Thanagarian Nonsense
Written By: Jeff Parker
Art By: Tim Truman, Enrique Alcatena, John Kalisz
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: April 22, 2015
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
Hawkman's Shadow War has ended but that doesn't mean his adventures have ended. No, instead of kicking back and curating the hell out of some museums with his lady love, Hawkman and Hawkwoman were unfortunate enough to be in Gotham on Dome Day and since their flight is powered by Nth metal and not from an internal power, it remains active and our Hawks are still out on the prowl, stopping crime wherever they can. So let's check out this issue and see how Carter and Shiera are dealing with their year under the dome and let's hope they don't run into any Thanagarian invaders!
Explain It!:
Our issue begins with a group of bandanna clad rioters attacking police officers when from up in the sky our Hawks appear and disperse the angry crowd....... Except for one, who while in the flying grasp of Hawkwoman calls her out as an enforcer (which was the term that was used for police officers on Thanagar) and before Shayera can get to the bottom of this very specific name drop, the rioter shocks her with a weapon, causing her to drop him to his death.......... Yeah, maybe not the smartest move on the rioter's part but once our Hawks inspect the body they realize that he hit her with a Thanagarian shock field and they deduce that the man was actually one of their kind and his final words before his brains leaked out of his head lead our heroes to realize that there are a lot more Thanagarian shadow warriors out there in Gotham.
Once all the excitement has ended, our Hawks take off their masks and wings and head back to their day jobs as curators at the Gotham Museum, where Shiera........... You'll notice that I keep going back and forth between the spelling of the names to depict whether she's in her mask or out and man is it getting tedious. Anyway, Shiera has a new exhibit where she talks about the correlation between animals and heroes throughout time. This goes from the Egyptians depicting their gods as animal beings to modern times where Gotham has it's Batman............. and at the end of the tour, it goes to Shiera outing herself as Hawkwoman as she dawns her mask and wings and flies above the crowd. I guess after a year under the dome, secret identities don't really matter to our Hawks........ or maybe they just sold out because, after that first tour, lines are forming around the block to get into the next show............ So Shayera is an attention whore..........got it. Once our heroes get back in the air and start flying around, they see a distortion in the light and when they go investigate, they find more Thanagarian invaders.
 |
| THIS MIGHT SOUND TERRIBLE BUT IF MUSEUM CURATORS LOOKED LIKE THIS, I MIGHT GO MORE OFTEN.......OR AT ALL. |
In the end, our Hawks take out a swarm of Man-Hawks that the invaders sent after our heroes............ Which I totally forgot about and man are they ridiculous and eventually they go after the invaders themselves, who tell us that they've hooked the rest of the Thanagarian sleeper agents up to the absorbascon.............. again, ridiculous........ so that they can use all those minds to reach out and try and find out what's going on with the dome and how they can get out. As the issue closes one of the people in the absorbascon tells us that it's learned of a great crisis in the future, which even if this city defeats all the other cities on this foreign planet, this crisis will destroy them all.......... That's some heavy knowledge to lay on our heroes........ Especially since as soon as he finishes laying it on them, Telos drops the dome and gives his big speech. So what have we learned today? Everything is futile, so don't even try.
That's it for this issue of Convergence: Hawkman and even though I love the character, after reading this issue I remembered why it's been so hard for Carter Hall to keep his own series. All the Thanagarian science and terms are ridiculous, we have savage Man-Hawks that look like turkeys with Green Goblin heads........ so obviously ridiculous and for the most part, the times that weren't ridiculous were just boring and that's the problem. The writer did a great job of recreating this era of Hawkman and Hawkwoman but this era was really boring and really felt like a throwback to comics from the '60s............ which people from the '80s didn't want to see and people from the 2015's...... Do we call our time the teens now? Well, we certainly don't want comics that feel like a throwback to the '60s..... because they were awful for the most part. It just didn't feel like anything here was all that great. I didn't love the art, the story was just a bunch of things being thrown at you and the only thing that I really enjoyed was the ending............ not because it ended but because it was actually good with a cool twist where our heroes learn that anything they do will be futile because Crisis is in their future. Poor, poor Hawkman.
Bits and Pieces:
While I wanted to really love this issue because I always look forward to seeing Hawkman flying again, the reason this issue doesn't work is that the writer was too good at recreating this era of Hawkman, which was just lousy with nonsense. Crazy Thanagarian science and terms are thrown at you all over this book and it just becomes a chore to get through because of it. Hopefully, the next issue will dial back the exposition and let our heroes get into proper action without trying to tie it into the Shadow War. I do have to say that the ending of this book was one of the better in this entire Convergence event and that should matter for something.
5.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment