Hawkman is among the twenty or so DC characters that are both instantly recognizable and incredibly important to the 80 years of DC history. You would think that, given that pedigree and notoriety, that Hawkman would be featured as prominently as his fellow iconic creations in DC books. But that has never really happened, and certainly hasn’t happened recently.
Part of that is the messier-than-usual continuity, and part of it has been the lack of a real strong creative vision for the character. Luckily, Robert Venditti has a solution to both of those problems. When “Hawkman” #1 drops on Wednesday, readers will get their most focused Hawkman story since Geoff Johns re-launched a Hawkman series in 2002. But Venditti takes it a step further, and manages to connect all the iterations of Hawkman with deceptive ease.
We spoke with Venditti about the series, his working relationship with artist Bryan Hitch, and what we can expect from “the Indiana Jones of the DC Universe.”
Hawkman is a character that is obviously intrinsic to the DC Universe, has been a major part of DC Comics for 50+ years now, yet is a character that people tend to really struggle with, whether it’s the continuity issues or the lineage. So, what is it about you that saw Hawkman as a great challenge as opposed to an “uh oh, how am I going to handle this” type character?
Robert Venditti: I think it was a lot of things. One, the concept really speaks to me. The idea of a reincarnating hero is something that I find very interesting and allows you to play with a lot of different times and whip through that. You could play with different genres and sort of do many different styles of comic in one style of comic. I also like the space cop aspect of the character as well. The Hawkman is one of those concepts that you don’t come across too often that is extremely earthbound but also very cosmic as well. I like the balance of those kinds of characters and I enjoy writing those kinds of stories.
Beyond that, it’s part of what you said. He’s such a foundational character in DC mythology, going all the way back to the very, very beginnings of superhero comics. He feels like he kind of lost his central significance and I wanted to take on the character, and Bryan and I both talked about it as we were sitting down, shooting ideas around of what we wanted to do and one of the things at the top of our list was to really return him to this central place of prominence that he deserves to have in the DC Universe.
Yeah, and that place of prominence, a lot of times features a membership with the Justice League or some sort of team association but you’re taking him, what seems like on a solo journey, although we do have some familiar faces pop up in the first issue. How much of this is going to be Hawkman’s journey by himself versus Hawkman’s journey as part of the larger DC Universe?
RV: I don’t think those two things are necessarily mutually exclusive. He can go on a journey that’s really a journey of self discovery for him and in doing so, reveal these ways that he’s connected to the wider DC Universe in ways that he never knew before and neither did we as readers. I think if you’ve looked at the work I’ve done on something like “Hal Jordan & The Green Lantern Corps” and even though they’re out in space, you bring in a lot of elements from all corners of the DCU and you make it feel like it’s more of a cohesive whole. I think you’re kind of hitting on very much what the series is about, which is his own personal journey but how that personal journey reveals how central he is to the wider DC universe.
Now, I’m not going to reveal the twist because I want our readers to pick up the issue and be as surprised as I was but there’s a really great moment where you solve a huge continuity issue with Hawkman and you do it with relative ease on one page, with really like one line of dialogue. How quickly did that reveal come to you?
Continued belowRV: It was sort of my immediate thought within the first day of me looking at the character and researching it and sort of just getting a very general background on who Hawkman is. It was kind of my first thought and I spent the rest of my time researching it, trying to find a way to sort of disprove it, you know? Or waiting for it to come up on its own. And it never did. So I was very pleased about that.
And also, something I don’t want to overlook here is how much, what we’re doing, spring boards off of the opportunities that “Metal” presented with the character. When “Metal” came in and expanded the character’s background beyond the ancient Egyptian mythology that we had known about up to that point, I really saw it as an opportunity to have this vast canvas with which to do new things with the character that didn’t contradict the things that already existed about the character. We’re definitely building and I guess that speaks as well to how we’re making Hawkman central, to go to your earlier question, in what’s, essentially, a solo book. Part of the rest of the answer to that is, we’re picking up these threads and expanding on mythology as it were put in place in “Metal” which was obviously a very sweeping expansive story for all the DC Universe and we’re going to continue to take that same approach.
