Hawkman by Geoff Johns Book Two (Hawkman

Hawkman/Hawkgirl (2002) (Collected Editions) #3-3.5

by Geoff Johns, Rags Morales (Artist), José Luis García-López (Artist)

Geoff Johns’ reinvigorating run on Hawkman continues here, as Carter Hall faces the question of whether an ancient, immortal warrior truly has a place in the modern world.

 Hawkman’s only just begun building a new life in St. Roch through his cycle of reincarnation, but his tangled past won’t be left behind. A high-flying confrontation with another Hawkman and Hawkwoman, a brutal attack from the Headhunter and a violent uprising in Kahndaq launched by Black Adam all intrude on Carter Hall’s peace. Even after taking command of the Justice Society of America and fighting alongside friends Hawkgirl and the Atom, can the winged warrior face such foes without losing the remnants of his humanity?

 Hawkman by Geoff Johns Book Two features stories by Geoff Johns (Justice League, Teen Titans) and art from celebrated talents Rags Morales (Action Comics, Hourman), Michael Bair (JSA, Identity Crisis), José Luis García-López (JLA: Classified, Batman Confidential) and others. Collects Hawkman #15-25 and JSA #56-58.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Dc Comics, Superheroes, Adventure, Action, Comic Book

331 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 17, 2018

About the author

Geoff Johns originally hails from Detroit, Michigan. He attended Michigan State University, where he earned a degree in Media Arts and Film. He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s in search of work within the film industry. Through perseverance, Geoff ended up as the assistant to Richard Donner, working on Conspiracy Theory and Lethal Weapon 4. During that time, he also began his comics career writing Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. and JSA (co-written with David S. Goyer) for DC Comics. He worked with Richard Donner for four years, leaving the company to pursue writing full-time.

His first comics assignments led to a critically acclaimed five-year run on the The Flash. Since then, he has quickly become one of the most popular and prolific comics writers today, working on such titles including a highly successful re-imagining of Green Lantern, Action Comics (co-written with Richard Donner), Teen Titans, Justice Society of America, Infinite Crisis and the experimental breakout hit series 52 for DC with Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid. Geoff received the Wizard Fan Award for Breakout Talent of 2002 and Writer of the Year for 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 as well as the CBG Writer of the Year 2003 thru 2005, 2007 and CBG Best Comic Book Series for JSA 2001 thru 2005. Geoff also developed BLADE: THE SERIES with David S. Goyer, as well as penned the acclaimed “Legion” episode of SMALLVILLE. He also served as staff writer for the fourth season of ROBOT CHICKEN.

Geoff recently became a New York Times Bestselling author with the graphic novel Superman: Brainiac with art by Gary Frank.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

First Shayera Thal returns to see if her partner, Katar Hol, returned with Carter Hall. Johns does a fantastic job of straightening out the various Hawkmen from over the years. It was great to see the Hawkworld characters again. I loved that book. Shayera was such a badass. Then Hawkman is attacked by the Headhunter who wants to shrink his head for his knowledge. Lastly, we get the big crossover with the JSA. Black Adam has overthrown his ancestral home, Kahndaq and the JSA go in to stop him. This is a HUGE donnybrook with major repercussions to a lot of the JSA.

Johns does such amazing work with a character no one has been able to work since he left the book. Rags Morales work looks great is this book. He has a very classic style that is perfect for Hawkman.

[Carlex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three and a half wings.

The comic is fine but in the final part there are many characters from the Justice Society of America that I did not know. On the other hand, the main character is not as coherent as in the previous book, but I suppose that this is less noticeable if you read an issue per month. Overall I have enjoyed both the development and the drawing.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Major points deducted for the tedious first few issues dealing with disentangling the title character's ludicrously convoluted backstory, but once the Justice Society of America start to get involved the storytelling and art take a major step up, both for some proper grimdark...



...and some Power Girl hilarity in the DC universe's New Orleans stand-in, St. Roch:



A very entertaining tome full of C-listers, I still recommend it!

