I haven’t been fair to The Savage Hawkman. I’ve been poking fun at the book for months. There’s something about dubbing Hawkman “savage” and then making him all spikey that is just hysterically desperate. It’s almost like DC is hoping that readers will mistake Hawkman for Wolverine with wings. Little did I know when I was cracking those jokes that I was on to something.
But first, let me get this out of the way. The Savage Hawkman may be kind of absurd. But it’s also pretty good. If you’re a fan of the character and you don’t mind DC tweaking him yet again, I think you’ll find a good bit to like here.
The story opens with Carter Hall trying to dispose of his Nth metal gear. We’re never really told what pushed him to this point. But it’s pretty clear Carter sees a division between himself and Hawkman. And he feels that only one of them can survive. By destroying his gear, Carter thinks he is burying Hawkman forever. But since this book isn’t called The Savage Carter Hall, you can probably guess that things don’t go exactly according to plan.
What happens next isn’t exactly clear. It seems the gear fights back somehow. There are flames. Eventually, Carter wakes up at home naked and burned. It’s never explained how he got home or how much time has passed. These are clearly issues that will be addressed in future issues.
Up to this point, I was getting a little frustrated with Carter’s mysterious new status quo. As readers, we weren’t being clued into what was happening or why. But just when I found myself losing interest, Carter went to work exploring some kind of alien artifacts. For me, this is when the book really found its niche.
At this point, the story takes a decidedly sci-fi turn. Carter’s employer believes he has found physical evidence of human/alien interaction. It’s a regular X-files investigation and Carter’s in the center of it.But before he can uncover any answers, something goes horribly wrong.
The issue ends with a showdown between Carter and an alien entity known as Morphicius. When confronted, Carter’s Hawkman armor starts growing out of his skin Wolvie-style. Yeah, it’s kind of ridiculous. But a B-movie kind of way, it was fun too. I decided to roll with it.
There’s nothing especially ground-breaking about Tony Daniel’s take on Hawkman. But it’s a fun mix of Indiana Jones, B-movie cliches and a touch of Conan the Barbarian that is bound to entertain genre fans. The art by Philip Tan is equally okay. I kind of dug the full-page shot of Carter in his newly generated Hawkgear. It’s kind of a silly book. But there’s enough going on here to bring me back for another look.
Green Lanterns New Guardians #1
So I’m a little curious for DC being a universe where aliens from space are known about: just what would really be special about Carter’s boss finding alien/human interaction?
I wondered the same thing myself. They thought they might have found the remains of an alien abduction which I guess is different from knowing Superman is an alien. But I’m not sure how big a deal it would really be in a world full of known aliens.
I thought this was a pretty awful comic.
Also, it looks like Tan maybe drew this one digitally. It certainly looks very different to his art in the first series of Batman and Robin (which I read a couple of days ago).
I won’t say awful. I had low expectations and it exceeded them.