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[American Comics] Twilight of the Superheroes: Alan Moore’s Lost DC Comics Mega Crossover: The Legends, the Leaks, and the Legal Threats
content warnings: brief mention of incest between fictional characters. Don Simpson’s rendition of the Marvel Family for Twilight “I know that I'm probably still intoxicated by the Watchmen deal, but it never hurts to allow for these things as a possibility, does it?” (Alan Moore) Alan Moore is one of the most important comic book writers of his generation. In the 1980s, everything he touched turned to gold and his mature plots with an interest in mirroring real life and deconstructing superheroes appealed to readers used to more juvenile storytelling. In 1987, Moore was working for DC Comics, home of Superman and Batman, and had just completed Watchmen, “set[ting] off a chain reaction of rethinking the nature of superheroes and heroism itself, and push[ing] the genre darker for more than a decade.” Moore then wrote a detailed proposal for Twilight of the Superheroes. This was to be a crossover, a company-wide event where various comic books intersected with each other to contribute to a larger story and boost the sales of all titles involved. It is unclear if DC commissioned Twilight or if Moore approached them with it. However, it was never produced and considered lost for years—but we’ll get to that later. First, I would like to walk you through this proposal and its history, starting with my best effort to condense the 18,000-word pitch to a manageable length. If you have the time and an above-average amount of patience for run-on sentences and digressions, I encourage you to read the full proposal. “If I don't manage [to make my point] and just forget and wander off at a tangent or something then I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to bear with me. As long as I don’t start free associating about my childhood then we should be okay.” (Alan Moore) Moore wanted to produce a story that “casts new light upon all the DC characters” without interfering with other creators’ current stories or being “obviously crassly exploitative so as to insult the reader's intelligence.” “Something that pulls together the threads of the DC Universe in an interesting and revealing way, while at the same time remaining simple enough in construction so that the chances for any screw-ups in the crossover continuity are diminished or avoided altogether.” Poor planning, so Moore, leads to events that “generate more problems than they solve” and take years to fix. While Moore had enjoyed 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths that had simplified continuity by eliminating previously coexisting versions of the same characters, he bemoaned having lost the playground alternate universes provided storytellers. So, he set out to create a story that dealt with an alternate future while having relevance in the present-day continuity. This way, he could appease “an audience thirsty for the stability that an ordered continuity gives them” while doing his own thing. “[O]ne of the things that prevents superhero stories from ever attaining the status of true modern myths or legends is that they are open ended.” (Alan Moore) Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, so Moore, “does service to the legend of Batman and brilliantly redefines the character for an eighties audience, and nobody really seems to care much how this all fits into the continuity.” Giving Batman an ending elevated him to the status of legend and lent weight to every present-day Batman story. “I'd like to try to do the same for the whole DC Cosmos in Twilight.” “Most of the following [characters] have been altered almost beyond recognition.” (Alan Moore) The story opens with 1987 John Constantine, chain-smoking working-class magician/con man, sitting in a bar remembering a time earlier in the year when a time traveler warned him about a dark future in which superheroes have “inherited the Earth almost by default as various social institutions started to crumble in the face of accelerating social change.” This world had feared nuclear Armageddon for decades only to find “itself faced with the equally inconceivable and terrifying notion that there might not be an apocalypse” and was ruled by superhero dynasties organized into Houses. The House of Steel is led by Superman, “a morally troubled figure who doesn't know what's best to do about the chaos he sees surrounding him.” He is married to Wonder Woman, now Superwoman. The House of Thunder is ruled by Captain Marvel and his wife Mary Marvel. Moore is aware they are siblings but they “married more to form a bona fide clan in opposition to Superman.” All the Marvels are kids who transform into adult superheroes. The Marvels’ real child identities don’t age and so Mary and Marvel Jr., who are carrying on an affair, live as their superhero selves full-time. “Hanging on to his Billy Batson identity has caused a lot of problems for [Captain Marvel] […] but these seem to have become a lot better recently.” Keep in mind, the Marvels are among DC’s most wholesome and innocent characters, so this is all doubly disturbing. The Houses of Steel and Thunder plan to consolidate their power by marrying Superboy, Superman’s psychopath son, to Mary Marvel Jr. The lesser Houses, foremost the Houses of Titans, Justice, and Secrets (the remaining villains) want to prevent this