The End of Hawkworld: John Ostrander's Run on Hawkman vol. 3

When I reviewed the Hawkworld ongoing, I noted that the lack of commentary on what succeeded it* was conspicuous: "I don't have much of a sense what Hawkman vol. 3 is like. You can find a lot of write-ups on the Internet about the Hawkworld ongoing, but Hawkman vol. 3 is usually only mentioned for the bare fact of its existence." I didn't find this article until later, but it's basically all I could find. Just skimming the covers and issue descriptions, though, made me think that reading Hawkman vol. 3 in its entirety wasn't going to be for me; it was clear that the series moved away from the science fiction elements that attracted me to the original Hawkworld in the first place.

So I ended up limiting myself to the issues of Hawkman vol. 3 written by Hawkworld writer John Ostrander (#1-6, Annual #1) or that sounded otherwise interesting, which wereits "Year One" story (Annual #2) and a Shayera Thal focal issue cover-branded with the title Hawkwoman (#19).

Ostrander's run picks up a few months on from the end of Hawkworld: Hawkwoman (Shayera Thal) is presumed dead, Hawkman (Katar Hol) is missing following a battle, and there's a new Hawkman out there, willing to cross a line the old Hawkman wouldn't. The first issue builds up a lot of mystery as to who this new Hawkman is; the second reveals it's Katar Hol again, so I don't know what the point of that was.

He's essentially a completely different character, though. In issue #6, it's revealed that in the months between Hawkworld #32 and Hawkman #1, Katar discovered his secret past: when his father Paran Katar visited Earth in the Justice Society era, he fell in love with a Native American woman and fathered a child with her; he took them both back to Thanagar with him, though eventually the woman got tired of space life and was returned to Earth. This retcon stretches plausibility even further than the myriad ones during Hawkworld vol. 2 already did. The original introduction of the Paran-Katar-on-Earth retcon made it clear the JSA Hawkman and Hawkgirl didn't know Paran was from space; this version shows they did.

It's clear the point of this is to reduce Hawkman's science fiction elements and increase his tie to Earth. Like all retcons, I judge it on the standard of: is the new thing, if not more interesting, at least equal in interest to the thing it's replacing? Here, the answer is a clear no. The Thanagar introduced by Tim Truman in Hawkworld vol. 1 was a fertile ground for telling interesting stories, and John Ostrander took it some interesting places in vol. 2. Now, Hawkman is yet another angry 1990s superhero.

The main upshot seems to be to give Hawkman "Native American powers"; he can commune with animals (of course he can). Also, now, when he flies into a place, it makes a noise that sounds like the wind. Only this is comics, so this gimmick can only be communicated by having people go, "What's that? It sounds like a tremendous wind only the leaves on the trees aren't moving!" I made up that dialogue, but it's not far off the real thing.

In short, it's mediocre, and I'm sure the post-John Ostrander issues, even if they aren't actually bad, will be devoid of what drew me to the character in the first place, and reading Hawkman Annual #2 validated this, as it's a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about Hawk spirits and reincarnation. The writing out of Shayera is a real shame, too, as she was essentially co-lead in Hawkworld vol. 2, but the trajectory here makes it clear that Hawkman vol. 3 will be focused on just Hawkman. I did enjoy her starring role in issue #19; she's as awesome as ever even if the story isn't that good. More angry vigilantes.

Man, the mid-1990s were a dark time in comics.

* Hawkman is a little tricky to follow through publishing chronology thanks to the changing names of his series. It goes: Hawkman vol. 1 (1964-68), The Atom and Hawkman (1968-69), The Shadow War of Hawkman (1985), Hawkman vol. 2 (1986-87), Hawkworld vol. 1 (1989), Hawkworld vol. 2 (1990-93), Hawkman vol. 3 (1993-96), Legend of the Hawkman (2000), Hawkman vol. 4 (2002-06), Hawkgirl (2006-07), The Savage Hawkman (2011-13), Death of Hawkman (2016-17), Hawkman vol. 5 (2018-present).

