An eons long fight just got real.
Creative Staff:
Story: Robert Venditti
Art: Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie
Colors: Jeremiah Shipper
Letterer: Starkings & Comicraft
What They Say:
The Deathbringers know where Hawkman is—and now they’re coming to Earth to claim him! Carter will need to put all the clues together and fast if he’s going to save the world from mass destruction!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Hawkman series has been doing really well in providing for what are connected standalone stories for most of its run. I liked how Robert Venditti gave us smaller moments at first and then opened us up to the character’s long, rich, and complicated history. And that’s been brought to a head now with the arrival of the Deathbringers. And with us back on Earth that allows Bryan Hitch to deal with more familiar locales just as Venditti sets to destroy them. The scale of things is wonderfully laid out with the trio of machines brought to bear here as it really gives a good sense of the power that’s being wielded by them and the numbers that they contain. Hitch and Currie deliver some fantastic pages here with this.
With Carter having learned all that he has and knowing what he knows, his return to Earth is quick after his timeslip to Krypton’s past. And with all the intensity that he has knowing what’s coming, he ends up at Xanadu’s without breath to spare to really tell her what’s going on, which is fairly comical. She’s one that would help him in an instant if he’d just explain things more clearly but he’s operating at 3x speed and only explaining a third of what’s actually happened and why he’s in the rush and panic he is for the Shell that he wants to use to try and connect his past lives. It’s unclear if the tool would actually be useful since Xanadu casts doubt on that but with neither of them able to be truly clear with each other there’s plenty of room for miscommunication here.
Naturally, the Deathbringers are pretty much nipping at his heels unbeknownst to him and the three massive figures that arrive are definitely apocalytpic in nature. It’s a great sequence as they demand tribute since it’s been a long time since they were last here and humanity has grown considerably since then. But knowing that the “betrayer” is here means the place is likely to get culled and Carter forced to watch, which is why it turns to violence quickly with thousands of more regular-sized hawkpeople being let loose to cause chaos. It’s got all the right scale by Venditti keeps it personal with Idamm showing up and going directly for Carter’s throat, making clear who has the upperhand and why, and that he intends to use it in order to give Carter lifetimes of guilt to suffer through for what he did to them. It puts our hero in a pickle to be sure but it’s all done in a way that flows well and feels authentic enough.
In Summary:
Hawkman has been building to this confrontation since the series launched and while it does feel abrupt that the Deathbringers are there already it’s an easy piece to kind of kick off to the side. What we get is the big threat with promises of help from the Justice League and the Green Lantern Corps, or at least Xanadu assumes they’ll show up, but it’s likely to be all about Carter and connecting the pieces of his past together in the right way. There’s a lot to like here as it moves a mile a minute but it feels natural and earned even if you do want to smack Carter around a bit for how he acts early on. It’s a solid issue that looks great and sets us up for what’s to come next perfectly.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: DC Comics via DC Universe
Release Date: February 13th, 2019
MSRP: $3.99
