Showcase Presents: Hawkman, Vol. 1

The Brave and the Bold (1955) #34-36, 42-44, 51

by Gardner Francis Fox, Bob Haney, Joe Kubert (Illustrator)

"In this fantastic volume filled with over 500 pages of classic 1960s stories, Hawkman and Hawkgirl face menaces including the Shadow Thief and Matter Master, and team up with Adam Strange and Aquaman!"--Publisher's website.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Dc Comics, Superheroes, Fiction

560 pages, Paperback

First published March 21, 2007

About the author

Gardner Francis Cooper Fox was an American writer known best for creating numerous comic book characters for DC Comics. Comic book historians estimate that he wrote more than 4,000 comics stories, including 1,500 for DC Comics.
Fox is known as the co-creator of DC Comics heroes the Flash, Hawkman, Doctor Fate and the original Sandman, and was the writer who first teamed those and other heroes as the Justice Society of America. Fox introduced the concept of the Multiverse to DC Comics in the 1961 story "Flash of Two Worlds!"

Pseudonyms: Gardner F. Fox, Jefferson Cooper, Bart Sommers, Paul Dean, Ray Gardner, Lynna Cooper, Rod Gray, Larry Dean, Robert Starr, Don Blake, Ed Blake, Warner Blake, Michael Blake, Tex Blane, Willis Blane, Ed Carlisle, Edgar Weston, Tex Slade, Eddie Duane, Simon Majors, James Kendricks, Troy Conway, Kevin Matthews, Glen Chase

Reviews

[Adam Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book presents more than 30 Hawkman tales. Really this should be Hawkman and Hawkgirl tales since she's the series co-star. The concept by Gardener Fox is great. Husband and wife police team from the Planet Thannagar goes to Earth in pursuit of a criminal and sets up shop on Earth.

This book collects several runs of Hawkman in 34-36 and 42-44, the couple get two separate tryout runs for a full book in 1961 and 1962. A guest appearance in the Atom #7, and a run in Mystery in Space 87-90 as one of two features sharing the book with Adam Strange, a guest appearance in team up version of Brave and the Bold in Issue #51 with Aquaman and then there are the first 11 issues of Hawkman.

There are two very good things about the book. The first is Joe Kubert's art in the first two Brave and the Bold runs which is very distinctive for the era and really fun to look at for the first fifth of the book. The next thing that works well is the team up. Without a doubt they're the most compelling stories in the book, Team ups with the Atom in The Atom #7 and Hawkman #9, the Aquaman Team-up in Brave and the Bold #51, a team up with Adam Strange to save both Earth and Rann in Mystery in Space #90, and Zatara appears in Hawkman #4.

Most of the rest of the book isn't all that special. Hawkman #10 features a nice spy tale with CAW and Hawkman #11 features a very involved tale with the birdman known as the Shrike. That comic's the only non-team up story to really use a 25-page format to its full value.

Mostly, the stories and the villains are forgettable. Not as strong as the Atom's rogues, mostly the Hawks faced one-note alien menaces with a key weakness or they faced local crooks. The stories are okay with some fun science lessons thrown in, but I think the awesome idea of Hawkman doesn't really have its potential fulfilled in this book.

[Danger Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

there is quiet possibly the best panel ever in comic book history in this book. back in 1960 they spell out how awesome it would be to have direct deposit and debit cards. it's the one thing we got right from 1960s sci fi. we might now have flying cars and jet packs but we have debit cards!!!

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume of Showcase Presents reprints three issues that were not included in the two Hawkman Archives, Hawkman #9-11. Same creative team (Fox and Anderson), featuring the return of the Matter Master, an adventure on another planet, and a pretty good tale featuring the villainous organization known as CAW. These three were actually very good, and it was nice to see The Atom guest in the Matter Master story, which is also notable because it is where the Hawks and The Atom reveal their secret identities to one another. (They had previously met in their civilian disguises not long after their first adventure together in Atom #7.) Although these stories are in B&W, they are still enjoyable to read, and fine examples of DC Silver Age storytelling.

[Astroboy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few artists of the silver age surpass Joe Kubert or Murphy Anderson, and here we have some of the best work from the early 1960s.