Return of the New Jedi Order, Episode III: Chewbacca by Darko Macan et al.

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2001 (contents: 2000)
Borrowed from the library
Read February 2014

Star Wars: Chewbacca

Story: Darko Macan

Pencils: Brent Anderson, Igor Kordey, Jan Duursema, Dave Gibbons, Dusty Abell, John Nadeau, Martin Egeland, Kilian Plunkett, Rafael Kayanan

Inks: Willie Blyberg, Igor Kordey, Jan Duursema, Dave Gibbons, Jim Royal, Jordi Ensign, Matin Egeland, Kilian Plunkett, Rafael Kayanan
Colors: Nathan Eyring, Matthew Paine, Angus McKie, Dave Nestelle, Dan Jackson
Lettering: Vickie Williams

Year One of the Invasion (Month 2)
This comic picks up shortly after Vector Prime, taking place in the lull between the Praetorite Vong beachhead and the arrival of the main force of the Yuuzhan Vong. During this time, C-3PO and R2-D2 travel the galaxy, recording testimonials from those who knew the fallen Wookiee warrior, friend and foes alike. I didn't much like the tales that mostly featured Wookiee characters-- they're hard to tell apart, and I think rendering Chewie's dialogue into English misses the point-- but most of these are decent little tales. I particularly liked "Ssoh; or, A Slaver's Lot," where Chewbacca leads a mass uprising, and "Wedge; or, A Pilot's Anecdote," a tall tale about just how dangerous a Wookiee can be. "Han; or, An Empty Galaxy" was also quite good: poor guy.

Legacy's End Week, Day Five

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2012 (contents: 2010-11)
Acquired January 2012
Read February 2012

Star Wars: Legacy, Volume Eleven: War

Story: John Ostrander and Jan Duursema

Script: John Ostrander

Pencils: Jan Duursema
Inks: Dan Parsons
Colors: Brad Anderson
Lettering: Michael Heisler

The final volume of Legacy sees Cade Skywalker speeding to a confrontation with a revived Darth Krayt, on which the fate of the galaxy rests-- of course.  Cade finally chooses his side... again, in what feels like a slight relapse given the events of Monsters.  At the same time, Nyna Calixte makes her move, the Sith attack the Jedi's Hidden Temple, Roan Fel invades Coruscant, and more.  It's decent, even exciting sometimes, but is somehow less than the sum of its parts; flipping back through it to write this review, I am struggling to find things to say about it.  It brings Legacy to a nice conclusion, but that is all it does, perhaps because it ultimately had too much it had to try to do.  It was okay, but I wanted it to be better than it was, given what it was about.

I will say that 1) the Antares Draco plotline was still lame and 2) I really appreciated the return appearance by Joker Squad.  Joker Squad is a Sith Imperial stormtrooper squad that was the focus of a story in Shards, the second Legacy collection, and though they've never been a focus again, I always appreciate their brief reappearances when stormtroopers bear down on our heroes; it personalizes the bad guys in a small but effective way.

On the whole, I enjoyed Legacy more than I didn't, but it definitely peaked with its first few volumes; Broken, Shards, and Alliance are still the best.  Cade Skywalker was never quite interesting enough, and I always felt like the best parts of the story were happening where he was not.  The first volume clicked perfectly, but after that, Cade's storyline span its wheels a lot while we got tantalizing glimpses of the wider universe.  Broken remains my favorite for having revealed a world full of possibilities while also telling a good story, in a way the series never quite managed again.  I don't think the best overall story that could have been told in this world was told, though the one that was got was usually decent, sometimes good, and occasionally great.

Legacy's End Week, Day Four

Comic trade paperback, 96 pages
Published 2011 (contents: 2010)
Acquired December 2011
Read February 2012

Star Wars: Legacy, Volume Ten: Extremes

Story: John Ostrander and Jan Duursema

Script: John Ostrander

Pencils: Jan Duursema
Inks: Dan Parsons
Colors: Brad Anderson
Lettering: Michael Heisler

As this volume opens, the Galactic Alliance Remnant finally engages openly with the Sith Empire on a massive scale, swooping in to the save the Mon Calamari from genocide.  As always, Gar Stazi is awesome, running into what he knows is a trap and still managing to win.  Well, sort off-- even that many ships can evacuate only a scant fraction of the total population of Dac.  But it's great space battle action nonetheless.