union. Meanwhile, the House of Lanterns, aliens and space heroes who have been banished from Earth, plan to end the heroes’ rule. Twilight’s world is full of “drunks, hookers, and panhandlers” and centers on “the barrio,” “a superhero slum where all the old heroes come to die.” Cyborg has turned full robot. Plastic Man is a sex worker slowly losing elasticity and turning into a puddle of goo. The Doll Maker, formerly human, is insect-like and kept in a vivarium. Congorilla keeps his old body that refuses to die in a closet. “The Question is investigating an impossible locked-room murder mystery involving a midget and a 6'6"-tall call girl into heavy bondage.” “In the background of all this we see John Constantine moving around amongst the various characters, gathering a bit of information here and there.” He is in a happy long-term relationship with a woman who “might even turn out to be the Fever character that I introduced in my two part Vigilante story a while back.” “As the plot builds up in momentum, it is this ingenious and baffling juggling act of Constantine's that becomes the main attraction.” (Alan Moore) He “manage[s] to make contact with the elite council of the Shadow, the Batman and maybe Doc Savage and Tarzan.” (“As an aside, are Tarzan and Doc Savage in the public domain yet?”) In one pivotal scene, Constantine asks Captain Marvel to stand down when the House of Steel is attacked, implying he knows Marvel’s secret. “On the wedding day, the planned attack by the Titans, Justice League and villains upon the Houses of Steel and Thunder gets underway” and Superman and Captain Marvel are the only ones left standing. Then, the aliens invade but Superman thinks he and Marvel can take them. “This is where the surprise card is played. Captain Marvel isn't Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel has been dead ever since the story opened.” “It had all started with little Billy Batson and his problem.” (Alan Moore) “A lot of the problems were sexual. Physically, Billy was not capable of normal sex” because he was a child that didn’t age “and thus pretty soon began to experiment with more bizarre variations such as S&M, visiting the appropriate bars in clothing that made him look as grown-up as possible while he still had the face and body of a child.” One night, an impossibly tall sex worker tied him up, gagged him so he couldn’t say his magic word, and revealed herself to be the Martian Manhunter, an alien shape-shifter. He then killed Captain Marvel and took his place. “Superman, since his own alien culture no longer exists, and since he has lived on Earth since infancy, has been made a citizen of the United States.” (Alan Moore) In the present, Superman kills the Manhunter but is slain in combat. The aliens are poised to take over Earth when, through some plot contrivance, Constantine summons an inter-dimensional army. The aliens are defeated and only non-powered heroes remain on Earth. Constantine then sends Rip Hunter back to the past and together with young Constantine they recruit heroes in the present. This is where the crossover element of the story would come in. At the end of the story, young Constantine gets a letter from old Constantine. They weren’t able to prevent Twilight despite their efforts, “consoling him with the fact that a wonderful woman is waiting in his near future, and that she will be worth everything.” This returns us to the beginning of the story when Constantine was sitting alone in a bar. “We’ve come full circle.” (Alan Moore) The woman […] notices John, asking him for a light. He looks up and their eyes meet. […] He knows instantly that he could love this woman forever. Knows who she is, knows how happy him and all his future selves are going to be with her... and finally, perversely, he understands how he can have his revenge against his future self, how he can avert the circumstances that lead to Twilight by throwing a small but important spanner into the workings of destiny. "Excuse me, have you got a light?" Constantine looks at her and blinks twice before replying. "No. I'm sorry. I don't smoke." The woman shrugs, and after a while leaves the bar […] After she's gone he sits, dead drunk at a dimly lit corner table, and cries his cold and cynical heart out. “I think it's safe to assume that if it were possible to credibly spin role playing games, toys, ‘Waiting for Twilight’ posters and T-shirts and badges and all the rest of that stuff from the title, then that would be a good idea too.” (Alan Moore) It is unclear why Twilight of the Superheroes was never commissioned. It is worth noting, however, that the content might have been a real concern for DC. Moore had been disallowed from using old Charlton characters in Watchmen because editor Dick Giordano thought Moore would irreparably damage them. If DC was so opposed to letting Moore use little-known characters, it’s not a big reach to assume that they would have been reluctant to give him free rein over their most-recognizable characters even if the proposal’s rougher edges were sanded down. Additionally, Moore’s relationship with DC began to deteriorate around that time. They clashed over work-for-hire contracts, parental advisory labels, editorial interference, and, finally, the rights to Watchmen, which DC holds to this day. Moore left DC in 1989 and would never return. He still works consistently on creator-owned projects, including