[Alessio De Agostini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Opinione personale:
Continua la mia avventura con l' Hawkman di Johns e questo secondo volume è qualcosa di grandioso. Se il primo volume mi era piaciuto, questo secondo arco narrativo mi ha entusiasmato e l' ho amato.
Questa seconda raccolta riprende dalla conclusione del primo volume, ovvero con Kendra Saunders accusata per l' omicidio di un poliziotto, poi avremo Hawkman alla riscoperta delle sue vite precedenti, mentre una minaccia incombe su di lui. La minaccia ha un nome e si chiama "il cacciatore di teste". Un villain che mi è piaciuto molto ( che non conoscevo), che rende la storia molto dura e cruda e nella quale Hawkman sarà messo a dura prova sia fisicamente che mentalmente.
Nell' ultimo arco narrativo avremo Black Adam come nemico(?). Il Kahndaq è sotto dittatura. Black Adam e il suo gruppo di nemici/antieroi cercheranno di liberarlo, ovviamente senza le buone maniere, a cercare di tenere sotto controllo la situazione arriva la JSA. Riuscirà la JSA a far tornare una situazione pacifica?
Questa storia mi ha fatto approfondire il personaggio di Black Adam, mostrando le sue buonissime ragioni per far crollare la situazione politica che vive nel suo stato. Un Black Adam patriottico, con la voglia di liberare la gioventù del Kahndaq dalla schiavitù.
Inoltre mi è piaciuto molto anche il personaggio di Atom Smasher, altro personaggio che non conoscevo e che ho trovato molto interessante a livello psicologico.
Avete letto questo altro volume della run di Johns? Cosa ne pensate?

[Tony Laplume · Rating 5 out of 5]

Geoff Johns’ Hawkman had been one of my gaps in his career, so reading this volume helps fill some of that. It’s also connective tissue not only to Johns’ own further work in 52, but the later brilliant Robert Venditti Hawkman series.

Johns can sometimes be undervalued by fans. He became such a ubiquitous architect, who became best known for the unpopular movies DC put up against the massively popular MCU, his legacy can seem suspect. But there have been few enough writers to forge such a positive legacy in this medium. His Green Lantern saga alone forged a decade of massive franchise building that can still be felt today (that John Stewart is active again today has less to do with fans who otherwise only know DC from cartoons and more Johns’ insistence at building the lore back up, including putting a green ring back on Stewart’s finger, at finally just letting all the human Green Lanterns exist simultaneously), and that’s really a result of the work he previously did to finally make sense of Hawkman.

Before Johns, Hawkman was a legacy character with no connective tissue between incarcerations. He was an easily identifiable character who kept popping up, but in different versions that were basically the same one but in different eras, for no other reason than he just wasn’t popular enough to sustain interest at sufficient levels to keep any one of them around indefinitely. He was one step below Aquaman! Aquaman was visible enough in the mainstream to become a joke. Hawkman was invisible. Fans knew him. But that was pretty much it.

Johns fixed that. Hawkman was his first real project. He created the idea that Hawkman, and Hawkwoman, is an ancient reincarnation cycle. He reconciled all the versions into one story. Even here in 2023, some twenty years later, it’s still a concept complex enough that it’s just beyond the grasp of even fans to accept on an ongoing basis, but it’s far more than the character ever had. What defines Hawkman other than this revised lineage? He’s got this reputation of being a tank. He’s the guy who is a savage warrior. In the New 52, he even briefly had a series titled Savage Hawkman. But how do you tell superhero stories with a guy like that?

By the end of this volume, Johns had an answer even for that. The guy is basically at war with himself. He’s the Wolverine who will truly never be able to reconcile to his own nature. In a lot of ways, he’s really a perfect superhero archetype. In modern comics the whole idea is becoming incredibly insular. These characters are fairly removed from any real conception of the real world. And actually, Johns himself walked away from that basically after this work, too, and you can see how and why in these pages.

So there are a lot of reasons to revisit this work. It’s a lot more integral to the medium than it might seem, and incidentally it’s also the last regular comics work Rags Morales drew before Identity Crisis rewrote his legacy.

Yeah. Hawkman! Who would’ve thought?

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is certainly a lot stronger than the first volume, since Johns manages to find his groove with the characters a lot quicker with these stories, but it's still a bit too disjointed for my tastes.

The volume opens with a three part story that attempts to sort out the Hawk-mythos surrounding Carter, Kendra, Katara, and Shayara, which is fairly successful but a bit complicated, especially for those unfamiliar with Hawk-Lore anyway.

Then we get two one-shot stories, one that focuses on Carter's previous lives and another that serves as a set-up to Black Reign, the Black Adam story that takes up the latter half of this book.

The strongest story is probably the Headhunter, but it resets the Carter/Kendra relationship yet again before spiralling off without resolving itself, despite the interesting bad guy that doesn't really get time to show off as much as I'd have liked.

Black Reign itself is a crossover between Hawkman's title and JSA, both of which Johns was writing at the time, but it's more of an excuse to have a six issue crossover in three months, because it's not really a Hawkman story anyway, more of a resolution of plotlines that have been percolating over in JSA for a long time. It's good, but it doesn't resolve many of Hawkman's plots, and then it just ends, so it's a bit unsatisfying for pure Hawkman readers.