After that, Extremes struggles to insert Cade Skywalker and his buddies into the ongoing plotline about the war between the Sith Empire and the rest of the galaxy.  Cade, who since his rejection of the Dark Side has been exclusively pursuing bounties on Sith, ends up protecting Gar Stazi from an assassination attempt.  The story is a rushed attempt to tie up Legacy (the series was originally cancelled with this volume) and not altogether interesting.  It has its moments, but it's small-scale, so thankfully this wasn't the actual end of Legacy.  The large-scale political plotline and the small-scale Cade one just can't be wedded successfully as attempted here.  (Though it was highly amusing to see Delilah Blue flirting with Stazi.)

There's also a plotline about Antares Draco rescuing Princess Marasiah from the Sith.  This would be more interesting if 1) we'd ever seen or even heard of Draco's old master who turned evil before it was dramatically revealed he was not dead or 2) we didn't know from Broken was Marasiah is a kickass warrior who doesn't need rescuing, thank you very much.

But it's not the end, as the final moments reveal... the galaxy has more troubles to come...

Legacy's End Week, Day Three

Comic trade paperback, 120 pages
Published 2010 (contents: 2009-10)
Acquired December 2011
Read January 2012

Star Wars: Legacy, Volume Nine: Monster

Story: John Ostrander and Jan Duursema

Script: John Ostrander

Pencils: Jan Duursema and Dave Ross
Inks: Dan Parsons
Colors: Brad Anderson and Jesus Aburto 
Lettering: Michael Heisler

This is probably the best post-Vector collection of Legacy.  Following a bounty, Cade Skywalker and friends head to Wayland-- the planet where everything went wrong for him as a boy.  It was on Wayland that the Sith first sabotaged the Ossus Project, the beginning of the ruin of young Cade's life.  This time around, things don't go any better.  Cade's lover, Delilah Blue, is captured by a rogue Sith who wants to know if Cade can heal her of a poison she plans to unleash.  If Cade's immense Dark Side healing powers can't save her, no one can.  The result of this is the best Cade-nearly-turns-to-the-Dark-Side yet, as instead of just seeing the rage that Cade is always fighting to contain, we also finally see the love he can't bring himself to admit.

Elsewhere in the galaxy, events are coming to a head, as Roan Fel's rebel Empire seeks an Alliance with the Jedi, who are at last emerging from hiding with the death of Darth Krayt.  This is all good stuff, too-- it's nice to see the Jedi finally doing something, not to mention Nyna Calixte finally revealing where she stands-- but I have two niggling problems.  The first is that Princess Marasiah Fel, one of my favorite characters in the first volume of Legacy, finally returns here... and does absolutely nothing.  I almost didn't notice she was in it. Lame.  Second, Azlyn Rae reappears, after having been put in a Vader-esque support suit during the events of Storms... in a new suit that's barely noticeably different from her Imperial Knight armor.  So what was the point of all that, then?  Lame.

There's also another Gar-Stazi-is-the-Biggest-Badass-in-Outer-Space side story in this volume, too.  All is well.

Legacy's End Week, Day Two

Comic trade paperback, 120 pages
Published 2010 (contents: 2009)
Acquired April 2010
Read January 2012

Star Wars: Legacy, Volume Eight: Tatooine

Story: John Ostrander and Jan Duursema

Script: John Ostrander

Pencils: Jan Duursema and Kajo Baldisimo
Inks: Dan Parsons
Colors: Brad Anderson and Jesus Aburto 
Letters: Michael Heisler

Most of this volume of Legacy consists of the story "Tatooine," a complicated story of conflicting agendas in the way that Legacy does best.  Cade Skywalker and company are on Tatooine to sell goods they've pirated off Imperial shipments, only things are getting a little hot.  Meanwhile, Moff Nyna Calixte has sent her daughter Gunn Yage to investigate the same problem... but Calixte has come in disguise as Imperial agent Morrigan Corde... and Corde is Skywalker's mother.  There's also a criminal mastermind and some bounty hunters and a corrupt Imperial moff to deal with, too.  It sometimes gets a little confusing, as you might imagine.