From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Promethea, and the controversial Lost Girls (don’t look it up). Twilight of the Superheroes was slated to be forgotten like countless unproduced pitches before and after it. “I have no idea where the original was obtained, but I have an Nth-generation photocopy courtesy of a friend in CAPA-alpha. It’s 39 pages long, and definitely genuine Moore.” (Chris Miller in 1995) That is until the text “surfaced later in an un-named Science Fiction fanzine” in or before 1995. This isn’t surprising. Comic book fandom was small and insular and the internet in its earliest infancy. There were no precautions in place to prevent leaks and several copies of the Twilight proposal were in circulation. Someone then uploaded the proposal on Compuserve and shared it around on Usenet, drawing attention from fans, creators, and publications alike. The earliest reference I could find is from June 23, 1995, though that’s a re-post. Twilight was initially dismissed as a hoax. “One of the arguments in favor of fakery was that the story seemed to anticipate so many elements of DC's later big events. However, by July 2, several creators familiar with either Moore’s ideas for the project or the pitch itself confirmed it to be genuine Later, comics journalist Rich Johnston got confirmation from Moore himself. Moore gave an interview where he discussed Twilight* but it has been lost. “It was, quite simply, better than anything DC has actually produced over the intervening (8) years!” (a comic reader in 1995) Today, thirty-five years later, Twilight of the Superheroes doesn’t read as the most original idea. Both in 1987 and the 1990s, that was not the sentiment. This was a grim and gritty yet fantastical take on the DC Universe by one of the best writers working in the industry and people bemoaned that Twilight never got produced. Some people thought Twilight sounded “pretty silly. 'House of Steel'? come on now.”. “Ah well, I suppose it is 13yrs old now, and it's no longer ‘cutting edge’.” One of the elements singled out for criticism was the Marvel Family incest. However, the consensus was that “Moore's [Twilight] would have probably been less outrageous than his proposal.” They thought “the script was fascinating and quite typically Moore,” praising the twist as well as the inclusion of Constantine, a character Moore had created two years before Twilight in 1985. Fans also agreed that the “truly dark and adult themed nature of the story is perhaps unsuitable for a crossover.” One commenter was “astounded at the skill and depth of imagination shown by Mr. Moore” but saw a deep chasm between Moore’s “hopes that the project would be exploited in as many areas as possible (toys and merchandise, etc.) in a similar way [to] previous crossovers” and “the subject matter and its connotations [that] manifestly prevent this.” “I’d have loved to see it as a series, and knowing Moore then, at the height of his powers, it would have been incredible. However, if I were a DC editor I’d hesitate severely at letting him deal with the characters this way, even as an Elseworlds kind of deal.” One reader “wonder[ed] if DC could bring itself to publish this story in any form.” “This isn't free speech. It's stealing a story that belongs to DC.” (a comic reader in 1998) In late 1995, Rich Johnston’s Twist and Shout Comics reached a deal with Alan Moore to publish Twilight: A Proposal in the summer of 1996. It would not feature any reference to DC Comics or its characters. One person pointed out that “DC might not appreciate a publication that implies, ‘This is what DC was foolish enough to turn down... and later, borrow ideas from’” and they would turn out to be right. A few days after Twilight: A Proposal was announced, DC caught wind of it, and the deal stalled as DC claimed ownership of “not just the characters but also the proposal” since they had commissioned the work from Moore. This triggered prolonged discussions about the nature of work-for-hire contracts and included writer Warren Ellis chiming in to tell Johnston to “[f]ind out if Alan invoiced.” “That Alan Moore wrote it is clear; that he ever transferred the copyright is unlikely, which may explain DC’s reluctance to work on providing evidence, or register the copyright. Both would be illegal, after all, if they don’t actually own the thing.” In addition to nixing the deal with Twist and Shout, DC threatened to sue anyone who shared their intellectual property online. The proposal that had been online for about half a year was taken down and replaced with a summary. This remained the status quo for a few years. Fans were doubtful that DC’s copyright claim was enforceable but also did not want to face a $2,500 fine. Eventually, probably in early to mid-1998, the proposal came back online though for a while it would “only be available during standard working hours, Eastern Time: 9AM to 5PM. It is thus only available during hours when DC’s lawyers can present proof that the copyright was in fact transferred.” Over the next few years, people repeatedly asked for a link to either receive one or be turned down, indicating that the proposal was available on and off for a time. Someone shared it in June 1998 and the conversation revolved almost exclusively around whether the uploader would get in trouble with DC. Others started sharing it not long after and it was once again included in the server’s FAQ. (A 1998 website with the proposal solicited artwork inspired by Twilight from Moore’s artistic collaborators.) By 2001, Twilight seems to have become readily available any time of day though discussion of the proposal died down almost entirely by then. It would finally be published in 2020 as part of DC Through the ’80: The End of Eras. “I read it several years ago, and […] it was apparent that a number of creators had read the story and had swiped elements to use as their own.” (a comic reader in 2002) If you’re a comic book reader, many ideas in Twilight might sound familiar to you even if you have never heard of the pitch. That’s because they made it to the DC Universe independent of Twilight of the Superheroes. 