The Hawkman Archives

    (DC, 2000-2004)
™ and ©2000 DC Comics

Look in the sky, it’s a bird. It’s a… yeah, it is a bird. It appears to be Hawkman. So street gawkers weren’t cheering his name as they’d done for Superman, but that doesn’t mean that Hawkman couldn’t be fun and educational at the same time. For instance: Did you know that wood is the only thing that will cancel out the effects of the spark shower used by creatures from Xardoon? I didn’t think so.

This is just one of the many pieces of information that writer Gardner Fox and editor Julius Schwartz brought to the Hawkman stories, when the character was revamped for the Silver Age in The Brave and the Bold #34 (Mar 61) as the Thanagarian hero Katar Hol (Hawkman).

With scripts by Fox and stunning art by Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino, and Murphy Anderson, The Hawkman Archives Vol. 1 collects the first adventures of the winged hero and his wife Shayera (Hawkgirl) in The Brave and the Bold and Mystery in Space.

Schwartz saw to it that the Hawkman stories were packed with useful information. Younger years readers could learn from these pages that a gladiator’s net was known as a retarius and that taxonomy is the science of biological classification.

(The one thing that Schwartz and the creators could have omitted was that Hawkman communicated with other birds by saying, “Wheet.” It got old after a while.)

While the Hawkman stories may not stand out as the best of the Silver Age, they are definitely some of the most fun—worth the $50.

— Nate Melby
Jump to issue:
  NotesWriterArtist
#1

July, 2000
Cover Price: $49.95
1 copy available for $75.00 		Gardner Fox 
#2

November, 2004
Cover Price: $49.95
4 copies available from $56.00 		Gardner Fox, R.C. HarveyMurphy Anderson