I love Geoff Johns. I really do. But this isn't his best work. JSA though, that's really freaking good, so go track down old trades of that if you really want to see Johns work his magic on these characters.

[Ανδρέας Μιχαηλίδης · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely a solid run. Not without its faults here and there, especially the weird psychological ups and downs of the characters, but all in all, good, enjoyable superhero fare, especially for someone who is not invested in the characters a priori. My one peeve is the unhinged condition in which Hawkman is left before shifting into a crossover.

The issues with Shayera Thal were especially good and I liked her no-nonsense attitude in contrast with the usually conflicted Kendra. Also the issue where Carter Hall visits his past and his grave in Germany was beautifully written and moving.

It is interesting how various characters tie into the Hawkman mythos and made relevant even of you don't know that much about them.

And as always, the art of Rags Morales is a beauty to behold.

[Zachary King · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded to 5. Johns continues to do very interesting things with Hawkman and his convoluted history, but the book loses its tight focus near the end when it becomes embroiled in a crossover with JSA. “Black Reign” is still a great story, but it involves Hawkman only passingly.

[Roberto Diaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid read in which Johns tries to wrap up the back story of Hawkman in the first issues, with little story arcs and one shots, to then crossover with JSA. A good revolving door of artist accompany the regular Rag Morales, with the beautiful covers by John Watson. Not essential, but good read.

[Nate]

Reviewing the entire Johns run. As I’ve gotten more and more into DC, I’ve become aware of the clusterfuck that is Hawkman continuity. Johns reintroduced the character in JSA (that arc is essentially volume 0 of this run) and against all odds made all the Hawkman incarnations make sense together. I mean, the continuity is still wild, but he streamlined it in a way where I could at least repeat it back coherently. That aside, the question remains if Hawkman is interesting enough to carry his own series. The answer? Sort of. This series should be called Hawkman and Hawkgirl, considering how much page time she has. And Hawkman himself doesn’t have a clear arc from beginning to end; there’s not really an overarching theme either. Still, Johns is a good enough writer to make this an entertaining, albeit standard superhero comic. As usual, there’s nice continuity nods throughout. I especially like Carter’s friendship with Ray Palmer, recalling their time as JLA newbies. And the JSA crossover at the end builds on Johns’ (and others’) work with Black Adam, Atom Smasher and more, while changing the status quo in several ways. As for Hawkman himself... he’s fine. I found Kendra more interesting generally, and even she wasn’t as compelling as she was in Johns’ JSA. Perhaps the best character moment comes in the issue where Carter visits his previous incarnation’s grave in Germany. I would have liked to see more of him exploring his past like this, or flashbacks to previously unseen incarnations (James Robinson’s issue about the Western versions was also a highlight). Maybe it would have been too similar to Starman, with a bunch of Times Past issues? Alas, Johns keeps it mostly in the present, with standard fighting here and dashes of angst there. All in all, not bad, but I think the new reincarnation origin could have been explored more. Also, Rags Morales’ art is very good, to say nothing of the beautiful Andrew Robinson covers.

[Michael Emond · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an okay book BUT I will admit I am not a huge Johns fan. I love his attention to the history of the characters. I love his striving to bring continuity to a character and expand on that history - Hawkman is a challenge because he has been rebooted a lot. But when it comes ot the actual STORIES? He leaves me a bit flat. I don't hate them but they aren't ones I would ever want to reread.

The first volume was very solid and I enjoyed it, this one was less so, mostly because a lot of it focuses on an uprising by Black Adam and is more a JSA story than a Hawkman story - in fact he is portrayed as a bit of a dick in this volume. He - for very little reason - flies off in a rage and becomes a different character than the first volume. The worst part comes when he terrorizes his students - first by failing them all because HE knows how history really happened and their papers are all wrong, then by actually terrorizing them when he destroys his office.

So we have a book of Hawkman where we don't like the main character very much. Not a good recipe. Especially after all the solid character building Johns did with the character (and Hawkgirl) in the first volume. This seemed like a huge step backwards.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is no following at all during the 16 issues collected in this book on the storyline with Ha Seth that was setup in most of the first collection. Why? This is Hawkman/Hawkgirl's main villain (literally killing them in each of their lifes) and this is the Hawkman serie so where did the main plot went?

I could not get very interested in the Headhunter story line which takes 4 issues but doest not really explain who the character is (I am not familiar with him but it does not explain what is the voice in his head, how he got Nth metal or why is he over 100 years old) and ends abruptly.

The last 40% of the book is a Black Adam cross-over with the JSA. It is a wonderful arc but it lacks a lot of background and follow-up without the actual JSA run and on the other hand you do not really need to reed the Hawkman run to enjoy it. So this book is not the best place to read it. It is also collected in the JSA books (such as the Omnibus Volume 2) where it fits much better and that I warmly recommend.