1996’s Kingdom Come by Alex Ross and Mark Waid would provide an end to the DC Universe. This sprawling superhero apocalypse presented a possible future and, as Alan Moore had hoped with Twilight, creators would reference and play with ideas introduced in Kingdom Come in their stories for decades to come. There were follow-up miniseries and some creators have done their takes on Kingdom Come-type realities, notably Titans Tomorrow. It has had an immense influence on the DC Universe. For months, rec.arts.comics.dc.universe talked of nothing else, necessitating a rule that posts about Kingdom Come be clearly labeled. Interestingly, there was far more engagement with Twilight while and after Kingdom Come came out than there had ever been when the pitch itself leaked. Comparisons between the two were drawn the moment Kingdom Come was announced. Kingdom Come and Twilight are alternate future stories that include superhero dynasties, one of them headed by Superman and Wonder Woman; a rift between Batman and Superman; a human scheming to eliminate all superheroes from Earth; and even a twist involving Captain Marvel (this time with 100% less incest and BDSM). These similarities don’t go beyond the superficial and “are the almost-inevitable consequence of writing a story of this kind in this genre.” A natural question arose: Had Waid read Twilight? And if so, did it matter since Ross wrote the outline? “If I'd had to guess about this beforehand, I'd have said that Waid had read 'Twilight', simply because it looks like 'Kingdom Come' will feature a Captain Marvel/Superman tilt, which was sort of a major feature of ‘Twilight’.” While these speculations were thrown about, one person came in to claim that Waid had plagiarized not Twilight but Peter David’s work. They were immediately dismissed by David. The speculation about Waid and Ross ripping off Twilight became so big after the first issue’s release that Waid felt the need to clarify. He had read Twilight “years ago and loved it, and if after KC is over, you see any plagiarized similarities between the two, then go ahead and drag my name through the mud. […] This is my one and only statement on the matter here. If you want to accuse me of plagiarism, at least grant yourself the displeasure of READING THE FCKNG STORY FIRST.” Comic book veteran Kurt Busiek further corroborated that Alex Ross had not heard of Twilight. “I know this because I got a horrified call from him after he'd heard of it but before he'd seen a copy, asking me […] if I thought his KINGDOM COME plans were too close to it.” Busiek didn’t. Other Moore ideas came to pass too. Moore had proposed an event called the Fluke that would provide an in-continuity explanation for out-of-continuity takes on characters. Hypertime, "the vast interconnected web of parallel time-lines which comprise all reality,” again created by Waid, would do the same in a simplified fashion. (And trust me, there’s nothing simple about Hypertime.) Even bringing back Barry Allen is first suggested in Twilight, a mere two years after Barry's death but decades before it came to pass as did. The same goes for whatever the hell artists were doing with Mary Marvel around Final Crisis. “If you don't do [a crossover event] right, […] then your entire continuity is cheapened in the long term along with its credibility, whatever the short term benefits in terms of sales might be.” (Alan Moore) Moore was prescient not only in his ideas though. His warnings came true too: DC’s crossover 1991 Armageddon 2001 plays with Twilight’s idea of a future hero returning to the present to avert an apocalypse. However, Moore’s warning that such an event had to be planned carefully was not heeded. When readers figured out immediately who the villain was, DC opted to change the ending, creating problems for years to come. Three years later, DC tried the same concept again with Zero Hour and fucked up a popular hero for almost a decade and it took extensive retcons to fix him. Back in 1987, Moore had worried that “the readers of today might well be left with the sensation that the stories they are currently reading are of less significance or moment because, after all, at some point ten years in the future some comic book omnipotent, be it an editor or the Spectre, can go back in time and erase the whole slate, ready to start again.” DC has rebooted its continuity multiple times since then in the hope of becoming more accessible to new readers to varying success. submitted by /u/ailathan to r/HobbyDrama [link] [comments]
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reddit.com |
ailathan |
Jul 14, 2022 |
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[DC Comics] Secret Origins of the Hawk-Snarl: One of the most screwed up continuities in comics.
