Green Arrow (v3) #44

Green Arrow (v3) #44
"New Blood, Part Five: Positive"
Cover Date: January 2005
Writer: Judd Winick
Artist: Phil Hester (Pencils), Ande Parks (Inks)

Previously...

Okay, so Judd Winick was on one of the early season of The Real World, and that season had a roommate who had AIDS. Anyway, Judd Winick later wrote a comic about said roommate called Pedro and Me that was basically the only critically acclaimed thing he has ever done. So he decided to see if lightning could strike twice, I guess.

In terms of where Green Arrow is at this moment in time, well, it's still Ollie Queen, and his son Connor is hanging around, as well as a teenage girl he picked up named Mia. She was a former teen prostitute, which I only mention because the entire issue kind of hinges on that fact.

Plot

This issue picks up right after last issue's cliffhanger, where Ollie found out that Mia tested positive for HIV. Ollie demands to know how this possibly could have happened. Mia explains that as a teen prostitute, she had lots of unprotected sex and shared needles when she shot herself up with meth. And the doctor explains that HIV is transmitted through exactly those mechanisms.

Ollie then demands to know what the difference is between AIDS and HIV. The doctor explains that too, and then we get a discussion of viral loads and drug cocktails. Shit, I have this issue, which means about seven years ago I spent $2.50 on a fucking PSA. Shit, I'm the real victim here. I mean, Mia isn't even fucking real, and only got HIV so Judd Winick could try and steal some mainstream attention. I'm the guy who's never going to get that money back.

Meanwhile, Connor and some dude are talking about a crime-lord who managed to murder the former mayor and is slowly taking over Star City. Now this is a subplot I can get behind!

But, no! The reader shall not be given respite from this very important discussion of AIDS, so Connor gets a phone call and drops everything so he can go home and talk to Mia. Kind of sucks for the people of Star City that every hero in the city has decided to take a hiatus from crime-fighting so they can talk about AIDS, but, hey, they're fighting ignorance, and isn't that a much more dangerous foe than an crime lord who just killed several high-ranked city officials?

Connor shows up and the house of archery and immuno-deficiency so the characters can talk about HIV and AIDS some more. It turns out that the anti-viral drugs have side-effects. Mia decides she's done talking about this. Winick denies us this mercy:

Later that night, Ollie gets out of bed and angrily spars with some practice dummies in his basement. This does not cure Mia's HIV.

Anyway, it's suddenly two weeks later, and Connor decides to start accusing both Mia and Ollie of being in denial. "Every time you look at her, all you see is AIDS." Green Arrow has super-vision? Oh, he meant metaphorically. Hey, could Superman see if some had AIDS just by looking at them?

Connor then goes off on a diatribe about how Mia is living with AIDS, and that she's not going anywhere, and neither is her disease. Well, not until the DC Reboot, at any rate.

But Connor is not done with his denial busting yet! Not by a long shot. He talks to Mia later that night, and manages to coax her into admitting that having HIV makes her feel 'dirty' and that 'no one will want to be with her.' I can't believe I spent $2.50 on this. Fuck!

Connor's response? Kissing her. He then clarifies to mean that while he himself wants no part of her, that the kiss symbolizes that it would theoretically be possible for someone else to want her. And then the issue ends.

Next Issue: Mia announces to everyone in her high school that she has HIV and used to be a prostitute. Apparently if Mia has HIV, she's going to make every on the god-damned planet hear about it.  Also, she becomes Green Arrow's sidekick. I spent $2.50 on that issue too. I fucking hate my life.

Commentary

$2.50! That's money I'm never going to get back!  Fuck!

Damage Stars: **************

Green Arrow (v3) #12

Green Arrow (v3) #12
"Feast and Fowl"
Cover Date: March 2002
Writer: Kevin Smith
Artist: Phil Hester (Pencils), Ande Parks (Inks)

Previously...

Green Arrow, the Oliver Queen version, came back from the dead in a tremendously over-long arc (10 issues!). Now he moves on to his next Herculean endeavor: Getting some.

