The Savage Hawkman #2

Hawkman #2 begins with the most confusing 8 page fight I've yet to read. That's almost half of the comic spent on Hawkman spouting 'I'm tougher than you' bravado while THOOOOM and BAM and BOOOM fill panels when something seems to hit something else. That means nearly half the comic book has just been wasted on learning the Black Oil creature can control the Nth Metal it sucked out of Carter Hall better than Carter Hall can control it. I think.



The page before this, Morphicius punched or blasted Hawkman into some cars. The next panel shows Hawkman's fist punching up through the ground. Because I guess after hitting the cars he was buried underground. After he pops up, he says, "If you're so tough, why are you hiding from me?"

Really? The thing just kicked your ass across the parking lot (they were just inside the page before). And now because you lost sight of it after being buried you assume it's hiding from you? Well, it wasn't because the page I posted above is what happens next.

Try to follow along. It drops down on Hawkman in panel one. In panel two, something blows up. Or has his back broken. In the third panel, Hawkman is now face to face with the thing that just dropped on his back and fucked him up pretty badly. He starts to narrate something about the thing kissing him and there is a sudden THOOOM. I don't know what happened. What happened? Did Hawkman get kissed? It looks like possibly something (Hawkman?) got knocked across the panel. But then in the last panel, there they are face to face again.

None of the other pages make any more sense. At one point, there is a a BA-DOOOM sound and Hawkman somehow comes to the conclusion that it was a failed teleportation by Morphicius.

I've read a lot of comics in my life and this may be the poorest layout for a fight scene ever. Yes, EVAR! And that's including whatever Darkseid did to the Justice League at the end of Issue #4.

When it's finally over, Morphicius leaves Hawkman in the wreckage still alive.


Totes.

Why don't these super hardcore villains start killing heroes already? This is making me think that Blood Rose isn't going to pull the trigger on Green Arrow next issue!

After the battle, things don't stop being confusing. We get introduced to Hogarth Kane and his Non Lethal Alternative Studies program. He receives a phone call from somebody informing him that the Black Oil or Morphicius is loose. This phone call must have come from one of Carter Hall's fellow alien archaeologists. So either the fat guy or the black guy or the woman guy is a big fat traitor!

That's not too confusing. But when the Vexaphon arrives to put a stop to the Xenusian, calling himself Waker and subduing him off-panel to bring him to Non Lethal Alternative Studies Headquarters only to be killed by Hogarth's assistant while Morphicius lies dying in the lab infected by the Nth Metal so that Hogarth can bring about the Extinction Virus, it gets a little muddled somewhere.


Even when he's simply transforming, I get lost! Who's the bastard?!

I can't imagine how anybody is supposed to remember any of this stuff month to month!

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.

Green Arrow #5

Here we see Green Arrow climbing into his office window at Q-Core Headquarters. Which seems a bit contrary to wanting to keep a secret identity. I'm pretty sure Seattle is populated with people who can look up. And then there are the people in the buildings across the way who probably look over on Queen's office day in and day out hoping to catch him fucking some starlet against the window panes.

But even if people don't know that's his particular office, they would still know the building is a Queen Industries building and realize Green Arrow has something to do with Q-corp. Or Q-core. Or whatever his business is called.

But then how does that little domino mask hide who he is anyway? I know, I'm asking all the old questions that everyone asks when they decide to suspend their suspension of disbelief. But it's a good time to think about secret identities since Green Arrow's comic isn't really providing me with a lot to say.

The best part of most secret identities is to have a personality that is so different from the super hero's personality that people would never suspect the two are the same. So Oliver Queen is a lazy, rich philanderer who doesn't take any responsibility for anything. Green Arrow is, well, not that.

Bruce Wayne is a socialite. A moneymaker. Also a philanderer? Batman is a grim, dicky, buzzkill.

Clark Kent is a klutzy human with bad vision. Superman is an agile, strong alien with X-ray vision!

See how they work? It doesn't matter that the only difference between Superman and Clark Kent is a pair of glasses! Even if they look exactly alike, nobody could ever believe that that schlep Clark is a hero!

How come it's only male super heroes I can think of here? I don't remember what the differences were between Diana Prince and the Amazon Princess. Oh! The name! Totally different! And maybe glasses also? And business skirts versus tights!


She's seriously contemplating it!

There's a lot of workplace drama going on in this comic. The two people in the above panel are the only two people who know Oliver Queen is Green Arrow. The guy is Jax, his weapon's inventor and also a pacifist. So he has to come up with cool non-killing arrows like the Boxing Glove arrow and the Hypodermic Needle Arrow and the Arrow that Stops in Front of Your Face and Blinds You With an Intense Flash Arrow. The woman is his computer blue tooth information specialist, Naomi.