[Eamonn Murphy · Rating 2 out of 5]

When Katar Hol and his wife Shayera chase arch-criminal Blyth from their home planet Thanagar to Earth there are problems. The first is how to learn about this new planet. Luckily, they have the Absorboscon which picks up the electrical transmissions from human brains and puts it into theirs, thus giving them all human knowledge. This includes knowledge of all human languages, so they can talk to birds. They must have picked up Doctor Doolittle’s brainwaves. The birds sometimes act as look-outs for them, keeping an eye on criminals and reporting back. You might have thought this was beyond their capabilities as did I, but then I recalled that ants used to do the same for Ant-Man, though that was at the other company.

Katar and Shayera are police officers on their home planet. They have wings but these are only to steer with when they fly. The actual uplift is provided by an anti-gravity device in their belts. As responsible people, they decide to team up with the local police when they come to Earth. But how to convince an Earthling they are from another planet? They pick the right man with Police Commissioner George Emmett, aided by some brilliant writing from Gardner Fox. When two people dressed in outlandish costumes turn up on George’s doorstep and claim they are law enforcement officers from a far distant planet chasing a shape-changer, what does he say? ‘Get lost, you nutters.’ No! He says, ‘Fantastic as all this is, I’m convinced you’re speaking the truth. Come in, please.’ Thus does a great writer handle difficult story problems.

The famous Gardner Fox footnotes abound in these stories. In Brave And The Bold # 42, the Hawks go back to Thanagar and the chief of police tells them to report for duty next Rothan, – the Thanagarian equivalent of a week on Earth says the footnote. Yet they are often informative. When Hawkman and Hawkgirl fought the Abominable Snowmen, I learned that ‘A couloir is a wide gulley on a mountain, often snow-filled’. When they fought the Matter Master, I found out that siderites are iron meteors. When they save the lovely magician Zatanna, I learned that the Shang dynasty of China existed from 1700 BC to 1100 BC. Furthermore, Hawkman uses weapons from Earth’s past to avoid Thanagarian technology falling into the wrong hands, so you get a bit of military history, too. This is Zatanna’s first appearance but she became a decorative addition to the DC Universe for a while.

As with so many characters, Hawkman did not get his own book immediately. His first appearance was in The Brave And The Bold # 34 (Feb/March 1961) and he starred intermittently in that magazine until # 44 (Oct/Nov 1962). He next guest starred in The Atom # 7 (June/July 1963) then appeared for a while in ‘Mystery In Space’, which gave him a chance to team up with Adam Strange. It wasn’t until April/May 1964 that Hawkman # 1 appeared. Outraged feminists will note that Hawkgirl is in the action almost as often as the other Hawk person, despite being his wife, does not appear in the title.

Gardner Fox wrote all the stories so, if you are familiar with him, you know what to expect. There are alien races galore, lots of fantasy posing as super-science and many clever little details. For example, in ‘The Case Of The Cosmic Camera’ (The Atom # 7), a cosmitron powered by earthquakes is used by the evil Thalens to take photos of the Earth. They then stick the photos together to make a globe and anything they do to the globe happens to the Earth. A knife cut in the copy makes a large gash appear on our planet’s surface. This is not science, it’s voodoo but did eleven-year-olds care in 1963? In his way, Gardner Fox was a genius of the genre. Comicbook stories, especially his, owed a lot to the super-science, evil alien infested plot driven yarns of thirties pulp Science Fiction before John W. Campbell changed the game.

The art is generally splendid and the fact that it‘s in black and white adds to the enjoyment in many ways. Joe Kubert did the first few six issues of ‘The Brave And The Bold’, so both pencils and inks and they are great, as you would expect. Kubert is an acknowledged master of the form. The Atom # 7 is a lovely piece of work by Gil Kane with inks by Murphy Anderson, who did both pencils and inks on most of the remaining stories. Carmine Infantino pencilled the Adam Strange team-up. Murphy Anderson is not as good a designer as people better known for their pencils but he’s good enough and his brushwork is very nice. All of the 554 pages of comics herein are very easy on the eye.

At the rate of fifty pages for a single British pound coin, this is great value and will give you many hours of low level reading pleasure. If you are too proud, pessimistic, mature, jaded, sophisticated or solemn for a bit of childish fun you can give it to your kids. It was all approved by the Comics Code Authority and will do them no harm.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/

[Robert Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

The art sold me on this one. In particular, I love Joe Kubert, who penciled and inked the first nine stories (originally published in six issues of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, 1960-1962.). Kubert proves an expert storyteller and displays a masterful use of shadow to convey mood. His Hawkman and Hawkgirl look especially birdlike, but also heroic and determined. Really, all his characters have great, well, character, and I have to say - he draws quite a few monsters here, and they all look very cool!

