khundian tribe, at moments he recalls with infinite precision all 347 steps of Krypton's Torquasm-Rao, he wakes in 2018 covered in the sweat of 1855, cursing the heavenly kingdom and their leader, Hong Xiuquan.

    And so with little - and too much - too hold onto, he comes to define himself by his relationship to someone else, the one constant in all his lives, the hands that reach in and pluck him out of the river of time.

    And that's not necessarily healthy, especially when Kendra isn't very keen to be defined by anyone but herself, is keen to leave the past behind.

    The key to a Hawman book (as he currently stands in the DCU, I've got another pitch entirely for the more straight forward Katar Hol version) is revealing the "secret history" of the DCU. Weaving a whole new history and mythology into the already established past of the DCU, digging deep into it. Which, actually, appears to be the direction Venditti is taking, so I hope it works out.

  10. #25
    Boisterously Confused
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    Quote Originally Posted by DragonsChi View Post
    All purpose heroes? That's interesting. What stories do you think showed how much range the character has?
    There's few stories that feature the range in a single book, and you also have to account for the fact that there's really two major versions of Hawkman (with the rest being largely mismash).

    From the Golden Age, All-Star Comics 1.33 had him taking on Solomon Grundy one on one (unsuccessfully, but he made a good showing). On the other hand, he was running up again common gangster enemies on a regular basis, mad scientists blackmailing the planet with gravity rays (Flash Comics 1.2), mesmerist/cult-leaders (Flash Comics 1.3), and more traditional supervillains like The Hummingbird, and The Monacle (Flash Comics 1.52 and 1.64)

    The Thanagarian Hawkman found himself up against multiple science-fictiony supervillains, like the shape-changing internplanetary thief Byth (The Brave and The Bold 1.34), and the vastly powerful alchemist Matter Master (The Brave and The Bold 1.35), The Shadow Thief (The Brave and The Bold 1.36), and the superintelligent inventor/gang-leader IQ (Mystery In Space 1.87). In addition, his skills as an archeologist let him take on villains like the mystical Fadeaway Man (Detective Comics 1.479).

    Both Hawk Teams also dealt with the Gentleman Ghost, who's been portrayed as both an is-he-a-spirit-or-is-he-a-trickester character (the version that I much prefer), and as an unambiguously supernatural menace.

    Quote Originally Posted by Assam View Post
    ...reading through all of these responses, I notice that almost none of them bring up his personality. Nothing about Carter/Katar, just Hawkman...
    Katar Hol was particularly more developed in this regard, especially early on. He and Shayera had a richly developed personal life in their early portrayals, complete with an unusual twist for the time in that the staff of Midway City's Museum included Mavis Trent, who was forever trying to lure Katar way from Shayera.

    The most important aspect of personality to both incarnations was the Hawkman-Hawkgirl/woman relationship. It was loving, and yet equitable. They were equal partners, which almost never happened in comics before Black Canary and Green Arrow became a thing in the late 1970s.

    Quote Originally Posted by Robanker View Post
    I say this as a liberal, but Hawkman has the unfortunate honor of being a mouthpiece for strawman politics. It always feels like left leaning writers putting words in his mouth to make him still wrong and push their point instead of offering discussion. This isn't specific to Hawkman, though. There's all kinds of liberals in comics, but we tend to paint the conservatives much more broadly and I do find political discussion poorer for it.

    He has lived countless lives, doubtlessly on either side of several different political systems. He'd have a more understanding approach than most, but again, there needs to be a strawman to burn and angry conservatives are an easy target.
    I have to give you this one. I blame Bates and Maggins, who wanted to debate the issues of the day when they were on Justice League of America, and positioned Hawkman (who didn't have a feature, let alone a title, to anchor his persona) as the foil for their mouthpiece, Green Arrow.

    If there was one positive thing that Hawkworld did, it created a reason for Katar to be an anti-establishment figure, with a empathy for the oppressed. From our POV, he might still look hawkish (pardon the pun), but he wasn't the straight-up Nixonite that the last days of the Satellite-Era JL gave us. Of course, while Hawkworld gets a lot of justifiable credit for that, a lot of people forget that Hawkman was already on that path as a result of The Shadow War of Hawkman, which had he and Shayera choosing their adopted world over their birthworld, which had descended into a predatory fascism.
    Last edited by DrNewGod; 06-14-2018 at 07:58 AM.

  11. #26
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    Hawkman has had some tough breaks over the years that stopped him from being a super-star like Flash or Green Lantern.

    Originally, in the 1940s, he was the next super-hero who was due to get his own quarterly (like Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman), but that never panned out--maybe because of paper shortages during the war. But the up side of that was he kept his spot in the Justice Society (if he had got his own title, he would have been forced out of active membership at least during the war years) and he appeared in every single adventure in the original ALL-STAR run.