So compared to the first book which brought a conclusion to Kendra's search of her parents' killer, this second book is not adding much (there is one issue before the Headhunter story that later ties-in the Black Adam JSA crossover but it is not a mandatory read).

[Shyue Chou Chuang · Rating 3 out of 5]

This second volume follows the tone of the first with its rather disparate stories and tone. The stories involve Hawkwoman clashing with Hawkman and Hawkgirl, then a battle with a shapeshifter, Byth, who was impersonating Katar Hol, an odd journey to the old Hanseatic city of Lubeck, an adventure to an Egypt-like city, a strange battle with the Headhunter which saw the Hawkman becoming even more savage and mad. Eventually, all the stories are linked in a final big story with Black Adam and his gang which had Nemesis, Eclipso, Brainwave, and Atom Smasher, take over an oppressed state. This is followed by a massive confrontation led by Hawkman and members of the Justice Society of America, which had the Green Lantern, Mr Terrific, The Flash, Power Girl, Wildcat, Doctor Mid-Nite, Doctor Fate, Stargirl, Hourman and Captain Marvel. It is fairly entertaining but the last tedious big battle with Black Adam was bloated and messy.

[Evan]

I probably didn't like this as much as the first volume - it's more dedicated to Carter slowly growing more and more frustrated with the world around him and the limitations of contributions to crimefighting. It culminates in the very strong JSA crossover Black Reign, which I read here rather than in the JSA collection I was concurrently making my way through. I love Kendra, and I like Carter a lot, and I think they're at their best when they're working together, which is ultimately where this ends up. The contrasts are still strong. St. Roch is such a great home base for them, and it lets them tell such different stories than the rest of the JSA. Cool stuff! I have no idea where the run goes from here - did it just end? I'm going to find out.

[Devero · Rating 4 out of 5]

La parte finale di questo volumone, ossia la saga Dark Reign nella quale un Hawkman sempre più rabbioso guida la JSA contro Black Adam in Kandhaq, la conoscevo già. Questi ha convinto alcuni loro amici, tra cui Atom Smasher, a ribaltare la tirannia nella sua terra natale. Il massacro che ne segue, i danni e le ferite alla JSA, sono l'effetto dell'azione. C'è una grande allegoria dell'invasione USA dell'Iraq e dell'Afghanistan e dei danni che ha creato anche tra il personale americano militarmente impiegato.

La parte iniziale invece è per me nuova, e la scoperta di come Johns ha adattato l'approccio che James Robinson applicò al suo Starman è decisamente ben riuscita. Il rapporto secolare tra Hawkman, Hawkgirl e Hat-set è intrigante. Come intrigante è il ritorno della tanagariana Hawkwoman.

Nel complesso darei 4 stelle al volume.

[Ross Cudmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong follow up to Book Two.

The story begins with Hawkwoman (Shayera from Thangar) entering the scene. I really enjoyed the character interactions between her and Carter and Kendra.

The next story arc concerns the villian "Headhunter" who was memorable and a nice new addition to Hawkman's Rogues Gallery. This story arc sees Hawkman beaten down and desperate perfectly setting up what comes next.

The final story arc was fantastic. Black Adam has assembled a team of "heroes" and has reclaimed his homeland, overthrowing a brutal dictator. But the JSA fear he won't stop at his own borders. The conflict between the two groups is exciting but may be a bit confusing for those not familiar with the JSA.

Great character work and fun action.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hawkman is a hard character to wrap your mind around given his insanely convoluted history. Johns does a really good job of trying to make everything make sense. The complicated relationship between Carter and Kendra is one of the main things to love about the book. Its hard not to feel sorry for both of them. The JSA crossover was fantastic. The art here, mostly by Rags Morales, was beautiful. Overall, while the source material daunting, this was a very good book and a must read for Hawkman fans.

[Eric Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal. Black Reign was an incredible finale to this run, combining an insane amount of lore and characters, and culminating in something with consequences and lasting impact. This is a character defining run for Hawkman.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great stuff, especially Black Reign co-starring the JSA. Makes me want to go back and reas that series in its entirety.

[Andy Green · Rating 3 out of 5]

A character I don't care for, but trying to read all of Geoff John's work. Rags Morales is fantastic here. It picks up when the Justice Society comes in.

[Brian Callahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the explanation of Hawkman's backstory. I also love any story that involves the Justice Society of America.

[The Poor Person's Book Reviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t know this going in but this mush be the inspiration for the Balk Adam movie with the Rock. This was way better than that