Plot

At stately JSA manor, Green Arrow has come to pick Black Canary up for a date. As she's getting ready, Stargirl pops in to exchange mild innuendo (Shouldn't you be practicing your rod-handling' 'funny that's what I was gonna tell you') and inform Dinah that Ollie is hanging out in the lobby with the also-recently-returned-from-the-dead Hawkman. Dinah informs Stargirl and the reader that this is a bad thing, since Green Arrow and Hawkman are "the ultimate liberal and the ultimate conservative" respectively, and they must therefore be kept apart at all times. I realize that I probably am going to have to do DC Universe: Decisions one of these days, and that thought makes me sad.

But, lo and behold, the pair are actually exchanging good-humored anecdotes about the travails of being resurrected. Black Canary is surprised by this development. Hawkman gives Green Arrow advice that boils down to, "Given the circumstances, you probably shouldn't fuck Black Canary on your first date."

Anyway, Black Canary and Green Arrow go to a restaurant, and Dinah informs Ollie that there's no way she's sleeping with him tonight. At this point, there's roughly a 0% chance that Green Arrow won't be having sex with Black Canary by the end of this issue. Dinah and Ollie chat about all the men Black Canary has seen while Ollie was dead. Unsurprisingly, this is an awkward conversation.

Fortunately, it's time for the perfunctory fight scene. And who's the villain tapped to show up and get his ass kicked in seven pages or less? It's the Riddler. He bursts in quipping, "What a guy gotta do to get a table in this joint?" He then follows that up with a Who Wants to be a Millionaire Reference? I feel like the universe is punishing us all for thinking that Clerks was a good movie.

The Riddler, of course, is just fodder, so he gets taken out quick, including a bit where Ollie creates a bow out of some skewers and a harp. I guess that makes sense as long as you don't think about it for more than about five seconds. Riddler and his henchmen get routed, and that inspires Green Arrow and Black Canary to go back to her room at the JSA's headquarters and have sex. Which they do. Repeatedly.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, we meet a super-heroine named Virago. She then gets shot to death by a villain named Onomatopoeia. This villain's gimmick is that he only talks in, wait for it, onomatopoeia. Really, Kevin Smith? Really?

Back at JSA headquarters, Ollie realizes that sleeping with Dinah wasn't the smartest thing he ever did, so decides to double down by sneaking out while she's sleeping. Hawkman catches up to him before he gets out of the building and looks none too pleased. To Be Continued!

Commentary

Green Arrow may be the worst hero that DC has published regularly. I mean, he's a dude with a bow and arrow. He's not a master of the martial arts, he's not a master detective, he's not a super-genius, he's just got the bow. Or, more to the point, he's a character so uninspiring that Kevin Smith felt compelled to let Ollie MacGuyver up a makeshift bow out of  a harp so that he'd have a credible chance of taking out the Riddler.

The only really good run the Oliver Queen version of Green Arrow ever had was when Mike Grell moved him to Seattle and basically refused to let him interact with any hero with actual powers. By doing that, he almost made a dude with a Robin Hood beard and bow seem halfway decent. But when you put him next to really any other hero, he just seems completely outclassed.


Of course, the first ten issues of this volume of Green Arrow featured a god-like managing to find a way to resurrect the body of Ollie without his soul, and also involved the copious use of magic, and was really the worst possible way to bring Ollie back since he spent just about the entire story wandering around while demi-gods fought each other in the background. In fact, Queen's most heroic moment in the story is when he allows his best friend, who is know the divine spirit of vengeance, to reinsert his soul into his body.

You know what, I have a simpler explanation for Green Arrow. Years ago, there was this joke on The Simpsons where the titular family is watching a show called "Knightboat" and the joke is that there's always some inlet or canal that lets Knightboat get around the fact the criminals can just escape on dry land. Essentially, Green Arrow is the "Knightboat" of super-heroes, in that you always have to come up with a contrived reason for why a guy with a bow and arrow is able to make it in a world with heat vision, telekinesis, and firearms.

