Retro Review

It’s amazing to me that a character could become so confusing to readers and creators alike that his name was considered unusable, even on a new character, but this was the case with DC Comics’ Hawkman. Introduced in 1940 in Flash Comics #1, the Golden Age version of the character (American archaeologist Carter Hall) had been a mainstay of the Justice Society of America, and the Silver Age version (alien police officer Katar Hol) had been a member of the Justic League of America. However, while DC managed to cope with having both Golden and Silver Age versions of the Flash and Green Lantern, after 1986’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, there seemed to be a problem with having two versions of Hawkman, and revisions and retcons kept being made to his origins, trying to streamline the character, but actually just making him horribly complicated.

You don’t believe me? Then try this: there was a human Hawkman, but then there was an alien one, and then the human one never existed but the alien one hadn’t arrived yet, so the one who showed up in the meantime claiming to be the original one’s son was another alien, and then they all merged to become a god. Saying that all his appearances between Crisis and the Hawkworld mini-series were actually those of an impostor was a particular gem; but the “hawk-god” thing in the absolutely dreadful Zero Hour was the nadir of character reworkings from DC.

It wasn’t until Geoff Johns’ run on JSA that Hawkman got straightened out, and in the best possible way: rather than trying to explain every appearance of the character in detail, with dates and times, Geoff Johns just brings him back and has him go into action. There is a small amount of dialog about him being a perpetual reincarnate, and having all the memories of every Hawkman ever, implying that all the previous Hawkmen were previous incarnations of the current one, and then they just get on with the story. This is the most essential thing for any retcon or revamp: if the story gets bogged down in explaining what actually happened on this or that page of this or that issue, instead of telling a new story that delivers a viable character, then the retcon has failed because it doesn’t engage. This is why none of the previous Hawkman retcons worked - they were too concerned with the details, not the story.

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