When Carter Hall and Sheira Sanders first debuted, their adventures
were told as part of an anthology in Flash
Comics, along with their
good friends of the time, Jay Garrick and even Johnny Thunder and his
genie T-Bolt (whose feature was later taken over by Black Canary). It
was only by the Silver Age that an ongoing series that they got a book
all their own, when Gardner Fox took to writing it following the
success of their preceding stories in DC
Showcase. And at that
particular time, it was the concept of being from the planet Thanagar
that took hold, and the protagonists were Katar Hol and Shayera Thal,
intially two police officers from another world who resided on earth to
check out the local forms of crimefighting. And then of course, when
all was rebooted again post-Crisis on
Infinite Earths, while the Silver
Age protagonists were retconned into being the Golden Age ones, the
leads in 1990’s Hawkworld,
written by John Ostrander, were still from
Thanagar, though this time they didn’t actually try to maintain a
secret ID.
Now, at long last, Carter Hall and Sheira Sanders have their very own
solo series with them as the stars, though this time, Sheira exists in
the form of her own grandneice, Kendra Saunders, whose grandfather is
the adventurer Speed Saunders, first seen in Detective Comics #1 way
back in the mid-1930’s.
And it’s one of the most remarkable fantasy series I’ve ever read, with
excellent devotion to a lot of DC history and sense of adventure, plus
it makes good use of character development focus for today.
For the first adventure, we have the Hawks coming to the aid of the
Stonechat Museum in St. Roch, Louisiana, where they’ve come to work and
reside as consultants, and the owner, Oliver Evans, is struggling to
keep his property out of the hands of the ruthless land owner and
historical artifacts collector Kristopher Roderic, who’s been trying to
take over ownership of the museum for his own greedy purposes. Evans’
son, Danny, is on a trip in India to find a valuble ruby called the
Third Eye of Shiva that could help to save the museum’s funding, and
Hawkman and Hawkgirl, along with the researcher Jayita Sahir, another
employee of Stonechat’s, take off to help him. Which is a good thing
too, since Roderic has enlisted the aid of three villains, Shadow
Thief, Copperhead and Tigress to snatch the gem for him instead.
Hawkman, Jayita, and Shadow Thief and Copperhead get stuck briefly in
an alternate world called Ganesha, where they discover a race of
elephants enslaved by a ruthless dictatorship, and come to their aid in
freeing them before Hawkgirl and Danny can regain the Third Eye gem
from Tigress to free their pals from the alternate world’s dimensions.
It’s quite an enjoyable adventure in the classic comics mode, and which
also helps to set up an effective adversary in Roderic, who, it turns
out, has something to do with the Hawks’ archnemesis, Hath-Set. And it
even sets up a pretty good supporting cast of characters in the title,
including Susan Morrison and Jeremy Barlow, two employees at the museum
who provide some occasional comic relief.
The last three issues have Green Arrow guest starring in a story where
he’s in St. Roch searching for a criminal bowman called the Spider,
Thomas Ludlow, a descendant of an earlier character from the Golden
Age, who’s also a descendant of the Ludlow family from England that
tormented the Flash semi-adversary, the Shade, in the 19th century,
which led him to have to slay the parents of family then in
self-defense. Their descendants would try to pursue him over the next
century, and Thomas Ludlow is the latest in the line of Ludlow members
from that time. And he’s even more crafty than you’d think: not only
does he tend to use deadly arrows, but also ones that leave a line of
spider-like webbing in the flight (shades of Spider-Man!), making a
perfect trademark for himself.
Ludlow’s been trying to frame Green Arrow for the murder or the
targeting of at least five important business figures in the St. Roch
area, and our lovably arrogant avenging archer is in the area to stop
him, and gets some assist from Hawkman, with whom he trades some pretty
good argument banter over the matters involving both Kendra and his own
son Connor Hawke. And the showdown in a city office building is one
very enjoyable spectacle, with Hawkman and Hawkgirl both dealing a blow
to the villain at once! That, I can tell you, is one of the most
charming things about their relationship, in that they actually attack
many of their foes together, in almost perfect synchronization.
All in all, this is a very good first collection of the Winged Warriors
latest series, a must for adventure fans, and which offers some very
good presentation on how Hawkman is quite the fighter he is. And it
also splendidly showcases Hawkgirl as well, making great use out of
Kendra as a new character in the role.