Damage Stars: ****

Teen Titans (v3) #2

Teen Titans (v3) #2
 "Child's Play"
Cover Date: October 2003
Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Mike McKone

Previously...

DC took their fifth shot at trying to resurrect the Titans as an A-list franchise.  For sake of reference, here are the previous four listed with the fatal flaw that did them in:

1. New Titans (1994)  (Used Damage as cast member)
2. Teen Titans (1996)  (Was generally terrible, had nothing to do with Titans to begin with)
3. Titans (1998) (Used Damage as cast member)
4. Titans (2000) (I like Tom Peyer, but I'm about the only one)

Anyway, so DC turned to Geoff Johns to sort it out. Johns decided to emphasize the 'teen' in Teen Titans, showing these young heroes growing into adulthood and finding their place in world. A noble goal. So Johns held over a few of the older Titans as mentors, roped in Superboy, Robin, Impulse, and Wonder Girl, and set them up in San Francisco. The idea was that the teen heroes would live their normal lives during the week, and then all hang out together on weekends. I'm not sure what happened if a supervillain struck San Francisco during the work week. I'd assume the police would show up and politely ask them to please reschedule at such time as the Teen Titans would be available to contest them.

In Teen Titans #1, the team had assembled, and they were all bummed because being a teenager is so hard. Also, Superboy found out that his human half came from Lex Luthor, which must have almost seemed like a good idea at the time.

Plot

Deathstroke is chilling in his pad, admiring the mounted head of his former valet, Wintergreen, and discussing how 'Deathstroke hunts alone'. Personally, I've never understood the appeal of Deathstroke, but hell, he's the biggest name villain the Titans ever had, so you might as well throw him out there.

At stately Titans Tower, Superboy is going for a swim when Robin starts bugging him about doing a DNA test to figure out whether or not Superboy has Luthor's DNA. Superboy doesn't really want to know, but Robin manages to take one of his hairs while he's not looking. This must have been more interesting at the time it was published.

Elsewhere in the tower, Impulse and Beast Boy are horsing around, as they are wont to do. Starfire shows up and, since it is not yet the New 52, does not offer to blow either of them. Ah, Starfire, it is amazing how quickly one bad moment can ruin a character. She breaks up the fight.

Wonder Girl, who has been watching this, decides to get up and leave the Titans. I can't say I blame her. Impulse pursues her and we are treating to an life-changing exchange between the two:

Oh, man, really? Well, at least it can't get any wo-

Why must you hate subtlety, Geoff Johns?

But this conversation is cut short when Alcatraz Island is attacked. The Titans spring into action, clearing the tourists who are there as the island explodes around them.

Impulse gets separated from the rest of the team and runs into Deathstroke, who had set all of this up as a trap. He manages to hit Impulse with a tranquilizer dart, which apparently is all a villain needs to completely shut down the kid's super-speed, then trots up to Impulse, explains his scheme, as well as his larger intention of discouraging teen vigilantism, before blowing out Impulse's knee with a shotgun. In fairness, it wouldn't be a Geoff Johns comic without some act of hyper-violence, now would it? To Be Continued!

Commentary

You know, I don't dislike Geoff Johns, it's just that he typically has the subtlety of...well, a shotgun blast to the knee, I suppose. For example, in these first few issues, Superboy learns that Lex Luthor is his father, and then Wonder Girl learns that Zeus is her father. I can't help but feel that Johns could have pushed the 'reveal of paternity causes teenager to re-evaluate place in the world, ultimately coming to the conclusion that they are not defined by there parentage' theme with just one of them.

I guess the real problem with a book about teenage super-heroes is that it never really seems like these characters are real teenagers.  Let's be honest; teenagers are, by and large, assholes. They'd be terrible heroes.  Fuck, I know if I had superpowers as a teenager, I'd use them in all sorts of irresponsible ways. But instead, you've got these guys, who essentially never do anything even remotely selfish with their powers except angst. A lot.

Damage Stars: Three Shotgun Blasts the Knee!

Wonder Woman (v2) #73

Wonder Woman (v2) #73
 "Losses"
Cover Date: April 1993
Writer: William Messner-Loebs
Artist: Les Mendes (Pencils), Ande Parks (Inks)

Previously....

