Take That Hawkman Fans

Okay, so for fifteen years after the original Crisis, Hawkman was hard to figure out, there were often multiple copies of him running around at the same time, and there were some questions about when the Hawkman from space originally came to Earth, to the point where DC thought it would be wise just to merge both Hawkmen and Hawkgirl into one being, and that that would sort itself out:




Well, it didn't, but it did convince DC to park Hawkman in limbo for about five years until Geoff Johns had the good sense to simply pick one Hawkman and basically ignore any other versions as much as possible. So, Hawkman was established as Carter Hall, an archeologist who was really the reincarnation of an Egyptian Pharoh, and so on, not the best origin, but it worked...until DC decided to screw around with it...

Yep, it was all a lie...including those two stories where parts of the JSA go back in time to hang out with the past incarnation of Hawkman...and Dr. Fate and Black Adam's past relationship's with the man....which is why retconning is so dangerous, because it is almost never confined to the retconnee.

I mean, if they were saying that Hawkman was never an Egyptian Prince, that'd be fine, but they're saying that the Prince himself never existed when clearly he did, and DC has to retcon those stories away too because they no longer make sense....unless this is all one larger mind game, in which case it's a truly bizarre choice for the plot of a one-shot.

But how did this twist of fate happen? Well....
See, fake memories? Not very superheroic, but memories that have bled through from other timelines....now that's the mark of a true defender of the earth.

And why did this happen?
I don't think anyone can deny that the results have been confusing...and giving Hawkman the power to see through retcons...well, that's going to be great, because the only more damaging to continuity and telling a good a story than retcons is bringing direct attention to those inconsistencies.

So, Hawkman, once an Egyptian Prince, now a fourth-wall busting guy with muddled memories.

Bad Character Designs: JSA Edition

Here's the thing, sometimes Geoff Johns writes excellent comics, like the first volume of JSA or the first half of his Flash run and the like, but sometimes....not so much. I mean, here's some of the great characters introduced in the pages of JSA over the last year:


Amazing Man III:
Now, you may ask yourself, "Wait, who the hell is Amazing Man, and why are there three of them?" Well, the first one was created by Roy Thomas because otherwise his All-Star Squadron would have had a conspicuously all-white super-team fighting the Nazis, plus it was probably worth exploring how a African-American super-hero would deal with the racism of the 1940s.

The second Amazing Man was a mainstay of the Justice League in the painful period between Giffen/DeMatteis and Morrison....and that should tell you all you need to know about him.

But here we are again, with a new Amazing Man, who's a black guy...from New Orleans, and based on his costume, I'm going to go ahead and guess his portrayal will be downright Winickian in its subtlety.

Lance:
First of all, Lance is a pretty terrible name for a super-hero, by pretty much any measure.

Second, his hook is that he's the great-grandson of FDR which seems kind of stupid, if only because it makes the JSA out to be some sort of aristocratic coalition that determines membership based on bloodline, which doesn't quite seem right. I mean, is really only getting in because of who his ancestors were?

Finally, he is enlisted soldier, fighting in one of America's real-life wars who wears some mysterious device on his arm, and he's being brought into an organization concerned with educating young super-heroes in the proper use of their powers....and that's a problem because that happens to be the exact description of the Gauntlet from Avengers: The Initiative.

Terrifying Designs in Comic Book History

War Machine 1992:
About as good a look as you're going to find in the early-to-mid 90s

War Machine 1999:
You will believe a Buick can fly!