Jim Starlin on "Hawkman"

[The Toyroom]

Jim Starlin is doing a "Hawkman Special" spinning out of that "Rann/Thanagar" thing he's been doing. I haven't been reading his recent work at DC these last few years..."Mystery in Space", "Death of the New Gods", etc. Just hasn't seemed exciting to me...

Anyway...Starlin says:

I was specifically approached to retool Hawkman's confusing history. The Hawkman Special is merely the first step for Hawkman and the reader on their road to truth. When I started writing Holy War everybody up at DC warned me to stay away from anything to do with Hawkman's past. They described it as "a mess."

Then a few weeks later Dan Didio called and asked if I'd clean up the mess. I guess the way I dress makes folks mistake me for the custodial engineer.

So up until now the rule has been to just avoid Hawkman's history.

Uh...didn't the Geoff Johns reboot work? I thought it did and I liked the book...even after Johns left, Palmiotti and Grey's work was OK. But the "One Year Later" came and they ditched Hawkman and replaced him with "Hawkgirl" and I dropped the title after a few issues into it.

That's one of the current things I hate about DC...reboot, reboot, reboot. It's like they can't get their heads outta their arse sometimes and don't know how to write their way out of it, other than crying "Reboot! Clean up on aisle three! Hawkman's sales are in the toliet! Reboot!"

Same thing has happened in recent years to the Atom (the All-New Atom was just cancelled at around issue 25 or so...2 freakin' years) and let's not get started on Artie Joe over in "Aquaman: Sword of Crap"....

[Earth 2 Chris]

I liked Johns resolution to the Hawkman mess. It was the best they could do without just throwing out everything from Hawkworld on. But really, just throw that out. If we can get back the ORIGINAL Thanagarian Katar and Shayera Hol, interstellar police officers, then it's worth it. If not, leave it be. Johns did the best anyone could with the situation.

Chris

[thunderbolt]

Yeah, I thought Johns straightened it out pretty well. Never been a Starlin fan, and now I have one more reason to avoid.

[The Toyroom]

Well I read the Hawkman Special today....


SPOILERS:













Pretty much Hawkman is told by some mysterious alien dude that everything he knew about his origin was a fabrication (as far as the Egyptian portion goes...Prince Khufu, Chay-era and Hath-Set, reincarnation, etc.). Doesn't reveal who or why but it has something to do with one of the many Crisis of recent years. And it was deliberately done. By the end of the book he's referred to as Katar Hol (not Carter Hall)...so apparently they're trying to jumpstart the Thanagarian heritage angle again and dropping everything Geoff Johns and others wrapped up nicely with a bow a few years ago.

I'm wondering how this all plays out, as obviously there WAS a Hath-Set at some point...the Justice Society has fought him several times over the years. Unless that too was a fabrication that was inserted into their minds.

I didn't care for the scripting by Starlin in this issue...the dialogue just didn't ring true. I can sort of see the speech patterns working for the alien dude but not Hawkman. I found the style of dialogue very distracting from the basic plot (whatever there was of it).

I'm sure they're going to drag this out...past the Rann-Thanagar Holy War mini-series and at some point relaunch Hawkman as a series.

They should have fixed Hawkman VERY early on after the original Crisis and during the initial "Hawkworld" mini-series. Instead they piled it on for years until Geoff Johns had to bail them out from under a mess of inconsistent "continuity" (Yes that's a contridiction).
And now they're mucking it up yet again.

[thunderbolt]

I really liked Hawkworld and the first few issues of the series, too. Too bad that one didn't stick. Johns's reboot was the best of the bunch now Starlin is dumping a lot of that one. The Egyptian reincarnation stuff is one of my favorite parts of the Hawkman story.

[The Toyroom]

Johns's reboot was the best of the bunch now Starlin is dumping a lot of that one. The Egyptian reincarnation stuff is one of my favorite parts of the Hawkman story.

I liked how Johns showed that Carter was previously Nighthawk and the Silent Knight (among others) in past lives. Now is all of that gone too?