On a Wing and a Prayer: Hawkman Appreciation!

[CryNotWolf]

I prefer Katar and Shayera, too. But that's because what actually got me to like Hawkman was going back and reading some of the Silver Age stuff. Also, the Modern/Geoff Johns Carter Hall just struck me as a creepy stalker, so there's that.

How was he a creepy stalker?

[Zero Hunter]

Yet they used Katar for New 52 and had Katar in other media to this day.

"More popular" is arguable when you have a big chunk of Hawkman that was all Katar/Shayera for decades more than Carter.

And how did that Nu52 series do? Oh yeah it was one of the first books cancelled. Yeah Katar was around for decades longer than Carter sure but his longest series pre-Crisis lasted 27 issues. His post Crisis series didn't fair much better only lasting 16 issues and that was back when any series that was even half decent could last 30 or 40 issues easy. You want to bring up Justice League Action but honestly I forget that show is even still on the air and so do most people. Even the merged version of Hawkman that came out of Zero Hour with the Carter/Katar mixed character lasted longer than almsot all the other series outside of Hawkworld which beat it by a few issues.

There was a reason that Hawkman sat on the shelf for so many years before Johns brought him back and that was because by and large people just didn't care about him. Then Johns brought the character back and made him more popular than he has ever been.

[SelinaK12]

did anyone read hawkman found #1

[Frontier]

And how did that Nu52 series do? Oh yeah it was one of the first books cancelled. Yeah Katar was around for decades longer than Carter sure but his longest series pre-Crisis lasted 27 issues. His post Crisis series didn't fair much better only lasting 16 issues and that was back when any series that was even half decent could last 30 or 40 issues easy. You want to bring up Justice League Action but honestly I forget that show is even still on the air and so do most people. Even the merged version of Hawkman that came out of Zero Hour with the Carter/Katar mixed character lasted longer than almsot all the other series outside of Hawkworld which beat it by a few issues.

There was a reason that Hawkman sat on the shelf for so many years before Johns brought him back and that was because by and large people just didn't care about him. Then Johns brought the character back and made him more popular than he has ever been.

Which is a shame given how good and fun that show is.

I wish more people checked it out (which would give CN more incentive to promote it instead of TTG!) .

[Jekyll]

Which is a shame given how good and fun that show is.

I wish more people checked it out (which would give CN more incentive to promote it instead of TTG!) .

The show is an absolute joy.

[Deniz Camp]

Exactly.

It's not even close when it comes to which Hawks are more known in the mainstream. Shayera Hol is way more known than reincarnated Hawkgirl (it's not even a contest) and Katar Hol was not only the first Hawkman in other media, but the longest running Hawkman in comics (several decades longer than Carter) and still involved in other media to this day (currently on Justice League Action). All Johns did with his "fix" was add the reincarnation angle and the Carter Hall name to a character that looked like Katar (Carter had blonde hair), acted like Katar (harder edged personality), and the Thanagar connection that was all Katar (which is still weird to even add when Golden Age Hawkman was way more mystic than alien tech).

They had a chance to use a Hawkman that finally didn't have a convoluted backstory and was just Katar again, but nope...kill him off for Carter once again.

I think it has less to do with which is already more popular - I don't think that many people are coming to a Hawkman comic for Carter OR Katar - and more to do with the fact that Carter has a stronger story engine than Katar.

With Carter you've got a character that is - potentially - intimately intertwined not just with the current DCU (because any character could be), but with its past. Endlessly reincarnated throughout history, you have a character with an almost infinite capacity for involvement in the historical DCU (or history in general), and therefore a plausible structure to tell almost any kind of story, via "Times Past" issues, crimes that cut across multiple time periods, etc.

I like Katar, and I think there's some interesting stuff you can do with Thanagar and the Hawk mythology in general, and that is more naturally fitting with Katar, but this would be an inherently insular thing, a goings on that would be lightcenturies away, literally, from the goings on of the DCU. You could involve other fringe characters like R'ann, and maybe some GLs here and there, but the meaty stuff would have to be about building at Thanagarian culture and some kind of thanagarian scifi mythology or realpolitik or adventure. And that just doesn't 'plug into' the DCU the way that a Carter Hall who personally knew Nabu, or fought Black Adam, or met Sgt Rock, or remembers fighting with the JSA, or once saved the Waynes in the 1800s, or fought with Vigilante in the old west, or WHATEVER you want to do.

And this kind of centrality to the DCU as a whole tends to be what drives the success of these concepts. Writers and fans both want to play in the sandbox. And while I'd love to write something with the Warlords of Okaara or delineate the linguistic workings of the Thanagarian language, I think fans tend to respond more to the DC-history heavy stuff.

[AdamFTF]

How was he a creepy stalker?

The whole "reincarnated Egyptian lovers" thing just creeps me out. Maybe because it's the exact same premise as The Mummy from 1932. And in that movie, Imhotep was pretty much a creepy stalker.