Kubert doesn’t stay long, but I ultimately loved the work of his successor, Murphy Anderson, as well. Anderson also provides both pencils and inks, and he has a cleaner, brighter, somewhat more elegant style. While that style is very different from Kubert’s, it nonetheless proves a nice fit for these tales of classic heroism and adventure, and I love the intricate detail on display. You might prefer apples or you might prefer oranges, but both go well in a fruit salad (Yes, you may groan at that awful analogy.)!

Kubert and Anderson (particularly the latter) draw the vast majority of the stories reprinted here, but three more artists - Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino and Howard Purcell - contribute to three more stories. Anderson inks Kane and Infantino, so some consistency remains there, and Anderson could even be said to bury Kane’s pencils (Infantino fares better, although Anderson’s hand is pretty evident there, as well.). The Purcell tale - a Hawkman/Aquaman team-up from THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #51 - proves an outlier, both because Anderson didn’t ink it (thus preserving Purcell’s more cartoonish approach) and because it’s the only tale in this volume not penned by fan favorite writer Gardner Fox (The author instead is Bob Haney, who delivers an enjoyable but not especially remarkable yarn.).

Fox had previously written Hawkman in the 1940s, during the so-called “Golden Age of Comics.” For this new 1960s version, Hawkman’s supernatural origin (He was originally a reincarnated Egyptian prince.) is replaced with a science fiction one, with Hawkman and his wife Hawkgirl being police officers from the planet Thanagar. They arrive on Earth to catch a criminal and decide to stay to “study Earth police methods.”

Having a superhero spouse does set Hawkman apart from his comics contemporaries. Modern readers might feel frustrated at Hawkgirl continually playing a subordinate role, as Hawkman routinely solves the problems and gives the orders. At one point, we even learn that Hawkman is now a Justice League member, and Hawkgirl, for some reason, apparently isn’t! On the plus side, Hawkgirl’s portrayal does improve over time, and in the latter stories (when Hawkman finally receives his own self-titled comic book series), she displays more independence, solves more problems and even saves Hawkman’s life a few times. Still…she never gets equal billing with Hawkman, and as boys constituted the main audience of 1960s superhero comics, the stories were likely written accordingly. That said, Fox himself had been married for quite some time when he wrote these, and there are moments when the characters’ marital relationship, at least, rings especially true (“If you’d only told me what was wrong,” Hawkgirl tells her stubborn husband in one scene, “I could have helped you!”)

Fox’s stories are formulaic, some of the usual silliness of the era’s comics is present (There are flying gorillas in one story!), and yes, Hawkman is your standard noble, mostly two-dimensional hero. These factors might cause some modern readers to reject this volume, but others - such as myself - will find them charming. There’s a certain comfort level to these stories: each time, you watch our heroes solve a mystery and defeat the villain, and know that they’ll do it all over again in the next tale. Formulaic though they may be, Fox’s plots are nonetheless well-crafted, typically with some good mysteries, some good complications and a tidy, satisfying conclusion. They’re often even educational, as Fox loved loading his stories with “factoids,” typically of a scientific, historical or archaeological nature (Quick - ask me about the location of ancient Chaldea, how much the Cullinan diamond weighs or how a skunk emits its smell!). For comics fans in particular, there’s a joy in watching a classic superhero series such as this unfold and seeing its mythos - including a brand new rogues’ gallery - slowly develop.

As noted on the cover, SHOWCASE PRESENTS HAWKMAN, VOLUME ONE contains “over 500 pages of comics!” Those comics span over five years (1960-1965). They are presented in black and white, which allows for a $16.99 cover price - a bargain in 2007, when this book was published. Since then, it has gone out of print, and I don’t know what prices old copies currently command (For what it’s worth, I bought mine at an Ollie’s Bargain Outlet in 2018 for $2.99.). Regardless, as someone who loves delving into the publication histories of classic superheroes - and who wants to read the stories and doesn’t care whether they’re on slick, glossy paper - I give this book high marks.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 This Hawkman was one of multiple Golden Age heroes DC revived and gave an SF twist to in the Silver Age. More twist than most: Hawkman and Hawkgirl are ET cops on Earth to study police procedure (their planet had no crime until recently), using anti-gravity, alien tech and ancient weapons (their secret identities are as museum curators) to fight crime and sometimes alien invasions.
At their best, the stories are wildly entertaining pulp adventures. At their worst their still fun, but the villains are relatively mundane. So we get everything from a robber with a gimmicked motorcycle to winged gorillas on a world of twisted evolution to a dinosaur-like creature stealing an interstate tunnel (you have to see it to believe it).
Joe Kubert's art on the first half-dozen adventures is awesome. Murphy Anderson took over after that; his art is beautiful but doesn't have the same energy Kubert generated.
Like most Silver Age material, this is very much YMMV, but my mileage is happy with it.