In that panel, Naomi is trying to get Jax out of her hair. I'm not sure how talking about Wonder Woman's boobs drives him off, though. That's a conversation to stick around for!



The woman in this panel is Adrien, Green Arrow's personal assistant and liaison to Emerson. He counts on her to deal with Emerson and get most of his job done. So this is probably a worst case scenario for Oliver. He can't save the person he needs most at work without making Oliver Queen look like a royal douchebag. And possibly making it so she doesn't give a shit if she helps him or not.



I put up this panel because it says a lot about what happens when a new writer comes on to an existing project (is 3 issues enough to call it an existing project?). Naomi and Green Arrow were humorless and all about the job in his run. Were there a joke or two? I honestly can't remember because all I remember is her blaming video games and Ollie being mad at attention whores. But Giffen brings the levity. So now these two characters are absolutely different people than they were under Krul.

Does that make Giffen a bad writer? Should Giffen have continued to write the character Krul had recreated? It's arguable. But I wouldn't have wanted to see more of Green Arrow refusing to kill people while being an absolute misogynistic bastard. Unless it was funny! I don't mind misogyny and pacifism if there are some good jokes thrown in! And Green Arrow has always been quite the chauvinist. But Krul just had Ollie being preachy and judgmental and entirely blind to his own faults.

Okay. That actually sounds like a super hero comic that can tell a good story. But seeing what Krul did with Captain Atom and how he lost the only good thread he had almost immediately, I'm sure Krul had no forward thinking plans for this aspect. And since he quit the title, that probably proves my point.

Where was I?

Green Arrow fights this big toxic monstrosity that I guess is called Midas. He seems to be the Toxic Waste Elemental to Firestorm's Fire Elemental and Swamp Thing's Plant Elemental and Animal Man's Animalental.



He's too much for Green Arrow to handle so, of course, Green Arrow promptly handles him. And then Blood Rose shows up to put a pistol to his head.

Thus ends Green Arrow #5!

Green Arrow #4

Starting this issue, Keith Giffen takes over for J.T. Krul on the writing.


It's better already!

And it is better although still not a great comic.

Oliver Queen (Green Arrow for anybody who doesn't know his secret identity since he's no Bruce Wayne or Clark Smith!) is still being hassled by Emerson, the guy Queen's father picked to run the company until Queen showed he could be responsible. But now the hassling is Giffenesque. It's fun with some jokes thrown in. It's more Perry White or J. Jonah Jameson. Under J.T. Krul, Emerson was acting like a soon to be Super Villain.



He's still beating up women but now he's not calling them whores or skanks or sluts or bitches as he does it.



And he's still talking a lot while fighting but now it's repartee with Naomi, the computer whiz on the other end of the blue tooth. So it's far less annoying than that horrible playground shit talking he was doing in the last few issues.

The levity and play of the comic has gone up. In J.T. Krul's world, Green Arrow was just a pissed off bitch mad at technology and people who didn't seem to making anything of themselves. My critiquing his work probably puts me in a space that would make his head blow up.

"Who does that little fucking shit on the internet think he is?! What is he contributing to anything?! I'm going to write a fucking comic book and put him in his Goddamn place!"

One thing so far about Green Arrow: he's just a man. But he's dodging bullets, getting electrocuted, hit by an entire wooden loading dock in this issue and none of it fazes him. Not a single thing.

Apparently those months on the deserted island where he learned how to shoot a bow also made him incredibly tough and agile! Unless he learned how to shoot a bow differently in this new universe. Probably at prep school.


Even Blood Rose bleeds black blood.

Green Arrow #3

I hope I don't become an internet superstar while doing this blog because I'd rather not have Green Arrow break in and kick my ass. Fuckin' jerk!



Would this cover art encourage you to pick up this comic?

If you'd read the first two issues, the copy might get you to pick it up!
"What? They're killing Green Arrow for me? Awesome!"

Although if it said, "Firing J.T. Krul for the fans!", that would have been better. Except J.T. Krul quits the title after this episode anyway. For the fans! Yay! Bring on Giffen!

Here are the first four Narration Boxes of Green Arrow in the first four panels he's in:

Panel #1: I've always been headstrong.
Panel #2: It has a way of getting me into trouble.
Panel #3: I came in here all headstrong.
Panel #4: Now I'm paying the price.

Do you think J.T. Krul wrote the first two and then decided he didn't like it and wrote the second two as Green Arrow's introduction to this comic. But then he forgot to cut out the first two panels before handing it over to the artist?

I hope Green Arrow reminds us how headstrong he is later in the comic as well! In case I forget.

Green Arrow apparently was beaten pretty badly and had his head knocked into the wall hard enough to have oil come out of it during the interim between issues. So now he's sitting against the wall, beaten! Maybe! No! He jumps up and punches two dudes and a chick in the face in one flying punch from a sitting against the wall position while Bridgewrecker looks on shocked!


