Hawkman
The year is 1940, and superhero comics are booming. All-America Comics is getting ready to launch their new book; Flash Comics. The headliner of that book is, unsurprisingly, The Flash. But one of the other stories featured in that comic was the adventures of Hawkman.
Hawkman was created by Gardner Fox and Dennis Neville. Hawkman’s civilian identity is Carter Hall, a ‘wealthy collector of weapons and research scientist.” His look is reminiscent of the Hawkmen from Flash Gordon, surely a coincidence in a book titled Flash comics.
One of the weapons in Mr. Hall’s collection is a dagger. Upon seeing this dagger, Carter has a vision where he is Khufu, an Egyptian Prince. Khufu fights Hath-Set, a priest of Anubis the Hawk-god. Hath-Set is trying to kill Khufu and his lover Shiera, and he is successful with ending Khufu’s life.
After this vision ends, Carter comes to the only logical conclusion; he is Khufu reincarnated.
As he then ventures outside of his home, and during a subway explosion he meets a woman who looks exactly like Shiera. This woman has also had dreams of ancient Egypt.
So Carter goes and gets his Nth metal wings and hawk mask to try to get to the bottom of this subway explosion. He learns that a Dr. Hastor caused the explosion with his dynamo. You will be shocked to learn that Dr. Hastor is in fact Hath-Set reincarnated.
Before we go any further, you might be asking some questions. Like why is reincarnation so easily accepted as an explanation for everything? How did the dynamo cause a subway explosion? How did Carter just happen to already have wings made out of a metal with anti-gravity properties and a hawk mask? There are no answers to those questions, and venturing further down that path leads to madness.
Hawkman fights with and eventually kills Dr. Hastor, while falling in love with Shiera, which is her name now as well. He then goes on to have a decade of adventures.
In the Golden Age, Hawkman was never quite popular enough to carry his own book. He was a constant presence in Flash Comics or All-Star Comics, mostly written by Fox and drawn by Joe Kubert. He joined and led the JSA. When artists decided it was too difficult to draw his hawkmask, he switched to a simple hood. He was frequently joined in his adventures by Shiera, who took on the guise of Hawkgirl.
When the JSA went away in 1951, so did Hawkman. See, a very simple character. The collector of weapons part eventually became an archeologist, but Hawkman was just a guy with ancient weapons and anti-gravity wings and he used these to fight crime and have world spanning adventures.
Now, to explain why people think Hawkman is confusing, I am going to have to explain Earth 2.
See, in 1959, DC sensing a resurgence in people’s interest in superheroes, decided to dust off some of their old characters. But magic and myths were not the order of the day; space was. So DC sought a new take on Hawkman from the fresh minds of Gardner Fox and Joe Kubert. They imagined Katar Hol as a space cop from the planet Thanagar, who comes to Earth with his partner and wife Shayera Hol chasing an escaped prisoner Byth.
Using the Absorbascon, they learn all of Earth’s languages and with the help of the Midway City police are hooked up with fake I.D.s and jobs, those being Carter and Shiera Hall, curators of the Midway City museum. The Absorbason also gave them the ability to talk to birds, which help them catch Byth, who they sent back to Thanagar. However, Katar and Shayera stayed on Earth to swap tips on billy clubbing immigrants with Earth’s police officers, becoming the policeman of two worlds.
Silver Age Hawkman’s first home was in the book Mystery in Space, which he shared with Adam Strange, the man of two worlds, who on Earth worked as the curator at a museum, but also could transport to the planet Rann and fight crime.
As the 1960’s moved along, the original Carter Hall made a comeback. To explain how there were two different versions of the same superhero, DC invented the idea of Earth 2, an alternate reality where all the golden age versions of the heroes lived, and had kept aging from their WWII adventures. Things there get confusing with characters like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, whose adventures continued the whole time, or characters who came back as the same character they were before. DC just came up with a cutoff line and some adventures were retroactively said to have occurred on Earth 2.
For Hawkman, this was not too confusing at all; while they are similar characters, Katar and Carter are different. And Carter only really showed up for the occasional JLA/JSA team up.
Hawkman had his shared of Silver Age adventures. He fought the Shadow Thief and the Gentleman Ghost. He joined the JLA. When his short-lived titled was canceled, it merged with another ending title, The Atom, to a team-up book which was also shortly canceled.
In the Justice League, Hawkman became the conservative counterpart to the liberal Green Arrow. Hawkgirl became Hawkwoman and joined the JLA herself. Rann went to war with Thanagar in space and Hawkman renounced his former home.