[Chris Stephens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good stuff but, 500 pages is a lot of Hawkman,
For reasons unknown I couldn't read more than one story every few days and vol. 2 might just go straight to the self.
I think it just lacked the silliness of most of this periods comics.

[Zack · Rating 3 out of 5]

wish the villains were more memorable. No one understands their primitive weapons? Hawkgirl should be Hawkwoman, but is barely existant.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in January, I decided to take up Chris Marshall’s challenge over at Collected Comics Library to adopt a comic book character or creator in 2013. I chose Joe Kubert, an artist I’d had very little exposure to over the years. So a few months ago, I picked up DC Showcase Presents Hawkman Volume 1, knowing that Kubert didn’t draw all the stories in the collection, but that was okay; I had some vague memories of reading Hawkman as a kid, so I figured why not?

Like the Marvel Essentials series, the DC Showcase series brings you mammoth phone-book sized editions of black-and-white comics for a pretty reasonable price. If you’re on the fence about a character or title, this series is a good way to get your feet wet without spending a whole lot of money.

Realize, however, that although these stories were first published in the early 60s, this is not the first appearance of Hawkman. He was originally a Golden Age character dating back to 1940 with Flash Comics #1. Hawkman has a much-recycled and convoluted history. In the Golden Age, he was the reincarnation of an Egyptian prince. In the 1980s and beyond, other Hawkman characters appear (sometimes with different names) and disappear, but the Hawkman in this volume is Katar Hol, a policeman from the planet Thanagar. Katar and his wife Shayera (a policewoman) have come to Earth to capture an escaped criminal from Thanagar (all of which is related in the volume’s first story, “Creature of a Thousand Shapes!” from The Brave and the Bold #34). After solving the crime, Katar and Shayera decide to stick around and learn about Earth police procedures while posing as museum curators Carter and Shiera Hall.

Most of the stories involve some detective and/or science work, but are mostly backdrops that provide a springboard for Hawkman and Hawkgirl to do their thing - catching the bad guys. The Gardner Fox stories usually aren’t that great, but they’re Silver Age fun and if you can put yourself back in that early 60s era, you’ll have a good time with this volume. But the real reason to buy this collection is the Joe Kubert artwork. Although Kubert’s contributions stop after page 162 (of 560), those first 162 pages are stunning, even in black and white. Kubert’s world is one of darkness, which is reflected in the characters, particularly the villains, who appear far more sinister and cold-hearted than those drawn by Murphy Anderson. Kubert also has an impeccable eye for bodies in flight, a skill he developed to an extraordinary level on Enemy Ace several years later. (I’m looking at pages 129 and 130 from “Masked Marauders of Earth” from The Brave and the Bold #43 as just one example.) The perspective and angles of his point of view panels give a real sense of wonder to the world of Hawkman.

You miss most of that when Murphy Anderson takes over on page 163. Anderson’s a fine artist, don’t get me wrong, but he has a different set of skills. In his hands, Gardner Fox’s stories are, for the most part, drawn as run-of-the-mill comic book stories. There’s not the same sense of wonder, the same tone of underlying darkness, the same risk-taking that you have with Kubert. One of the biggest gripes I have with Anderson is his overuse of long vertical panels. Kubert uses them sparingly; Anderson all the time. I don’t mean to slam Anderson. Again, he’s a fine comic book artist. His biggest problem is he followed Joe Kubert. (You want to be the guy that follows the guy that follows Kubert!)

I plan to keep this volume, but will probably limit myself to re-reading only the Kubert-drawn stories.

3/5

[Trevor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just your average Silver Age hero, nothing truly spectacular abut this one. Although it irks me a bit how frequently the Halls destroy the priceless artifacts in the museum they're supposed to be curators for...