Click on picture for extreme size viewage

He can probably accomplish this feat due to his extremely short left puppet leg as seen in the above picture.

Seriously, though. You have two very experienced artists working on this comic: Dan Jurgens and George Perez. I might even go as far as to say George Perez is a legend in the field. And we get this kind of art? Shoddy, DC.

Green Arrow fares much better than anyone would expect for a guy with no super powers who is the best archer in the world but isn't currently using his bow. Especially when he's up against eight people with super powers. Apparently their super powers are:


1. Threatening Palm Punch.


2. Juggling Webcams and 3. Blue Hair


4. Lighting up a room and 5. Standing around in a circle.

I think I could beat this gang up! So they go through the whole fight scene.

Bad Guy: I'm better than you.
Green Arrow: You talk too much. Besides, I'm better than you.
Bad Guy: Nuh uh!
Green Arrow: Ewww! You're a jerk!
Bad Guy: Am not!


What is this electric light wired into one the end of the dock?

Eventually, Green Arrow wins against the overwhelming odds. With his last tranquilizer arrow! And then Old Man Oliver Queen, The Green Buzzkill, lectures everyone and makes them feel bad:


I hate preachy Green Arrow!

The prisoners, by the way, get sent off to Belle Reeve. That means they can become fodder for Suicide Squad! Yay!

All in all, I'm with ZodorX:


One last note: last issue ended with this:



So what happened to Black Canary? This issue ended with a one page tease about someone named Blood Rose. She's on the cover of the first Giffen Issue. So since J.T. Krul quit the title, did they replace that last page? Was it going to be a Black Canary tease for the next Krul storyline?

Who cares! J.T. Krul is gone! Next issue, Keith Giffen.

Green Arrow #2

I'm not sure what overall 'good purpose' Green Arrow thinks he's serving by going after party hard people with super powers. It's only the second page of Issue #2 and he's, yet again, going after some people who were just out having a good time AND happen to have super powers. And he's pretty frickin' judgmental to boot!

I wonder if Green Arrow had to pay the $20 to get to the top of the Space Needle to bust a paying customer through their window? Why is Green Arrow causing so much trouble? Was his family killed by watching Reality and Gossip Television? Maybe they starved to death watching YouTube videos?

Why so bitter, DUDE?! Can't a bunch of wanna be super villains just hang out and get wasted? Dance a little?

The woman he's being a big chauvinist to (which I think is something he's always been anyway!) is Lime. Or Light. Yeah, more lame Super Villain names. They're the ones I thought might be Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen from the last issue.

Green Arrow battles Light and Lime while saying a whole bunch of things I'm pretty sure I've heard 13 year olds say during a game of Call of Duty. Okay, maybe he doesn't call them faggot niggers. But his repartee is almost as unimaginative.

I was hoping with all the Super Villains shown at the end of the last issue that this comic was going to be interesting. But so far, it's just disappointing. Why is Green Arrow hunting these celebrity Super Villains? Why are they criminals?

In the first issue, Naomi says that Doppleganger terrorized Milan during fashion week. Okay, but that doesn't expressly mean she committed any crimes. And Overcharge blacked out Monte Carlo with his powers. It could have been an accident from partying too hard. Did he break any other laws once the power was out? And Lime and Light haven't done anything the Rolling Stones never did!

Wait. The kids might not know who The Rolling Stones are. What's a good group to replace them with that the kids would know? Hmm. Lady Gaga?

So we have a Super Hero who really just seems to be wasting his time upset that no talent super villains are becoming celebrities of the gossip tabloids and reality driven television scene. Who cares, Green Hornet? Leave them alone!


His super power is making you not know what he's looking at.

So then this kid comes along and explains it all. I guess. These guys go around destroying property. Those are their disgusting YouTube videos.

Not exactly your most horrible threats to America. Why isn't Green Arrow going after the white collar criminals? That seems more his usual speed instead of going after destructive attention whores.

Except this kid doesn't just explain it all. He also becomes a victim of this super group hunting for fame. And they post it on the internet. And Naomi's reaction is the stupidest reaction I've ever seen from someone not on the network news.


I'm beginning to think J.T. Krul is not a very good writer.

But that's okay! Because I just looked up J.T. Krul to see if I knew him from other books. And it looks like he stops writing Green Arrow with issue #3. And since I have four issues of Green Arrow sitting here, I took a look at the cover of issue #4 because I remember in my previews saying something about Giffen or something.

And...YES! Keith Giffen takes over the writing for Green Arrow on issue #4. Fuck me. I'm super excited about that. Okay then! Let's just power through these Krul issues and get to some good times! Green Arrow's dialogue is going to be so much better in a couple of issues!