The best part of Tatooine is that we finally get a story that is interested in Delilah Blue.  Blue is Cade's Zeltron engineer-- like all Zeltron women, she's sexy and sexual, but beyond the fact that she turns Cade's hydrospanner (in every sense of the word), we don't really know much about her.  In Tatooine, Blue pretends to be an Imperial missionary to make some money, and we gain a sense as to what life she used to live and what motivates her to be with Cade.  It's a little late in the game, but it's much-needed at this point.

Much of the story pairs Cade with Yage, and in true Star Wars tradition, they seem to be attracted to one another because they don't know they're brother and sister.  Which is fun in its own way, I suppose.  It's also nice to see Cade experiencing some of his family history by running around the old Lars farm.  So it's certainly a fun and worthwhile story, but at a certain point seems to wear out its welcome; there's only so much quadruple-crossing you can read before you get bored.  For me, it was when they all went into space to talk to the crimelord or something.  I was done, but the story wasn't.  Still, there were a couple promising revelations at the end.

There's also a side story at the end, "Rogue's End," focusing on a Mandalorian member of the Alliance's Rogue Squadron, who we've seen a couple times in the series previously.  It's all right-- I wasn't super-invested in this guy to begin with, and this story doesn't really make me a big fan, though it's interesting enough.

Legacy's End Week, Day One

Once I heard that Star Wars: Legacy was coming to an end, I began stockpiling the trade paperback collections so that I might read them all at once.  This took longer than I thought, because having been cancelled and concluded, Legacy received a temporary reprieve in the form of the miniseries War.  But this past month, the last volume finally came out, I bought it, and so the end of Legacy began...

Comic trade paperback, 122 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 2009)
Acquired April 2010
Read January 2012

Star Wars: Legacy, Volume Seven: Storms

Story: John Ostrander and Jan Duursema

Script: John Ostrander

Pencils: Jan Duursema and Omar Francia
Inks: Dan Parsons and Omar Francia
Colors: Brad Anderson
Letters: Michael Heisler

At the end of the previous volume of Legacy, Vector, Darth Krayt, the Sith Emperor, was killed.  Storms picks up right from that, with Cade Skywalker and his band of fellow adventurers (i.e., pirates and bounty hunters) trying to make it to safety so that the dying Imperial Knight Azlyn Rae can be healed.  What follows hits the notes that Legacy has hit many times over at this point, unfortunately; a galaxy free of Krayt has not changed Cade Skywalker's outlook one jot.  He's angry and purposeless and lashing out at those who know him, yadda yadda yadda.  We do see him go the farthest he's ever gone in his attempts to hold on to someone's life, further even than with Marasiah Fel in Broken; he uses the Dark Side to keep Azlyn alive, but with a terrible cost that will make for some interesting dynamics should they ever be reunited.

As always, it seems as though the most interesting parts of the world Ostrander and Duursema dreamed up are the ones sideways from the main story.  Storms features two side stories.  The first, "Fight Another Day," focuses on the Sith Empire's ongoing attempts to exterminate the Mon Calamari for their betrayal of the Sith; this time they are opposed by a lone Imperial Knight in a decent little story that shows the Imperial Knights at their best.

The second, "Renegade," focuses on the man who is surely Legacy's best character and true hero, Gar Stazi, admiral of the Galactic Alliance Remnant.  Holding fast to the Alliance when even the Jedi have abandoned it, Stazi demonstrates his mettle here in a cool story where the GA takes the first steps in its fledgling alliance with the Imperial rebels against the Sith.  Its characterization of some of the Imperials is a little simplistic, I think, but on the whole, it is a solid story, the best in this volume.