The Savage Hawkman #1

Having never known much about Hawkman, I decided to read up on him in the 1990 DC Who's Who binder. What I read was a bunch of confusing crap about flying policemen and drugs in the Downsiders and a repressive government and Hawkman shooting his dad and Hawkwoman being more experienced and an anti-gravity belt made of Nth Metal and feathered wings for special occasions.

In other words, it didn't help me figure out who this guy is. My favorite moment in Hawkman's career was the time I stuck him in the passenger seat of the Batmobile with Batman driving and then drove the Batmobile right off the back porch. It did a flip and landed on its top. Being that the Batmobile has no roof, that means it landed on the heads of Batman and Hawkman. Hawkman's wings took the brunt of the impact and one of them snapped off. After that, Hawkman could only fight crime in circles.

I also know Hawkman was known as Carter Hall or Katar Hol. I'm not sure if this was two different versions of him or if he Earthlocized his name. Could be one is the Earth-1 version and the other is the Earth-2 version. Since this is the New DC Universe, I guess it doesn't matter. What we get here is Carter Hall.

And he seems unhappy with being Hawkman. Disgruntled, he sets fire to his costume in the woods. But it looks like Nth Metal doesn't like being set on fire because it explodes into a big hawk shape and breathes fire all over Carter Hall. End scene.

After a number of typically comic art comics, we have here one that goes a different way. It looks like the colorist is doing water colors. I've always appreciated that look.



Maybe they look a little sallow and zombieish. But it's refreshing after Jurgen's and Perez's phoning it in job on Green Arrow.

This Carter Hall is a Cryptologist and it looks like he may have some specialty in Alien languages. So his cohorts pull an alien ship out from the bottom of the ocean and Carter is brought in to translate.

Good thing for him I already translated this language when I read Justice League International! Bad thing for him, it had an alien mummy in it with Black Oil for blood which covered one of his colleagues and turned it into an alien speaking killing machine!


It's saying, "GRRRAAH!!"

The next time one of these speaks, it says, "RRAARGH!", just in case someone who has read the comic was wondering what great words of wisdom were coming from the mouth of an ancient Black Oil Alien.

Carter begins fighting them because he was a hero before burning his costume. But a strange and surprising thing* happens as he gets his battle lust on: the Nth metal has become a part of him and his Hawkman costume just bubbles out from under his skin to cover his body and remove the clothing he was previously wearing!

*not really surprising


This is how Hawkman feels about slaughtering aliens.

Hawkman kills a bunch of Black Oil aliens which seem to take over humans. But they can also regenerate a person it is covering so that if it loses a hand, the hand covered in Black Oil becomes another Black Oil alien. Hawkman's Nth Metal somehow negates this process. But the biggest, baddest, most Villain of the Monthiest one of the Black Oil things is more powerful than Hawkman and takes him down on the last page. The comic ends with him sucking out Hawkman's Nth Metal and declaring that he is Morphicius.

Yes, yes, another stupid villain name. I think all the good ones like The Riddler and The Joker and Bizarro have been used up.

I'm also glad I fished my alien translation notes out of the garbage immediately after throwing them in after reading Justice League International! I thought they might come in handy for that title later but it looks like this might be DC's alien language du jour. If du jour means what I want it to mean. Which is 'of the new universe!'

All in all, this title has enough going for it to place it just ahead of Justice League. But that's a very easy spot to lose, The Savage Hawkman! So keep getting better. And think up better villain names while you're at it.