Wonder Woman's home island of Themyscira was blown up. I don't know, I really just picked this issue because of the cover, I mean, aren't you curious about how Wonder Woman got a job at the local Taco Bell rip-off?

No? Not even a little bit?


Well, we're doing this anyway.

Plot

So, Diana is looking at the expanse of ocean where Themyscira used to be before it got blown up. She finds Steve Trevor just kind of floating in the water in scuba gear, and they chat for a bit, about how Themyscira will exist as long as people remember or it gets retconned out of existence during the next reboot of Wonder Woman's origin or something. Then, Wonder Woman, depressed about the destruction of her homeland, decides to go crash in her friend's basement for a while. But...uh...she does it heroically.

Anyway, eventually Diana decides to find a job, which proves difficult as she has no work experience or skills, so she finds the going tough. Eventually she starts bitterly complaining about how the economic realities of modern America make finding good work so difficult for the underclass. Man, I could just imagine a kid spending $1.25 on this issue to read about the heroic adventures of Wonder Woman and her epic struggle with chronic unemployment.

Diana eventually lands a job with Taco Whiz, the litigation-avoiding version of Taco Bell, and meets Hoppy, her new sassy African-American boss whose speech patterns seem to vary from sentence to sentence. She explains to Diana, "I seen on TV where Taco Whiz is the biggest employer in the country now, right behind the Japanese an' the Federal Government." Thrilling. Also, I can't help but note that by 1993, 'the Japanese' were in the middle of their 'Lost Decade' so I'm not sure-  You know what, let's just finish this damn thing.

Right, so time for Wonder Woman to fight a villain, then? No! It's time for Diana to look for an apartment! Because if there's one thing more exciting that watching a super-hero get a minimum wage job, it's watching them look at apartments. It turns out that working a minimum wage job does not allow you to afford much of an apartment, so Diana ends up renting a room in a boarding house.

The next day, Diana is walking to work when a guy with sunglasses who had been stalking her finally puts his plan into action. The plan involves intentionally picking a fight with some sort of mob boss with robotic henchman...and the mob boss has some sort of helmet that allows him to turn into a demon. You know, that plot point seems pretty fucking stupid when you type it like that. I can't help but feel that there might have been more time to come up with a decent villain if I hadn't had to watch the montage of unsuccessful job interviews that took up most of the middle third of this issue.

Wonder Woman defeats the demon and her stalker offers her a job. Will Diana's new job interfere with her commitments to the Taco Whiz? To Be Continued!

Analysis

Man, there have been a lot of bad Wonder Woman comics over the years, haven't there?


William Messner-Loebs wrote Wonder Woman for over three years. It was not a good period for the character. I guess that Loebs was trying to humanize Wonder Woman a bit with this plot, and there's nothing more human than unemployment I guess.

I suppose it's really more a problem with the character in general. Wonder Woman is supposed to be a perfect child of the gods, but what the hell does that mean. Superman's already got the whole 'perfect man-god' thing covered, so where does that leave Diana? In general, there have been two main stands in trying to flesh out the character. First, there's the 'naive innocent living in world she does not really understand' interpretation, where they try to play up how this perfect being who was raised in a different world would not quite understand how the real world works, which is the model in play in this issue. The problem with that is that there's probably a time-limit for how long that type of character would work.  You couldn't have Diana being confused by income inequality in a capitalist society after living in man's world for years, after all. (Unless, of course, you reboot the franchise, meaning that it will probably be making a comeback relatively soon.)

The other main way to portray Wonder Woman is as a great 'warrior', playing up her martial abilities, and I'll talk more about that if I ever do one of those issues of Wonder Woman.

Damage Stars: ****

Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #1

Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #1
Cover Date: Summer 1992
Writers: Various
Artists: Various

Previously...

