Amongst comedian guide readers, Hawkman is a hero with somewhat little bit of a repute. Typically, he’s an alien. Typically, he’s the reincarnation of an Egyptian prince. Others, he seems to be the bodily embodiment of some type of primordial hawk-god. Writers have spent a few years attempting to reconcile the various totally different makes an attempt to “crack” the character of Hawkman. As is inevitably the case, these makes an attempt are likely to solely additional complicate the difficulty. However for Hawkman’s stay motion cinematic debut in Black Adam, there are only some issues it’s good to know. Particularly that Hawkman loves three issues, on this order: flight, historical past and justice.
Two Nice Tastes
After all, greater than any of these, Hawkman’s biggest love is Hawkwoman. Their love is one which goes again to Hawkman’s very first look, in 1939’s Flash Comics #1. Again then, within the Golden Age of superheroes, Hawkman was a standout idea. He had a romantic companion who fought alongside him, for one. However much more exceptional was his means to fly. Although ubiquitous among the many super-set at this time, Superman hadn’t but had his preliminary flight when Hawkman first soared by way of the skies. Most of Hawkman’s co-founders within the Justice Society of America had no technique of flight on their very own. Solely heroes with magic powers, just like the Spectre, Alan Scott and Thunderbolt, may give themselves the facility to fly and it was merely a consequence of getting each conceivable energy. Hawkman alone was a hero who counted flight as his main energy. (Till Starman, that’s, however that wouldn’t be for an additional 5 points after the founding of the JSA.)
What was the key of Hawkman’s flight? A cloth referred to as Nth steel (or, as referred to as in its earliest appearances, “ninth steel”), with gravity defying properties. That’s an essential distinction in the case of Hawkman: it’s that Nth steel harness he wears round his chest which permits him to fly. The connected wings are merely there for steering.
In line with Hawkman’s authentic Golden Age origin by co-creator Gardner Fox, Hawkman is archaeologist and museum curator Carter Corridor, whose discovery of Nth steel on an archaeological dig awakens him to his previous life: that of the Egyptian Prince Khufu. His companion, Shiera, was in that previous life Prince Khufu’s consort, destined to be with him throughout time in a cycle of reincarnation. Impressed by Khufu’s sturdy sense of justice, Carter used the Nth steel to style his crimefighting persona of Hawkman, avenger of the skies.
It was fairly easy as superhero origin tales go. The reincarnation angle is new, however not too alien an idea for readers to grasp. However an alien idea is strictly what would outline Hawkman’s future within the Silver Age.
The Than’ Man
Within the Sixties, editor Julius Schwartz was trying to reinvent DC’s steady of heroes with extra up to date, science fiction pushed ideas. The magical Inexperienced Lantern was now a corpsman in an intergalactic union of house cops. The Atom was now not a short-statured wrestler, however a scientist who may really shrink at will. For Hawkman, Schwartz gave Fox one other crack at reinventing his winged hero to suit DC’s new path. In a brand new origin informed in The Courageous and the Daring #34, Fox did away with the reincarnation story. This time, Carter Corridor was the human disguise of Katar Hal, an alien police officer from the planet Thanagar, a world the place everybody used Nth Steel to grant themselves flight. Katar and his companion, a reimagined Hawkwoman, pursue the Thanagarian felony Byth to Earth, the place they keep and assume human identities as museum curators.
How do you reconcile these two origins? Within the Silver Age, you didn’t must. Like all Golden Age heroes, the reincarnated Prince Khufu was the Hawkman of Earth-Two. The alien Katar Hal was the Hawkman of Earth-One. Two totally different origins, two totally different worlds, two totally different Hawkmen.
Now It Will get Difficult
It’s solely after Disaster on Infinite Earths that Hawkman’s story actually will get difficult, but it surely’s an issue we’ve since solved. This part is barely right here to deal with the thought of Hawkman being a “complicated” character. If you happen to’d similar to to know what Hawkman’s deal actually is, go forward and skip to the subsequent part.
With the consolidation of Earth-One and Earth-Two into one continuity, there may now solely be one Hawkman. Tim Truman retold Hawkman’s Thanagarian previous for the fashionable period together with his 1989 Hawkworld miniseries, however there was one drawback: Hawkman was already a member of the Justice League of America by the point Hawkworld was printed. So Hawkman’s earlier Justice League adventures had been retroactively ascribed to Hawkman impersonator Fel Andar, a Thanagarian double agent infiltrating Earth underneath the guise of a hero.
Having two Hawkmen round, each from Thanagar however having left at totally different instances, was deemed a troublesome idea for readers to get round, so in 1994’s Zero Hour occasion, they…effectively, made it worse by consolidating each Hawkmen right into a form of psychopompous totemic hawk deity. This storyline by no means actually went wherever and is often solely introduced up when persons are attempting to impress you with how difficult Hawkman is. It does ultimately get resolved, however when it does, we uncover that the entity wasn’t really Hawkman in any respect however associated to the hero Hawk of Hawk and Dove. Go forward and disrespect it. (Except you’re an enormous Hawk fan, I suppose, wherein case, go nuts!)
Fixing for Hawkman
Later within the ’90s, James Robinson and Geoff Johns revived the traditional Hawkman origin as a part of their wider effort to revitalize the Justice Society as a complete. Katar Hal, the Thanagarian Hawkman, and Carter Corridor, the Hawkman of the Golden Age Justice Society and reincarnation of Prince Khufu, co-existed now as separate entities. What Johns added to the Hawkman mythology was the concept the reincarnation cycle didn’t simply go straight from Khufu to Carter—there have been a bunch of lives that Hawkman lived in between, every with their very own distinctive adventures in each period. The problems of Johns’ 2002 Hawkman collection which share these tales stay a spotlight of the run.
Johns had half the riddle of Hawkman solved there, together with his love of historical past immediately informing his character by way of each period. Nevertheless it was solely in 2018 that Robert Venditti and Bryan Hitch lastly solved the Hawkman riddle—an issue so notorious that even Bat-Mite devoted a full challenge of his 2015 collection to poke enjoyable at it.
In Venditti and Hitch’s Hawkman #1, we’re given an evidence of Hawkman’s historical past so miraculously elegant that it’s a surprise nobody ever considered it earlier than. How can Hawkman be each a Thanagarian policeman and an historic Egyptian prince? It’s easy: Hawkman’s reincarnation cycle doesn’t simply happen by way of time, however by way of house.
In a previous life, Carter Corridor has been a Thanagarian. He’s additionally been a Rannian, a Kryptonian, even a New God. Most significantly, these lives don’t essentially happen in linear order, which means that Hawkman’s private timeline of lives can go backwards, forwards and even concurrently by way of time as we understand it. The ramifications of this are as huge as probably the most imaginative of you may count on, and so they’re totally explored within the collection’ unforgettable twenty-nine points.
How all of this performs into Black Adam is anyone’s guess, however no less than now you possibly can say that you understand the place Hawkman comes from and what he’s about. In each life Hawkman’s ever lived, he’s been about three issues: flight, historical past and justice. And on this newest incarnation of his within the DC movie universe, you’re about to witness all of them. Let’s soar.
Black Adam, that includes Pierce Brosnan as Physician Destiny, hits theaters Friday, October 21. For all the newest information, options and trailers from the movie, go to our official Black Adam hub.
Alex Jaffe is the writer of our month-to-month “Ask the Query” column and writes about TV, motion pictures, comics and superhero historical past for DCComics.com. Comply with him on Twitter at @AlexJaffe and discover him within the DC Group as HubCityQuestion.