[Kaled]

Personally I never got the whole "convoluted history" thing. His history only got complicated after Zero Hour when they made all the Hawkmans into one person. I like the Hawkmen in both the Justice Society and the Justice League but my favorite ended up being Kartar Hal from Hawkworld. I hated it when Ostrandar left the series. It was shortly afterwards Zero Hour made it bad with the whole Hawk Avatar thing. I did like when he returned in the JSA.

[Hawkman]

DC just need to move beyond the whole "Which version do we go with?" debate and start publishing more entertaining stories that feature Hawkman. Period. The debate is what's been detrimental to the character over the past several years, not necessarily the origin they've gone with in and of itself.

To put it another way, The Savage Hawkman wasn't poorly received because it was Katar. It was poorly received because most readers didn't find it very good. Personally, I enjoyed it well enough, but I would readily admit that it was nothing special, either. And it definitely wasn't a version of Katar that I immediately recognized. Conversely, I would also argue that Johns, Palmiotti, and Gray's run with the character wasn't successful because it was Carter, but rather because all three of those gentlemen were telling good stores that featured Hawkman.

That said, I think both Carter and Katar have the ingredients to facilitate good stories, provided the right writer is behind them. It looks like DC want to give Carter another go right now, and I'm thrilled with that, but not because I prefer him over Katar. Rather, it's because I'm a Hawkman fan, and if a writer has a good story to tell with Carter, then as a Hawkman fan you can bet I'll be there to read it.

Anyhoo, it's my hope that this thread can stay away from the aforementioned debate, or at least keep it civil when its ugly head does crop up here. This thread is to celebrate Hawkman, be it Carter, Katar, or even Fel (really?)! They're all Hawkman, after all, and thus, all awesome!

[The_Greatest_Username]

I prefer the Thanagarian version of the characters as well. However, I think it would be for the best if they could write Shayera back into continuity as Hawkgirl (or Hawkwoman) while Carter is around. That way you could have a major character to pull stories from either version.

[Jekyll]

I’m a carter hall fan. Never could get into Katar.

[Frontier]

DC just need to move beyond the whole "Which version do we go with?" debate and start publishing more entertaining stories that feature Hawkman. Period. The debate is what's been detrimental to the character over the past several years, not necessarily the origin they've gone with in and of itself.

To put it another way, The Savage Hawkman wasn't poorly received because it was Katar. It was poorly received because most readers didn't find it very good. Personally, I enjoyed it well enough, but I would readily admit that it was nothing special, either. And it definitely wasn't a version of Katar that I immediately recognized. Conversely, I would also argue that Johns, Palmiotti, and Gray's run with the character wasn't successful because it was Carter, but rather because all three of those gentlemen were telling good stores that featured Hawkman.

That said, I think both Carter and Katar have the ingredients to facilitate good stories, provided the right writer is behind them. It looks like DC want to give Carter another go right now, and I'm thrilled with that, but not because I prefer him over Katar. Rather, it's because I'm a Hawkman fan, and if a writer has a good story to tell with Carter, then as a Hawkman fan you can bet I'll be there to read it.

Anyhoo, it's my hope that this thread can stay away from the aforementioned debate, or at least keep it civil when its ugly head does crop up here. This thread is to celebrate Hawkman, be it Carter, Katar, or even Fel (really?)! They're all Hawkman, after all, and thus, all awesome!

[Mar-Vell]

DC just need to move beyond the whole "Which version do we go with?" debate and start publishing more entertaining stories that feature Hawkman. Period. The debate is what's been detrimental to the character over the past several years, not necessarily the origin they've gone with in and of itself.

To put it another way, The Savage Hawkman wasn't poorly received because it was Katar. It was poorly received because most readers didn't find it very good. Personally, I enjoyed it well enough, but I would readily admit that it was nothing special, either. And it definitely wasn't a version of Katar that I immediately recognized. Conversely, I would also argue that Johns, Palmiotti, and Gray's run with the character wasn't successful because it was Carter, but rather because all three of those gentlemen were telling good stores that featured Hawkman.

That said, I think both Carter and Katar have the ingredients to facilitate good stories, provided the right writer is behind them. It looks like DC want to give Carter another go right now, and I'm thrilled with that, but not because I prefer him over Katar. Rather, it's because I'm a Hawkman fan, and if a writer has a good story to tell with Carter, then as a Hawkman fan you can bet I'll be there to read it.

Anyhoo, it's my hope that this thread can stay away from the aforementioned debate, or at least keep it civil when its ugly head does crop up here. This thread is to celebrate Hawkman, be it Carter, Katar, or even Fel (really?)! They're all Hawkman, after all, and thus, all awesome!

I'm with you! Well said!

Although I lean to the Thanagarian side, since that's the version I like best, and I've always been a cosmic hero fan, I'll take any version of Hawkman at this point! I'll give it a shot, for sure.

[The_Greatest_Username]

https://www.funko.com/blog/article/3...cing-heroworld

Looks like Hawkman (sans pants) and Hawkgirl are being included in some new DC figurines from Funko. I like that their being included so early in the line.

[Kirijax]

Tried to put together a map of the Hawk family. Take a look and let me know if I missed anything.
27972275_559915771053822_1309625412032916802_n.jpg

Click the link for a better look. https://goo.gl/LBuewo