Last time we talked about how Hal Jordan hooked up with a 14 year-old (which gets retconned down to being a 13 year-old in this issue). Anyway, that relationship lasted for the rest of that run of Green Lantern, but, by 1992, Arisia had kind of fallen off the map. Now, you might think that the writers of Green Lantern would celebrate the fact that they no longer had to deal with that...unpleasantness, but Gerard Jones wasn't your typical writer. No, Jones decided to address the situation head-on....

Plot

So the framing story for this anthology is Hal and a bunch of other Green Lanterns looking at the Book of Oa, which tells them about famous Green Lanterns. The other stories are particularly memorable, but eventually Gerard Jones gets his chance to explain what happened to Arisia after we say her last.

Well, at some point after the end of the second volume of Green Lantern, Arisia decided to make a trip back to the old Green Lantern Corps headquarters in L.A., which unfortunately coincided with Guy Gardner and Kilowog accidentally demolishing it. The upshot is that Arisia gets hit on the head and reverts back to her 13 year-old personality, but still has the body of an adult.

This inspires her to have a flashback where it's revealed that she never really had a fully mature brain, but instead was using her power ring to fake having an adult personality so she could seduce Hal Jordan, which, uh...turned out to work like a charm.

You know, it's funny, because Gerard Jones was the writer who objected to the story where Hal went crazy and killed the Green Lantern Corps because, you know, he felt like it would ruin Hal's character, but revealing that Hal was sleeping with what was essentially a 13 year-old, that's apparently okay.

Anyway, Arisia, using her quasi-adult brain, also became a model, because apparently Jones felt like his story wasn't making the audience feel uncomfortable enough:

Anyway, her brains still scrambled, Arisia manages to get into a car wreck, which gives her amnesia. Meanwhile, back on Oa, Hal and his buddies have been watching the whole fucking story, and Hal vows to fix everything, whenever he gets a chance to head back to Earth. Then he decides just to go onto the next story, since, you know, what's the worst that could happen leaving a 13 year-old with amnesia and the body of a fashion model alone for a few weeks? To Be Continued!

Commentary

Here's the thing, when Hal Jordan got replaced as Green Lantern in 1994, this was probably exactly the sort of shit that made DC editorial say to themselves, "Yeah, it's time for a new Green Lantern." The Jones version of Hal Jordan was interesting, if only because Jones seemed to really have it out for Hal. I mean, this was a period where Hal was portrayed as a chronically unemployed, graying ex-test pilot with jail time on his record. And then you add the fact that his last relationship was retconned into having the mind of a child? Hal would've better off getting written out of the book three years earlier.

Damage Stars: *****

Green Lantern (v2) #206

Green Lantern (v2) #206
"In Deep"
Cover Date: November 1986
Writer: Steve Englehart
Artist: Joe Slaton (Pencils) Mark Farmer (Inks)

Previously...

After the first Crisis, most franchises in the DC universe took an opportunity to try new things out. Superman and Wonder Woman got new origins, Flash got a new protagonist, and Green Lantern...well....

For whatever reason, the people writing Green Lantern decided the transform the book from a book about a (mostly) solo hero working in deep space, to one about an Earth-based team. Why? I have no idea. Anyway, to make it happen, the Guardians of the Universe, who run the Green Lantern Corps, decide that they're going to retire to another dimension, and that individual Green Lanterns are now free to do whatever the fuck they want. Instead of using their rings to crave out empires in space, a bunch of them, led by Hal Jordan, decide to go live in L.A..

More importantly for this issue, though, Arisia, the token plucky teenager, has been ill over the past few issues.

Plot

Hal Jordan and Arisia have fallen down into a mine shaft as the result of last issue's fight with Black Hand. Their rings are also out of power. Jordan gets up and notices something...different about Arisia.

I don't think I like where this is headed.

Arisia kind of freaks out, so Hal helpfully calms her down the only way he knows how:

Awesome. You couldn't destroy Hal Jordan's character any faster if you were trying.

Anyway, the rest of the Green Lanterns are still above ground. They decide to regroup, and some reporter follows them and starts asking questions about how they're going to handle Black Hand. Kilowog, the biggest member of the team, decides to handle it in the most appropriate manner he can think of:

So...we're sure the Green Lanterns are the heroes of this book, right? Anyway, the reporter leaves, and Jon Stewart explains to Kilowog that the beating of reporters is generally looked down in America. The rest of the Green Lanterns disagree.