So, back to Green Arrow and his crusade against entertainment!

Green Arrow decides to go after the Villain Gang of the Month since he so cleverly figured out that the internet video was a call for Green Arrow to come and try to stop them.


It does sound like that! Good work, Batman!

And then he checks out his techie's new air bag arrow.


Oh you clever, clever boy! I was going to suggest Helium!

After that, Green Arrow heads out to fight the gang that either doesn't have a name or I missed it while yawning. He takes out the first enemy, Chupacabra!


I have no idea what this arrow does. Emit anti-chupacabra pheromones?

Next, Green Arrow punches out French Wonder Woman or, as the comic book calls her, Stunner while calling her a skank. Classy, Green Arrow! Just because she's a hot woman, she's a skank? She dresses exactly like Wonder Woman. Would you call her a skank? Maybe. But not to her face, I'm betting!

And hey, Stunner?! Are you trying to riff off The Outsider's character, Looker? I mean, sure, you're definitely way hotter! But anybody not drawn by Jim Aparo is going to be way hotter than Looker!


I feel bad about putting down Jim Aparo's art because he's dead.

They all dance around a little bit doing no actual harm to each other (even though Green Arrow gets absolutely electrocuted by Static Overcharge, the Human Superconductor (unless a superconductor does something else)) so that they can get to the last panel where Green Arrow finds himself surrounded and streaming live on the internet! OMG!


This doesn't look like a big fight about to happen. It just looks like general disapproval.

Green Arrow #1

The first thing about Green Arrow that worries me is that it was written by J.T. Krul. You might remember him as the writer who wasted two issues worth of Captain Atom before getting to the beginning of the story! Should I just skip to issue three right now?! No, no. Give it a chance, me. Okay, you, I will.

Hmm. Can I be worried when on the third page J.T. Krul writes this:




I don't ostracize vermin.

Oliver Queen. Green Arrow. He's always been DC's Robin Hood. Help out the poor and unwashed masses kind of guy. The liberal to Hawkman's conservative.

I'm not sure they're taking him this way this time. Perhaps Krul is retaining some of this aspect of him. But in this issue he seems mostly about hating on the status quo and hunting super villains. In a mini-series I didn't read, Green Arrow apparently obsessively hunted Super Villains but he killed at least one in that comic. In this new version, he's definitely anti-killing.

He's also incredibly wealthy as usual. Queen Industries seems to think WayneTech and LexCorp are small time.

Imagine a picture is here where Green Arrow is throwing a disc.

Why the hell is Green Arrow throwing discs? And where does he keep them? Has he always thrown discs? Is this because it isn't always realistic for him to quickly string a bow and shoot it at the enemies?

This is a picture of a guy shooting blue lightning bolts out of his hand but missing Green Arrow.

And this guy, Static Overcharge! I mean, Supercharge! He's shooting lightning at and around Green Arrow and it's missing! That's a really bad shot to not be able to hit something that conducts electricity and instead hits the wooden floor beside Green Arrow!

At least Green Arrow goes in and beats the three villains he's been following. It's nice to see another competent hero like Aquaman. Although he busts these guys before they even do anything! Is this actually illegal?



Because once Doppleganger (that's her name!) does that, Green Arrow busts in and begins fighting them. As far as Green Arrow has let us know, these three Super Villains' only crime is a disgusting YouTube video!

Oh wait! Here's a picture that can be used in place of those two times I told you to use your imagination:


I tore a corner off a page in my giant 52 book for this picture!

I'm not sure why the French put these guys in jail. Perhaps because they had super powers. Or maybe because Green Arrow was fighting them and as Green Arrow's Wade, Naomi, says (or Batman's Oracle if you're not into Kim Possible), "At least, we know we're the good guys."

Top ten lessons learned from Green Arrow #1:

10. Green Arrow is damned if he does.
9. Green Arrow is jealous of Mark Millar.
8. Green Arrow thinks reality shows and the people who star in them are ridiculous.
7. Green Arrow telecommutes.
6. Green Arrow fights the good fight because he sat there and watched people he loved die (like Spiderman, kind of!).
5. Green Arrow is damned if he doesn't.
4. Green Arrow doesn't think pirates are sexy.


He's being ironic!

3. Green Arrow has no time for losers.
2. Green Arrow doesn't play games.
1. Green Arrow talks a lot!

The comic ends with this bunch of people breaking out the other three villains who were arrested for partying too hard:



Starting from the left and going clockwise, I'm going to try to guess who they are:

1 & 2: Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen
3: Cameltoe
4: Six Pack (the non drunk version)
5: Chupacabra
6: French Wonder Woman
7: Scoliosis
8: Big Guy