Review | The Savage Hawkman #1

Like Aquaman, Hawkman has a fundamental problem. He's silly. The costume looks like an Atlanta Hawks mascot who comes out to dunk off a trampoline at halftime. In fact, swap that battleaxe on the cover with a roundball, put Ronny Turiaf in the foreground, and you have a classic posterization shot. Couple this innate ridiculousness of the character with this past summer's viral video mocking the strap-on wings off the dude, and you have a marketing problem. What does DC do to make him "cool?" Amp up the aggro, natch. The Savage Hawkman. Ooo, he's an angry angel! He has MORE SPIKES. This testosterone injection unfortunately makes for a predictably one-dimensional comic. Carter Hall is sick and tired of being Hawkman. Who can blame him? We open on Hall burying his hero persona. But the Hawkman spirit won't let him quit. Once a mere outfit in a closet, now the Hawkman duds are magically bound inside Hall, ready to be summoned up when Hall hulks out. This magic happens because Hall...shoots his costume with a pistol? Okay.

There's a way around this trite muscle-flexing. Wonder Woman did it. Milk the mythology; have some more fun with the character. He'll never look cool, so make him clever. Or, play up his Justice League benchwarmer status. Make this a tale of down and out has-been. Doesn't The Misanthropic Hawkman sound far more interesting?