Back in the mine shaft, Arisia explains that she must have subconsciously used her power ring to age her to adulthood so she could fuck Hal Jordan. Hal seems mildly disturbed by this revelation. She then tries to sell him on the idea that her mind has matured as well, so it would be totally right for them to get it on. Hal essentially accepts this premise, explaining, "I believe your mind matured! Coming to me and admitting your problem proves that!" Yeah, that's ironclad logic there. Hal then tries to get out of the conversation by claiming that he's not ready to love again after his string of ill-fated romances in the past hundred issues or so of this comic.

Black Hand attacks, and the Green Lanterns try to fight him off, only for the villain to start draining the power from their rings, causing the team to immediately run away. The Green Lanterns in this issue could not possibly seem more pathetic.

Back in the mine shaft of forbidden love, Arisia asks about Hal's ex-girlfriends, and we learn that they were, in order, a woman who was occasionally possessed by an alien gem, a woman who lived in the future, and his friend's girlfriend who Hal stole when said friend was in a coma. And then Arisia and Hal get attacked by a mountain lion. Did you know Steve Englehart was generally regarded as a decent writer back in his day? You're not buying it, huh? Hal and Arisia fight off the mountain lion for a bit.

In the meantime, Black Hand is using the Green Lantern power he stole from Hal and Arisia to lift Angels Stadium into the air. Has enough time passed to make a Donny Moore joke? Anyway, the Green Lanterns finally get their shit together and stop him. They then decide to look for Hal and Arisia and...

Hey, don't judge Hal, he held out against Arisia's underage charms for nearly one full issue. What more could be asked of him?

Next Issue:

Hal's Greatest Challenge Yet!

Commentary

Well, this was a thing, then.

I guess Englehart thought to himself, "Well, Hal needs a love interest, and I've got a spare female member of the team, so what if she's 14...?"


Also, you wouldn't think that they'd ever bring up this story again, but Arisia is still an adult, and still alive and kicking in the Green Lantern titles even today, despite the fact that her modern depiction traces from this very issue. It's kind of amazing what sticks and what doesn't. You'd think DC editorial would do everything it could to erase the Hal Jordan's re-enactment of Lolita but no, as far as I know, it's still canon.

Damage Stars: *****

Hawkman (v3) #0

Hawkman (v3) #0
"Eyes of the Hawk, Prologue: Old Scores"
Cover Date: October 1994
Writer: William Messner-Loebs
Artist: Steve Lieber (Pencils), Curt Schoultz (Inker)

Previously...

Okay, let's try and keep this manageable. But in the '40s, DC published some stories about Hawkman, who was really Carter Hall, an archaeologist who was really the reincarnation of an Egyptian prine. Now, admittedly, the Egyptians' actual religious beliefs were about as far from reincarnation as you can get, but sure. Now, flashfoward to the Silver Age, where DC retcons the original Hawkman to Earth-2, and introduces a new Hawkman on Earth-1, where he's Katar Hol, an alien police officer who's hanging on Earth for a variety of reasons. Okay, the Crisis hits, and Earth-2 and Earth-1 get merged. The Golden Age Hawkman then gets (effectively) killed off to make things a bit simpler. The Silver Age Hawkman is still around, though, and even gets another (short-lived) ongoing. A couple of years after that, DC decides to retcon Katar Hol's origin. Now, this version of Hawkman is already appearing in other DC books at the time, so the revised origin, told in the Hawkworld mini-series, has to take place in the past, since it ends with him arriving on Earth for the first time. Except DC decided that, no, from now on, Katar Hol had only just arrived on Earth.

Now, that was a problem, since that meant that literally hundreds of stories now needed to be patched, since Katar Hol had appeared in them, but, per his new origin, he should not be there. So DC decided that all of Hawkman's appearances up to the first Crisis were really the Golden Age Hawkman, and all of the subsequent appearances had been a new character that was really a Thanagarian spy, who was then gotten rid of as quickly as possible.