    Even though he was the third super-hero to be revived by Julie Schwartz--after Flash and Green Lantern and before the Atom--he didn't get his own title until after THE ATOM, in 1962, when his HAWKMAN title finally launched in 1964. This probably also stopped him from winning membership in the Justice League--Ray Palmer was invited into the League first in 1962, while Katar had to wait until 1964 for his own seat in the JLA meeting room.

    He also lost his own title the first (before Atom, Green Lantern and Aquaman)--and had to share space with Ray Palmer in the Tiny Titan's title which now became THE ATOM & HAWKMAN. But that reprieve didn't last for long as that title was also canned. Then in the 1970s, he had to leave the Justice League for a period of time.

    And, with the changes after Crisis, while HAWKWORLD seemed to give Katar and Shayera new life, all of the confusing continuity that followed turned Hawkman into creative "Kryptonite" and no one wanted to touch the super-hero for a number of years. Geoff Johns rescued the Egyptian version of Hawkman and somewhat settled the situation on Thanagar, but even so Hawkman has had a stormy status at DC ever since.

  12. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Kelly View Post
    Hawkman has had some tough breaks over the years that stopped him from being a super-star like Flash or Green Lantern.

    Originally, in the 1940s, he was the next super-hero who was due to get his own quarterly (like Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman), but that never panned out--maybe because of paper shortages during the war. But the up side of that was he kept his spot in the Justice Society (if he had got his own title, he would have been forced out of active membership at least during the war years) and he appeared in every single adventure in the original ALL-STAR run.

    Even though he was the third super-hero to be revived by Julie Schwartz--after Flash and Green Lantern and before the Atom--he didn't get his own title until after THE ATOM, in 1962, when his HAWKMAN title finally launched in 1964. This probably also stopped him from winning membership in the Justice League--Ray Palmer was invited into the League first in 1962, while Katar had to wait until 1964 for his own seat in the JLA meeting room.

    He also lost his own title the first (before Atom, Green Lantern and Aquaman)--and had to share space with Ray Palmer in the Tiny Titan's title which now became THE ATOM & HAWKMAN. But that reprieve didn't last for long as that title was also canned. Then in the 1970s, he had to leave the Justice League for a period of time.

    And, with the changes after Crisis, while HAWKWORLD seemed to give Katar and Shayera new life, all of the confusing continuity that followed turned Hawkman into creative "Kryptonite" and no one wanted to touch the super-hero for a number of years. Geoff Johns rescued the Egyptian version of Hawkman and somewhat settled the situation on Thanagar, but even so Hawkman has had a stormy status at DC ever since.
    Yeah, Hawkworld (the ongoing) created quite the mess. I always thought the cleanest answer would have been a Last Days of Hawkman mini-series, similar to Miller's Dark Knight Returns, featuring the end of Katar and Shayera's careers by having their final adventure throw them back in time to Ancient Egypt, where they were adopted into the pharaoh's court as Lord Khufu and Lady Chay-Ra. Then move on in the present and leave the fans to decide for themselves if that future was cannon or not.

  13. #28
    Incredible Member Skedatz's Avatar
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    The appeal is he's a brawny guy with wings, a mask, and a mace who goes around bashing people's faces in while crying for his Hawkwoman.

    It takes a pretty self secure guy to do that.

  14. #29
    Extraordinary Member Captain Craig's Avatar
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    I recently bought the nu52 era trades of Savage Hawkman. The last stretch of Hawkman I read was the Hawkworld in the 90s (Ostrander?). The characters look is iconic and unmistakable. Unfortunately his look is more iconic than the character himself to most, me included. However, that doesn't mean I'm not open to reading up on the character.

    DC has just launched a new Hawkman series that hit the shelf yesterday. I've become more of a trade reader these days but I flipped through it on the shelf and the art was good. Madame Xanadu was in there and spot reading it gives the impression this is another series taking a shot and reconciling the zany Hawkman mythology and reincarnation.

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  15. #30
    Father Son Kamehameha < Kuwagaton's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Assam View Post
    If anyone does want to go into more detail about what they like about Hawkman's personality, things that have nothing to do with superheroing, I'm not snarking, I really am all ears.
    I thought Hawkman the user, Jim Kelly, and Flash Gordon did good jobs of explaining. I tried. For one thing there is indeed just a high concept appeal: with exceptions to other takes, he's either a Space Batman by way of Hanna Barbera, or a crime fighting archaeologist who has lived past lives. His character goes back to old adventure stories where the main character was a template to build the plot around. Flash Gordon, Superman, Doc Savage, and a few others are the same imo. Reed Richards also has the sci fi hero thing except he was pretty condescending to his wife. It can be tough to sum up a decades old character but really, you can decide whether or not you want to continue with Katar Hol as quickly as you can assess your opinion on something like seeing this



    and you did mention not being a superhero, but that's really how we see these characters. How off would it seem to try summing up Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne without their secret identities?

    Searching online for someone more comprehensive than myself, this Hawkworld review sums up why I like the flipped on his head Katar of Hawkworld, even if I don't really think he's at odds with the character as written by Fox or Isabella.

    http://sequart.org/magazine/13210/th...alcatena-1989/

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