Hawkman: Found #1 – Jeff Lemire, Writer; Bryan Hitch, Penciller; Kevin Nowlan, Inker; Alex Sinclair, Colorist
Ratings:
Ray – 8.5/10
Corrina: The Neverending Struggle
WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW!
Ray: A few weeks back, we got the bizarre one-shot Batman: Lost, which saw Batman catapulting through the Multiverse and confronting his past, his present, and his future in a series of surreal segments. This issue in many ways is the counterpart, as Jeff Lemire returns to the DCU with his first full-length DC comic since his Green Arrow run. It focuses on Hawkman, whose previous death and transformation at Barbatos’ hands has been a focal point of the main Metal event. This issue is as complex and surreal as you’d expect out of this event, but unlike Batman: Lost, I’m not sure Hawkman is quite compelling enough yet to carry it in the same way. The issue opens with Hawkman relating a dream he has every day, of soaring through the sky as his costumed alter ego, before he wakes up once again as Carter Hall, a normal human in an endless battle he can’t win.
That battle would be against the Man-Hawks, a horrific race of humanoid bird warriors that come each day from a massive spaceship. He’s surrounded by allies, fellow warriors that seem familiar, but he can’t place them. The highlight of this issue is Bryan Hitch’s art, which is at its best showing off wild, sweeping battles with an epic scale. The Man-Hawks are suitably monstrous, and Carter playing the Conan-meets-Indiana-Jones hero archetype is where he’s at his best.
There’s all sort of little hints through the story as to where he is, but there just isn’t enough Hawkman history to draw on to create a massively compelling puzzle box of a trap like there was for Batman. What we’re left with, ultimately, is a compelling Hawkman story with a dramatic twist ending that doesn’t quite make us care about Hawkman yet. There are shades of Jeff Lemire’s brilliance in here, but I imagine he’ll be able to cut loose a lot more in The Terrifics.
Corrina: It’s not that this comic is bad. I could never view a comic drawn by Hitch and written by Lemire as bad overall.
It’s that it feels incomplete.
I should have expected that from a Metal tie-in story but, somehow, I’d hoped this would have a specific story to tell. There are glimmers of something fascinating, such as seeing all the various lives Carter Hall has lived embodied in several panels. The idea that Carter is basically stuck in an interdimensional version of Groundhog Day within his multiple lives adds an emotional weight to his struggles.
But the ending disappoints because there isn’t one and the one we have, we know is a bad thing for Carter. It’s frustrating, given the talent on the book. (But I guess I could say that about the entire Metal event.)
Disclaimer: GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