In 1985, DC published The Shadow War of Hawkman. At the outset of that story, Hawkwoman is apparently killed by . . . Thanagarians who are trying to conquer Earth. Turns out that since Hawkman left Thanagar it had turned into a fascistic hellscape. Hawkman defeats the current fascist government of Thanagar and is proposed to be the head of a new fascistic government. But he opts out and fucks off back to Earth forever. Also, it turns out Hawkwoman wasn’t dead.
Up to this point, things are still pretty simple. But DC is resetting their entire universe with Crisis on Infinite Earths. This leads to the end of Earth 2, and dozens of other alternate realities. Hawkman, at least initially, made it through unscathed. The JSA are now just predecessors to the JLA, and there two alternate versions of Hawkman, but they are separate enough to keep separate. Also, the JSA was taken off the board to avoid confusion.
For a few years, things were fine. Then in 1989, DC published a new origin story for Hawkman: Hawkworld. Written and drawn by Tim Truman, it seemed to be something like The Longbow Hunters and The Dark Knight Returns; prestige mini-series that give pretty different takes on long standing characters. The Longbow Hunters gave Green Arrow a new direction, while TDKR was just an alternate take on Batman.
In Hawkworld, Thanagar was always a fascistic hellscape. It details a decadent empire that exploits conquered peoples to keep its wealthy elites living in drugged out comfort. Katar Hol is a young, high-born man recruited to the wingmen, Thanagar’s police force. It a good mini-series, and it ends with Hawkman and Hawkwoman in pursuit of the criminal Byth, who is heading to Earth.
Except Hawkworld was such a success that DC decided to continue it with a Hawkworld ongoing series. Set in the contemporary DC universe, with Hawkman newly arrived. Also, Hawkman was a longtime member of the JLA. Both of these things were true.
DC tried several solutions to this problem they created. They tried ignoring it, but that didn’t make it go away. They brought back the JSA. Maybe the old Hawkman and Hawkwoman had come out of retirement and joined the JLA for a while. They decided that Katar dad must have visited Earth in the 1930’s, met Carter Hall, gave him some nth metal and inspired his hawk costume. Katar’s dad took a human wife, and now Katar was half human. That didn’t quite do it, and also DC decided to make the JSA go away again. So what if another Thanagarian came to Earth, Fel Andar, and he was in the JLA for a while. See, problem solved.
Its now 1993, and a new plan was put in place to solve any confusion about Hawkman. Hawkman is just the avatar of the Hawkgod, as were all Hawkman before him. All the previous Hawkmen were merged into this Hawk avatar, and that is the current Hawkman. Also, Zero Hour fixed some problems (that is a lie).
This brought on other animal god avatars, and Katar/Carter had trouble turning all of these different characters into one entity. DC finally threw in the towel, decided that Hawkman was radioactive and he disappeared. He was off the board even for his beloved JLA run, replaced with Zauriel.
I’m not going to dig deeply into the return of Hawkgirl in 1999’s JSA, but I will note that Kendra Saunders (Saunders/Sanders being Shiera’s maiden name) committed suicide when the spirit of Shiera inhabited her body and then she became the new Hawkgirl.
Those JSA adventures take part of the team to ancient Egypt, where they meet Prince Khufu, who flies around on Nth metal hawk wings. He got the Nth metal from a crashed Thanagarian ship, and used the metal to make wings and the Claw of Horus. Honestly, I think this pretty successfully ties the mythic, ancient Egypt version of Hawkman with the space one.
Hawkgirl is transported to Thanagar, now a fallen empire ruled by the evil Onimar Synn, who can control all the Nth metal on the planet. There, Carter Hall is revived with all the memories of his various incarnations. Given the Claw of Horus by the JSA, he is able to stop Synn’s control of the Nth Metal.
All of the continuity problems were then ignored or covered up by successive crises. This version of Hawkman appears to die in Final Crisis. I think it’s pretty unambiguous. Hawkman then appears alive and well in Blackest Night. At least until they are killed. They are then immediately resurrected in Brightest Day.
Then the New 52 happened, and a new Katar Hol was Hawkman, and his book sucked and I don’t know anything about it.
Honestly, that’s where my knowledge ends. I know another new version came about in DC Rebirth/Dark Nights: Metal but I don’t know that one.
Hawkman is a man who flies around with bird wings and bashes people/things with a mace. Or other weapon. There is absolutely nothing confusing about him.