Now, you’re working with Bryan Hitch on this book and Bryan is a writer in his own right, and Bryan is somebody who has a really clean visual aesthetic. When you see a Bryan Hitch page, it comes abundantly clear what his goal is for that page, and I really admire that about his artwork. So how does working with Bryan inform how you’re writing this series?
RV: It’s been amazing. He’s an artist, he’s a writer, but he’s just an extremely gifted storyteller and he’s such an asset to have on the book and to bounce ideas off of, and to come back with his own ideas. And for me to say A and for him to come back with B and then for us to combine A and B into C, it’s really a great lot of fun. I’m writing plot first for him, so I’m giving him about an eight page plot, six to eight page plot to work from for the issue and then after that, we exchange a lot of emails as his drawings and new ideas come up and new things occur to us so we bounce back and forth. The pages are just so rich in detail as you can see from reading it. He packs so much visual information into it.
In many ways, you almost don’t even have to letter them. The storytelling is so clean and it’s so inviting and so easily discernible that I’m really just trying to back up what he’s doing. It’s a great collaboration that we have going. Of course, you read number one but we’re many more issues into the series in terms of plots locked down and things like that.
But even beyond that, the visual approach he’s bringing to Hawkman, for example, there’s an image in issue one where Hawkman takes flight and his wings are sort of in a downstroke position. I’ve read a lot of Hawkman comics up to this point, over 150, close to 200, maybe more. I can’t recall off the top of my head. I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere but I can’t recall ever seeing his wings in that downstroke position. They’re always spreading or they’re folded along his back, or things like that. But Bryan takes the actual elements of bird flight and incorporates it into the character and it becomes a part of the way he moves, and the way he fights, and the way he battles, and where he gets his strength from, and the agility, and the power. It just makes it all so real on the page. I could not be happier with how the story is turning out.
One of the things you mentioned that I really am interested in, and I got the sense of it from reading just the first issue, is that this book can be many things within just its one title. It could be a tale across time, a tale across space. It’s a very inward journey but it’s also very impactful to the world at large. Which element of the book do you feel, right now, is drawing you the most? What is that sort of beacon calling to you, storytelling wise?
Continued belowRV: For me, the thing about Carter Hall as a character that always struck me is, here’s a guy who is Hawkman and he’s made for the sky and wide open spaces and wings spread and soaring, but he’s also an archaeologist, and those two things seem very antithetical to each other. Why would somebody who’s made to soar pick a profession that by necessity requires that he be underground and in tunnels and all these kinds of things? That just struck me as an interesting dichotomy for the character and for me, I try to sit down and say, “Why would he do that?” It’s because he’s so driven by this desire to explore and to discover that he’ll put himself in these claustrophobic situations that go against his nature because that drive is there. Then I ask myself, well, why is that drive so acute for him? I think that it’s because all this outward exploration that he’s done throughout his many, many lives has been all about inward discovery. There were pieces of himself that were missing that he didn’t know and we’re all going to find out what those are in issue one.
But there was just this nagging feeling that there were things that he needed to know and to discover and he realizes that it’s all about what he’s been doing over his many lives, has been all about discovering who he is within himself and I think that’s something that’s relatable to everybody who reads this book. Throughout our lives, we spend every day of our lives trying to figure out who we are, from the day we’re born to the day we die. And that’s very much part of Hall’s journey too and so that is what I think is really the emotional core of the book and what’s really pulling me along.
One of the things that I love doing with comics that I really enjoy is giving people a reason to check it out that doesn’t seem clear from just looking at the cover or paging through it. So, if someone is interested in picking up “Hawkman,” what’s the sort of unexpected hook to it that you think people will buy issue four or five. What will they be grabbing onto?
RV: This is the Indiana Jones of the DC Universe with a bit of National Treasure mixed in. It’s a wide standing epic adventure. Carter Hall’s going to go to places that are unique to the DC Universe. We’re going to see things that we haven’t seen before and I honestly feel, and I read a lot of comics every month, I honestly feel there’s nothing else on the stands that’s like this book, in the terms of the visuals, in terms of the content, in terms of who this character is. It’s a wholly unique experience. It’s one that Bryan and I are having an immense amount of enjoyment putting together and I really do believe that that passion and that enthusiasm comes across in the finished product.
