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Monday, June 15, 2009

Hawkgirl dissatisfaction

I was *so* pleased with Hawkman, I really enjoyed all of it, there was so much good stuff happening and it was a really layered and mature story. OK the last few issues before One Year later were a bit off, but tbh I haven’t yet found a DC title that wasn’t a bit off in the few issues just before and around Infinite Crisis.

Hawkgirl had a change of writer in Walter Simonson and it was crap. The depth of relationship between her and Carter has gone and thought bubbles were introduced. Ugh. I think Simonson used the narration boxes and thought bubbles to echo more old fashioned styles, so maybe other readers got a kick out of it, but I hated it. Or would it be the letterer (Rob Leigh) responsible for this? Either way, I’ve read other Simonson books and I’m sure they’re usually more enjoyable than Hawkgirl, so maybe it is just a matter of taste (or generation?).

The end of the run saw Kendra and Carter fighting Hath-Set again, and after 3500 years, defeating him. This should have been more interesting than it was. Hawkman was written by Geoff Johns, then Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray and any of them would have done this last fight far better.

This fight irked me in that it was a reminder of how Hath-Set had been dropped by Johns early on in Hawkman and then ignored until the last few issues of Hawkgirl. Suddenly Hath-Set can possess many people’s minds and not just one descendent at a time. An explanation for how this came about would have been nice.

Also, Kendra suddenly has telekinetic powers over her wings. Why? My final jibe is over the art – about half the panels in every issue has Hawkgirl’s nipples on prominent display. I guess after Infinite Crisis she always gets the horn when fighting baddies.

There were a couple of good bits, the 2 issues with the female furies and a giant robot Kendra were pretty cool, but that’s more about the art than the writing. Simonson also expanded on how Sheira’s soul joined with Kendra, which was useful to me. On the whole though, I’m very glad I never bought the Hawkgirl trades.

To take away from the crapness have some cover and internal art, mostly from Hawkman:







Kendra does make a damn fine robot:

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