Discovering The Past
Written By: Robert Venditti
Art By: Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie, Alex Sinclair, Starkings & Comicraft
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: June 13, 2018
It's time to see if DC can wrap everything up from what we got in Savage Hawkman to the Death of Hawkman and while that's a tall order, it seems that they're going to try at least, but really; it looks like all you need to go into this is the knowledge of what Scott Snyder threw out there about Hawkman from Dark Nights: Metal. So yeah, it looks like Carter Hall is out of a coma and he's on his way to discover the truth about himself. Let's jump into this issue and see if Hawkman's picture is still next to the word convoluted in the dictionary. Let's check it out.
For our first foray into Hawkman's solo adventures in the Rebirth/DC Universe era of our favorite comics, we see that Carter Hall is on the hunt for.......... his past. With that, we get an issue that does more to describe the areas he's around in this issue and the people who are helping him and not that much about Carter except for his inner dialog about what his life means and how he doesn't remember everything about his reincarnations.
While this issue does get a little long-winded, it does at least give you the idea that Carter has been around for a long time and for new readers who don't know anything about Hawkman, I guess that's all you really need for the story at hand, not to mention some Indiana Jones type scenarios with a Hawkman spin to them.
All in all, this issue has some pretty excellent art, which I'm happy to say because I'm not usually a fan of Bryan Hitch's work, but here he's made me a fan of what he can and by the end of the issue I can't say that DC has successfully merged all the inconsistencies of Hawkman's past together, but they have gone and created a concept that I at least find interesting that I will happily come back to each and every month to get to the bottom of the mystery that plagues Carter Hall. Yeah, I would have liked this issue to be a little bit more exciting for a first issue, but right now I'm happy that we're finally trying to give Hawkman a singular story that kinda of makes sense if you squint and maybe blur your eyes a bit.
Bits and Pieces:
While this isn't the most exciting issue to start our Hawkman series out with, it does at least try and make sense of Carter Hall and his many incarnations over the years. Yeah, it's not perfect, but I'm all on board to see what we get in the upcoming months to explain our winged archaeologist hero. Even more than making sense though, I just hope that it's fun and that the art continues to be as good as it is here.
6.8/10
Nice review Eric. I've always been intrigued with Hawkman and his complicated history, though I've never been fully invested into one particular iteration of the character. He's always been the one character that looks bad ass that has too much backstory for me to jump in. I very much enjoyed this first issue though. The big Indiana Jones type action as Hawkman is flying to escape the gorilla golem is pretty sweet. This is maybe the best Bryan Hitch art I've seen so far. That two page spread of all the various Hawkmen looks glorious, and he handles the quiet moments out in the boat and in Xanadu's parlor really well. I'm in for now and hopefully Venditti is able compress all these different histories of the character into one decently serviceable version that we can enjoy for a few years.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything you said!!!! I was not expecting to like this issue, yet it was the most fun I've had in a while.
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