I liked the Ostrander Hawkworld vision of Hawkman and Johns’ reincarnation heavy Hawkman. Both good reads. I completely missed the Hawkman one-shot because I thought it would be irrelevant and the art looked bad. Umm, exactly what did I miss?

@will: speaking of the Fel Andar years, wasn’t that (retconned into being) him in the JLI? Giffen & DeMatteis did a great take on Hawkman as a stodgy “in my day” grump. I daresay they gave him the personality of Sam The Eagle….

One quibble with your article right off the bat is the statement, “what Jim Starlin has apparently done to Hawkman.” Let’s not blame the writer for what’s obviously a shoe-horned editorial move — what I can’t figure though is who thought Hawkman’s Egyptian origin didn’t work; it was a nice compromise that accommodated all of Hawkman’s past incarnations. Now it seems like DC’s not cleaning up continuity — they’re making hash of it again.

Is Geoff Johns still using Hawman in Justice Society? It’ll be interesting to see how Johns uses Hawkman once he gets him back from Starlin’s series.

So of course they are screwing him up again.

Thank God Johns seems to be ignoring Starlin’s nonsense in Justice Society of America and moving forward with his interpretation of the character, at least for now.

I did like Hawkworld quite a bit, too, but the space cop thing never had as much potential as the reincarnated immortal warrior archaeologist adventurer concept. Oh well.

Anyhow, I agree with you about Hawkman. I had no investment in the character to begin with, and, oddly enough, his showing up in Trinity coincided with my losing interest in the book and ultimately dropping it. I enjoyed your annotations, however, which helped me understand the book A LOT better than I would’ve otherwise, but in the end it still wasn’t enough to get me through the weekly slog of that title. Promising start, but I couldn’t stick with another 40+ weeks. Sorry. I’ll stick with the annotations and recaps here, just to see if it picks up or becomes a lot less convoluted. If it does, I might come back (and scramble for back issues).

Anyhow, the only Hawkman I ever really dug was the one in the Hawkworld miniseries, and then the subsequent monthly title… I have no idea how the monthly series ended as I stopped reading comics before it ended, but with Shayera apparently dead (Sob… I really liked her in the comics AND in the JL/JLA cartoons)I’m guessing it didn’t end well. Somehow, her not being around just seems emblematic of the (many, IMO) problems plaguing DC these days.

I would absolutely read the adventures of the Hawkman you describe, which is in stark contrast to reading nothing featuring him right now.

My last name is O’Neil. Once, my wife, having in mind all those times when names are read or written last name first, suggested we name our child “Before Zod.”

It’s probably a good thing we don’t have kids.