Hawkman #23 Review

A Pocket Full Of Posies 

Written By: Robert Venditti

Art By: Marcio Takara, Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert, Jeremy Cox, Rob Leigh

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: May 5, 2020

It's time to get back to our regularly scheduled comics after a short hiatus and with that, back to the grand adventures of our Winged Warrior, Hawkman.  When last we left our constantly resurrecting renaissance man, he was infected by the Batman Who Laughs, where he became the evil Sky Tyrant.  If that wasn't enough, he planned on using an ancient key to some catastrophic weapon that would obliterate all life in the universe, thus, allowing him to never pay back his life debt, which would allow him to continue resurrecting forever.  Thankfully, Adam Strange, Ray Palmer and Hawkwoman were there to stop him, but at the end of the last issue, Hawkwoman and Sky Tyrant were teleported away by the ancient key of doom.  Let's jump into this issue and see what is next for our hero.  Let's check it out.



Even though I wasn't a fan of the infection story that swept through this title, turning our hero into a past incarnation of Carter Hall from Earth-3, Sky Tyrant, we discover in this issue that the infection is simply gone now and that comes off feeling even more lackluster than the story about the infection.  Thankfully though, we use this issue to look back into Hawkman and Hawkwoman's lives to see one of their incarnations during the Black Plague in Spain in 1650.

While I love a coherent story that feels well thought out, I do enjoy these snippets that we get of Carter's past lives, even if they do break up the momentum of what we're dealing with, but fans of Shayera Hol will probably be happy as hell to see a story that features both our heroes throughout time, where they come to find each other and weirdly........ kind of points out the fear and anxiety that a lot of us are dealing with during the current climate of the world when it comes to sickness.  Thankfully though, we've progressed enough that we don't point fingers at people who aren't sick and condemn them as a demon, who needs to be burned at the stake to cure the world.  By the end of the issue though, we discover that the key that transported our heroes and for some reason seems to have cured Carter Hall of his infection has brought them full circle to where our series began, with the banished God Beyond The Void.

All in all, I wish we could have had a more thought out look at Sky Tyrant, not to mention his cure, but this is an interesting issue that gives me not only what I want in showing off some of Carter's and Shayera's past lives but also brings the story to an interesting head by bringing us back to the God Beyond the Void, where hopefully we'll learn more about this entity, Carter's original form of K'tar Deathbringer and how Shayera has something to do with the being that cursed/gifted Carter with the power of resurrection to pay the pain that he had caused.   The art in this issue is excellent to look at and everything that we're dealing with, whether the plague or our heroes within the Void are colored in a wonderfully dark manner that really accentuates the mood of the era of the flashback and then the despair our heroes currently find themselves in.

Bits and Pieces:

While we do get an interesting flashback to one of Carter and Shayera's past lives and a really cool cliffhanger that brings this series back to something that feels like the Batman Who Laughs' infection storyline was nothing but forced nonsense, it's because we were given that forced nonsense that I want a satisfying conclusion to it and in this issue we simply see that the infection is over and that's it.  We're moving on now and I'm excited for what's to come, but everything that has led up to this feels so small because us how simple it is just tossed aside here.

6.8/10