Hawkworld

Hawkworld by Timothy Truman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Idealistic young Katar Hol rejected his privileged upbringing to be part of the police force but soon finds out that Thanagar's seedy underbelly is a thousand times worse than he expected...

I've never been much of a Hawkman fan but I've loved Tim Truman's artwork since Grimjack and Scout. I unearthed Hawkworld for a cool three bucks a comic convention and decided it was time to read it, only twenty-something years late to the party.

Hawkworld sees Katar Hol go from being a young cop to a patsy to an exile on a remote island to taking the final steps to becoming Hawkman. The man against his own culture theme reminded me of Elric a bit. While a lot of reboots felt unnecessary, I feel like this one did a lot to modernize Hawkman and make him a potential A-lister for DC. That didn't happen but it could have with the right creative team.

The artwork is well-suited to the tale, full of alien creatures and ancient weapons. It's a lot more in line with what Truman's later work on Jonah Hex than his Scout stuff. Truman's Dungeons and Dragons roots were showing quite a bit in the gritty underworld of Thanagar. Byth recast as a dirty cop worked pretty well for me. It was pretty thrilling once Katar came for Byth after a decade of exile.

Hawkworld was damn good. Now I want to go out and track down subsequent Hawkman tales, to find out how this Hawkman and Hawkwoman wound up on earth. Four out of five stars.

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