Written by Mark Henely
There is really only one word to describe Death of Hawkman #2 and that word is “disorienting.” I loved the first issue and I had high hopes for the second, but I was immediately unsure of what was happening and when it was all happening. New readers who are picking this up first would be best served skipping it because there is very little in the way of exposition to help establish what is going on in this comic.
In my review of the first issue, I praised this comic for being something unexpected. I liked that writer, Marc Andrejko, decided to center the “Death of Hawkman” (the comic where Hawkman presumably dies) around little known superhero, Adam Strange. I liked it because Andrejko really took his time and established who Strange was and what motivated him. He told us Strange was a man who spent half his time on Earth as a normal guy and half his time in Space living his life as a hero. He enjoyed his time at home, but longed for his time in space.
But, this comic doesn’t honor that set up. Strange spends the whole comic disturbed by the horror that is his alternate life of being a Space Cowboy. I wanted to see Strange become a swashbuckling hero with an impish glint in his eye. Instead we get a man at the end of his rope. Strange takes no joy in the Super Hero life. He isn’t thrill seeking. He is a man who is upset because his wife is acting weird.
We get a little more from Hawkman this time around, but it is so mired down in impenetrable details about the politics of fictional planets that it’s hard to get a feel for who this character is in this story. We see that he likes to hit things and bone women, but there has to be more to the guy than that. And if there isn’t, then I want to see more of him boning women and breaking faces. If he is nothing but his desires, then I want his hedonism to be over the top. I need to be sad that Hawkman dies, not indifferent because he is so plain.
Rating: 4 out of 10