At this point, things were already a bit complicated, and then the Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl returned to the main DC continuity, making things even harder to follow. DC then decided to use the Zero Hour event to consolidate the conflicting origins of Hawkman by...literally consolidating the Golden Age Hawkman, the Golden Age Hawkgirl, and the current Hawkman into one body, which seems to be the least helpful solution you could think of, but that's where this issue begins...

Plot

The issue starts with a monologue by Hawkman that includes gems like 'Good and evil...madness and sanity...life and death...they seem like two sides of the same coin to me now.' So, at the very least, it appears that this incarnation of Hawkman has the combined pretentiousness of his predecessors.

Anyway, he decides to fly back to his apartment and hang out with his supporting cast. We've got a Native American mechanic, Hawkman's Native American mother, a dude with three arms, some crippled former villain from Thanagar, and Hawkwoman. The agree that he's still basically the same old Hawkman, except bigger, has hawk eyes, and real wings growing out of his back. Oh, and he's got the minds of all of the other Hawkmen floating around in his mind.

At that exact moment, a guy named Badblood burst into the room with a gang of heavily armed mutants to kill Hawkman. I then check to see if that really happened, or I was just being unnecessarily snide....okay, no, it actually happened.

Anyway, ol' Badblood is pissed off about Hawkman foiling his previous schemes. Now, you'd think that if you open fire in the relatively small room, you'd be able to kill at least one person, but no, Badblood strikes out. We do learn, though, that Hawkman's wings, since they are now made of flesh, can now be hurt by bullets, and that Badblood can apparently use his spilled blood as a weapon, hence the name. Still, Badblood's gang gets beaten off. Hawkman then decides that, for the good of everyone, that he must hunt down Badblood alone, and picks up some new weapons, most notably a punch dagger.

Katar heads off into the city, and does a little more philosophizing before fighting off some more mutants. He notes, "I can barely remember the names of the groundlings beneath me." Please stop talking, Katar. He then finds Badblood and precedes to start beating the fuck out of him. Badblood tries to use his blood as a weapon, but Hawkman just keeps slashing at him until Badblood's bad blood somehow turns on the villain and kills him. Well, either that or the fact that Hawkman just slashed him with his punch dagger about a hundred times.

Elsewhere, Vandal Savage observes the fight from a close-circuit monitor and muses about how Hawkman's changed.

Commentary

Here's is an incontrovertible truth: Hawkman sucks. Hawkman has always sucked. Hawkman will always suck. No good has ever come from using Hawkman in a story.

I mean, here's the thing, his main power is that he can fly. That's...a tad underwhelming, especially since he's always been portrayed as a dude with a mace or some other close-combat weapon, which would seem to negate his one tactical advantage. So, that's a problem.

In fact, let's summarize the different takes that writers have had on Hawkman:

1940s: Hawkman is the reincarnation of an Egyptian prince who also has some magical metal that he turns into wings that let him fly. He then decides to be a super-hero, on the premise of 'might as well.'

1950s-1980s: Hawkman is an alien policeman come to Earth from the utopian world of Thanagar. His wings come from alien technology. He's also the conservative counterweight to Green Arrow in the Justice League, a fact that every subsequent writer of Hawkman or Green Arrow will be contractually obligated to acknowledge should the both of them appear in the same story.

late 1980s-mid 1990s: Hawkman is an alien policeman come to Earth from the dystopian world of Thanagar. Otherwise, he's basically the same, except he's got a different costume.

mid 1990s: Hawkman is a merged being consisting of a handful of former Hawkmen and some sort of Hawk God. This proves to be such a miscalculation that DC throws the character into limbo for the better part of a decade.

2000s: Hawkman is back to being a reincarnated Egyptian prince, but now he's lived through bunches of past lives, which makes him a great warrior or something. This typically translates to him being an ersatz Conan the Barbarian with wings.

2010s: Hawkman gets a new ongoing, under the theory that, "Fifth time's the charm!"

Damage Stars: ****