To hop on the bandwagon of the many DC Comics related posts lately, I think it’s time to introduce the readers here to the story of Hawkman. If you’re a fan of DC comics related media, you’ve probably encountered a Hawk Person of some kind in a cartoon or TV show, the most famous incarnation probably being the Hawkgirl from Bruce Timm’s Justice League cartoon. What you might not know is that due to a series of oversights and missteps over the years, the Hawks have one of the most confusing backstories in all of comics. So strap in everyone, because this one is going to be a trip. The Early Days Hawkman was first created in 1940 by Gardner Fox during the Golden Age of Comics. He was Carter Hall, an archaeologist, who found an ancient dagger and discovered that he was the reincarnation of the ancient Egyptian prince Khufu. He created a suit made out of a mysterious Nth metal, which gave him a pretty standard superpower suite of flight, moderate super strength, and durability, with the added flavor of beating people up with archaic weaponry. He also fought alongside the reincarnation of Khufu's wife Chay-Ara/Shiera, aka Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman. The character notably became one of the most prominent founding members of the Justice Society of America (one of the first big superhero teams in comics), becoming its chairman and holding the position until the end of the JSA's run in All Star Comics in 1951. He was the only member of the JSA to appear in every adventure during the Golden Age of Comic Books, which would eventually make him a very important character in the wider DCU. Like most Golden Age superheroes, his series was eventually cancelled in the early 50s and Carter faded into obscurity. About a decade later the Silver Age of comics is underway and DC was taking a lot of its Golden Age characters and reimaging them with new powers, origins, suits and names. Often these reimaginings had a more science-fiction bend to them, so for example Green Lantern went from a guy who found a magic ring and lantern to a guy who is recruited by an alien ring weapon into an intergalactic police force. Hawkman was one of the character who got reimagined like this. Now he and Hawkgirl were Katar and Shayera Hol, alien cops from the planet Thanagar who came to Earth in pursuit of an escaped criminal. They had wings made of Nth metal, relatively similar powers, and secret identities working at a museum as Carter and Shiera Hall. Because Katar was a cop, he was also eventually chosen as a conservative foilfor Green Arrow after Arrow became a lefty. At this point, there’s nothing really distinguishing Hawkman from the many other characters who got rebooted in the Silver Age, which if you are curious is pretty much everyone not named Superman, Batman, Robin, or Wonder Woman. Like many continuity issues in DC, the problem started with the Flash. In the famous “Flash of Two Worlds" story, it was established that all the old DC characters from the Golden Age still existed on another world called Earth-Two. This meant that there were two completely different versions of Hawkman on two different worlds. Somewhat more complicated, but no different than any other character in the DCU at this point. Hawk Snarl Begins Then came the Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985. I won’t give you the gory details of the actual event for the sake of brevity, but just know that it ended with all the various alternate universes being merged into a single universe. The intent was to clean up the convoluted continuity that had built up over the years, but in the case of Hawkman it made things infinitely more complicated. Now there are two Hawkmen on the same Earth: the alien cop and the archaeologist. The alien and his wife were briefly members of a rebooted Justice League, while the Golden Age characters were temporarily trapped in Limbo along with the rest of the JSA because no one at DC had any idea what to do with all these WWII Era characters that just got dumped onto the “main” Earth. Then Hawkworld happened. This 1989 miniseries involved Katar Hol, lawman of Thanagar, being partnered with Shayera Thal II. Now, there’s no real problem with this in theory, since at the time there were a lot of “Year One” type comics coming out giving updated origin stories for various DC characters and teams. This could have just been Katar’s. Unfortunately for Hawkman, someone at DC got their wires crossed and decided to turn Hawkworld into an ongoing series because of its popularity. Now Hawkworld took place in the present day and had Katar and Shayera come to Earth in pursuit of an