Hawkman: Found #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Icarus On Repeat

Written By: Jeff Lemire

Art By: Bryan Hitch, Kevin Nowlan, Alex Sinclair, Jeremiah Skipper, Clayton Cowles

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: December 27, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

In Dark Nights: Metal #4 we went through a topsy-turvy story to get us to our cliffhanger, where we saw what had happened to Hawkman since he disappeared so long ago.......... He apparently became a giant hawk-god looking creature who became Barbatos' dragon at the Forge of Worlds.  Yeah....  With so much story to fill in to that point, I really hope that Hawkman: Found does the trick and brings all of the readers up to date with everything that's been going on in Metal.  That's a tall order though with a one-shot so let's hope for the best as we dive into this issue and see what Hawkman's been up to.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!;

Our issue begins with Carter Hall describing a dream that he has every time he falls asleep, where he begins flying and remembers that he's a warrior before his weight returns to him and he crashes down to the surface below.  After he awakes startled from this, he then marks the days with a hawk symbol to try and gauge how long he's been in the Dark Multiverse....... even though a notch would be easier, but with that, we see that he's not alone and the people in this area are constantly plagued by bird headed, flying warriors, who snatch the people up.  

Yeah, there's not much to this because eventually Carter decides that he's had enough, fights the bird warriors, before climbing up a cliff face so that he can access their space ship.  Inside, he finds weapons that remind him about who he actually is and what brought him there........ Namely, the disappearance of the Challengers of the Unknown and his own quest for exploration into this darkness, but in this flashback we see that he made his way to the Forge of Worlds, where he decided that he needed to become the new forger.  

In the end, after he fights off a Judge Dredd looking version of himself, we realize that something went down when he decided to become the forger and that he's actually stuck in what appears to be the mind of the Hawk God looking version of himself, who proclaimed to be Barbatos' dragon in the last issue of Metal and somehow this makes him relive him failing to become himself over and over again like if he was stuck on a Dark Tower like Batman and Superman were.  Ultimately though, we really get nothing out of this issue.

That's it for this issue of Hawkman: Found and while it is reminiscent of Batman: Lost in how it shows Hawkman in a repetition of failures as he tries to remember who he is and how he got to the Dark Multiverse, this issue does nothing to give us any idea at how or why Hawkman then became the Dragon of Barbatos' at the Forge of Worlds....... or why the hell he became a great big, scary, hawk mama jama.  All it does is show you that he's fighting in his mind....... possibly..... and that he can't seem to get out and that's it....... Which is really disappointing.  The best thing about this issue and the oddest thing in my mind is how much I enjoyed Bryan Hitch's art in this issue.  Yeah, there are fans out there, but I've never been one of them until now.  This is probably the best looking art we've gotten from Hitch in years and it really made this issue bearable to read since we weren't getting much from the story.

Bits and Pieces:

This issue was really disappointing because it didn't do anything to break new ground in the Metal story and only gave us a glimpse that Carter Hall is still around somewhere, but no ideas about how or why he is what he currently is in the Metal story.  Just a bunch of things that don't mean anything to the event but thankfully, we had some great art by Bryan Hitch that really made this bearable.

5.1/10