escaped criminal. This, as you can imagine, is the point where things really goes off the rails. To fully beak this down: Hawkworld was not a retelling of the origin, but a completely new one about a new Hawkman named Katar Hol and a new Hawkgirl named Shayera Thal coming to Earth. However, there’s still another Hawkman named Katar Hol and Hawkgirl named Shayera Hol who’ve been operating as heroes on Earth for years at this point, meaning that there are now two Katars and two Shayeras both operating on Earth. And also Carter and Shiera are still around doing their own thing. Got all that? I hope you do because it’s about to get worse. To try and fix all of this DC revealed that the Hawkman that joined the Justice League was actually the spy Fel Andar from Thanagar who took the false identity of Carter Hall Jr., the son of the Golden Age Hawkman, and brainwashed his girlfriend Sharon Parker to make her believe that she was Shayera. He would then kill her when she learned the truth, because what’s superhero comic drama without a few dead girlfriends/spouses? Oh, and I almost forgot that Hector Hall, the actual son of the Golden Age Hawkman, was still alive post-Crisis and would go on to become very important. So that’s six Hawkpersons flying around swinging their maces. How to fix this nonsense? If you know DC, you know the answer: another Crisis. This one was called Zero Hour and it was meant to serve as a patch for all the things that the last Crisis didn’t fix and/or made worse. On the Hawk side of things it was revealed that Katar's father had landed on Earth at some point and met Carter Hall, and based Thanagar's wings on Carter's and named his son (Katar) after Carter; it was also revealed that Katar was half-human. All the disparate Hawkmen and Hawkwomen were fused into a single being, a "Hawkgod" (yes, you read that right). The end result was that Carter, Katar and Shiera did not exist anymore, Fel Andar became a character of his own and Shayera went back to Thanagar. Now did this fix things? No, it did not. Even with the above retcon the character’s backstory was so convoluted that it DC editorial decided he was completely unusable and to declared the character entirely off-limits. This was the (in)famous “Hawk Embargo” and it lasted into the late 90s. Among other things, it’s the reason why famous writer and chaos mage Grant Morison’s run on Justice League has Zauriel, a winged angelic hero who uses archaic weaponry, instead of any of the Hawks. While Zauriel was originally pitched as Morison’s own version of Hawkman, editorial vetoed them. Sanity Strikes Back In the late 1990s writers James Robinson, Geoff Johns and David Goyer revived the Justice Society in the series JSA. Now if you’ll recall, the Hawks are pretty important characters to the JSA historically, and because of that the writers felt they needed to be included in some way. So they established that Shiera's soul escaped from the Hawkgod and reincarnated in Kendra Saunders, the new Hawkgirl, who had no memory of her previous lives, which also allowed them to ignore all the above mentioned nonsense. Geoff Johns brought back the Golden Age Hawkman (Carter Hall) and merged the Golden and Silver Age origin stories: a ship from Thanagar crashed in ancient Egypt, and Prince Khufu and his wife Chay-Ara got access to their tech and the Nth metal. They were killed by the priest Hath-Set and reincarnated several times. Also, since Carter Hall absorbed Katar Hol's memories while they were the Hawkgod, you can just consider Katar an unofficial reincarnation. So things (kind of) make sense now and the Hawks return to their rightful place as solid B-listers in DC’s roster and regular members of various hero teams. At around this time we also get the famous Bruce Timm/Paul Dini Justice League cartoon, which used a version of the Silver Age Hawkgirl as one of the core cast members. Thanks to some good writing and creative liberties on the show’s part, the character of Hawkgirl wound up becoming significantly more popular, arguably eclipsing the popularity of Hawkman himself. Back in the comics, there was a bit of a hiccup where Grant Morrison killed off the Hawks in their big crossover Final Crisis (it wasn’t final), even though Geoff Johns wanted to use them for his big crossover Blackest Night (so he could kill them). Johns got his way, as he often did at this time, so they were brought back to life at the last minute, killed in Johns’ event comic, and turned into zombies because that was kind of Blackest Night’s thing. At the conclusion of this event, the pair were revived again, except Kendra turned completely into Shiera (remember her?). Then they became wind elementals or something. It doesn’t really matter because another continuity reboot is coming, which means that the Hawk continuity is about to get completely screwed up yet again. Revenge of the Snarl So in 2011, DC gets the bright idea to completely reboot its universe. This was known as the New 52 and while it was advertised as a “clean slate” for the DCU, in practice it was so haphazardly handled that most of the people writing for DC had no idea what was in continuity and what wasn’t. When Hawkman was reintroduced in the New 52, it was a version of the Carter Hall character trying to retire for some vague reason. In addition to the usual mace and wings, he also had shards of Nth metal fused into his body after a while that gave him additional powers. Meanwhile, Kendra was rebooted onto the new alternate universe Earth-2 (where they put modernized versions of JSA characters) as a completely unrelated character who went by Hawkgirl but was otherwise unrelated to the main universe's Hawkman mythos. Then, as if poor Hawkman hadn’t suffered enough, they brought Rob Liefeld on to write him. For those unaware, Liefeld is arguably the poster boy of what has been dubbed the “Dark Age” of comics. He’s famous for helping to codify the concept of the 90’s Antihero with characters like Cable and for his unique interpretations of human anatomy. This made him one of the more infamous and ridiculed people in the industry well before he was tapped for Hawkman, so what DC was thinking here I will never know. For whatever reason, Liefeld decided to retcon Hawkman's origin story in a #0 issue, revealing that "Carter Hall" was actually Katar Hol from Thanagar and had amnesia; Carter Hall was just a cover identity he adopted when he landed on Earth. Also, Carter Hall apparently existed as someone whose identity Katar had stolen and Katar had an intimate knowledge of earth archaeology despite being an alien with amnesia. Shayera was reintroduced and then re-killed, Katar joined two different Justice Leagues, and then finally died in the Death of Hawkman miniseries... his last words being "see you in the next life", even though the whole reincarnation thing had never been established with this character. And then another event comic, Dark Nights: Metal, revealed that the the real Carter Hall Hawkman did in fact exist in whatever continuity we’re in at this point (the whole New 52 thing had mostly been dropped at this point) alongside a Shiera Hawkgirl. Once again, Prince Khufu and Princess Chay-Ara found a crashed spaceship made of Nth Metal and operated as Hawkman and Hawkgirl throughout their numerous lives. One of those lives happened to reincarnate Khufu as Carter and Chay-Ara as Shiera. Both operated as Hawkman and Hawkgirl as usual and died at some point in the past. Both were reincarnated again, this time Shiera coming back as Kendra Saunders — this time recalling her previous lives — both once again operating as Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Carter later disappeared into a place called the Dark Multiverse while Kendra took up the identity of Lady Blackhawk. This helps explain why Katar was able to pass himself off as Carter, but didn’t explain why Kendra would allow this and not get involved. The most likely answer to this being “we want to forget all that Liefeld stuff ever happened”. A 2018 Hawkman series tried to put this mess to bed for good by revealing that Hawkman didn't just reincarnate through time, but through space as well, meaning he was both Carter Hall and Katar Hol at one point or another. While there are still some questions and continuity hiccups, like how exactly there could have been a Hawkman reincarnation on Krypton when Superman was a baby, this seems to have resolved the issue for now. So that’s the story of Hawkman, the character with the most confusing backstory in all of comics. It’s all kind of a sad waste. The guy has a good design and a pretty cool concept with the whole reincarnation thing, but his continuity troubles have overshadowed that until very recently. He’s basically the living embodiment of how poor communication and planning behind the scenes can completely derail a character. Unfortunately, he’s far from the only example but those are stories for another time. Special shout out to this TV Tropes page and Wikipedia for cataloging most of this nonsense. Hopefully I got everything, but can you really blame me if I didn't? submitted by /u/pyromancer93 to r/HobbyDrama [link] [comments]
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reddit.com |
pyromancer93 |
Sep 8, 2021 |
United States