Place of origin Thanagar Fictional universe DC Universe | Full name Katar Hol | |
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Team affiliations Elite Hawkmen ForceJustice League Similar | ||
Hawkman (Katar Hol) is a DC Comics superhero. He is the Silver Age, Bronze Age, and current Hawkman. Created by Gardner Fox and Joe Kubert, he first appeared in The Brave and the Bold #34 (February–March 1961). There are 2 versions of Katar Hol, the Silver Age version and the post-Hawkworld version.
Contents
Publication History
The Silver Age Hawkman (Katar Hol) was first introduced in Brave and the Bold #34. He was originally created by Joe Kubert and Gardner Fox. At this time DC had already rebooted many of its characters such as the Flash, and Green Lantern. Hawkman's first appearance sold well and spawned 5 more tryout issues in Brave and the Bold. During these issues he teamed up with his wife, Hawkgirl, to battle foes on earth as well as on his home planet Thanagar.
After Hawkman had concluded his appearances in Brave and the Bold, he went on to Mystery in Space. He had a side comic strip in 4 issues of this series, and teamed up with Adam Strange in some of his adventures.
Eventually Hawkman was given the right to his own magazine. In 1964 after enough requests Hawkman was finally given a solo magazine published every 2 months. Murphy Anderson took over the art for this series. Hawkman occasionally teamed up with The Atom and Adam Strange in his magazine. Together Hawkman and Hawkgirl battled such foes as the Matter Master, the Shadow Thief, Lion-Mane, and many others. Hawkmans self-titled magazine would go on for less than 5 years before it was eventually canceled at issue #27.
Luckily however, Hawkman wasn't over. After declining sales forced the cancelation of his solo magazine, Hawkman teamed up with The Atom and starred in The Atom and Hawkman for 7 issues. Sadly though this series had to be canceled as well.
During the 70s and early 80s Hawkman continued to appear in the Justice League of America, which he had joined back in 1964, he also made regular appearances in World's Finest Comics. and Detective Comics. But it wasn't until the mid 80s when Hawkman finally got his own series back. In 1986 DC started a 4 part miniseries called, The Shadow War of Hawkman. Due to the decent sales of this series. Hawkman began a monthly solo series. It lasted until the 17th issue, and contained 1 special.
Then in 1989 Timothy Truman decided to reboot the Silver Age Hawkman in a 3 book series titled Hawkworld. This was the start of the post-Hawkworld version of Katar Hol. While this series was originally meant to just be a retold origin of Hawkman, it spawned yet another Hawkman series. In 1990 DC created the Hawkworld monthly series. This series had 2 volumes, but was eventually canceled due to poor sales.
During the mid 90s-2010 Hawkman would have more off and on series. But none of them were of much importance. Sadly though, with all of the different series Hawkman had been part of, his origin and story had become rather complicated and confusing. So at the end of his 3rd series Hawkman was physically dissolved into nothing. Eventually Hawkman came back, but this time, rather than being the alien policeman that he was in the previous series, he was Carter Hall the reincarnated Egyptian prince. However this added even more complexity to Hawkman, and the series was canceled.
Eventually in 2011 the Silver Age Hawkman was rebooted again in the new 52. His magazine was titled The Savage Hawkman. While this Hawkman was the most simple version of this complex character, it also did not sell very well. It ended at issue 20. Hawkman is currently being published in the DC rebirth in a series titled The Death of Hawkman.
Silver Age version
Katar Hol was the imperial prince of his home planet of Thanagar. His father was Paran Katar, renowned ornithologist and inventor. When Katar Hol was eighteen, an alien race called the Manhawks invaded Thanagar and began looting the planet. Paran sent young Katar Hol to infiltrate their nest and bring back information on the aliens. Using this information, Paran created a hawk-like battle suit containing advanced technology like his "Nth metal". Katar used this hawk-suit and Paran's advanced weaponry to drive the Manhawks away from Thanagar.
That, however, was not the end of the problem. Some Thanagarians had learned the concept of stealing from the Manhawks. Due to the amount of crime, the Thanagarian government created a police force. In honor of Paran Katar and his achievements, the new police force began using his hawk-suit and equipment. Paran headed this new police force, named the Hawk-Police (or Wingmen), and his son became one of the first recruits.
Katar soon became one of the most skilled of the Hawk-Police. When a group called the Rainbow Robbers began committing crimes, Katar was teamed up with rookie Shayera Thal to track and apprehend the criminals. During the case, Shayera saved Katar's life, and the two soon fell in love. A few weeks later, Katar proposed to Shayera and the two got married, working together as partners-for-life in the Hawk-Police.
After ten years of marriage and in the force, the pair were sent to Earth in 1961 to capture the shape-shifting Thanagarian criminal Byth. During their mission, they meet George Emmett, commissioner of the Midway City Police Department, and told him their alien origin. With Emmett's help, the pair took over his retiring brother Ed's place as museum curators. They adopt the identities as Carter and Shiera Hall. After capturing him and sending him back to Thanagar, they elected to remain on Earth to work with authorities to learn human police methods. The two acted publicly as the heroes Hawkman and Hawkgirl (later Hawkwoman).
The rest of Hawkman's supporting cast consist of Mavis Trent, museum naturalist and diorama artist who flirts with Katar; Joe Tracy, the museum's publicist; his commanding officer Andar Pul; a large red hawk named Big Red who lives nearby Hawk Valley; and teenage orphan Charley Parker, Golden Eagle. Katar gained a variety of unique villainous opponents such as the Shadow Thief, Matter Master, Ira Quimby (I.Q.), Konrad Kaslak, Chac, the Raven, the Criminal Alliance of the World (or C.A.W.), Lion-Mane, Kanjar Ro, Hyathis, the Fadeaway Man, and the Gentleman Ghost.
Katar joined the Justice League of America in the early 1960s, where he befriended the Atom. As Hawkman was a conservative, he frequently verbally sparred with his fellow leaguer Green Arrow, a left wing liberal.
Hol left the Justice League for a time when Thanagar was hit by the Equalizer Plague, which caused all Thanagarians to change so that their physical and mental talents, and even their heights, became the same. With the help of the JLA, he was eventually able to reverse the effects of the plague.
However, in the wake of the plague, Thanagar adopted an expansionist outlook, and went to war with the planet Rann, which orbits Alpha Centauri. This forced Katar and Shayera to choose to fight for or against their own planet, and they elected to oppose Thanagar, becoming exiles on Earth. Around this time, Shayera herself joined the JLA, and took the name Hawkwoman.
Following the truce between Thanagar and Rann, Thanagar began to secretly try to take over the Earth. Hol opposed their efforts in a furtive "secret war" for several years.
Following the events of DC's miniseries, Crisis on Infinite Earths, the histories of Earth-One and Earth-Two are merged. As a result, both Golden Age and Silver Age versions of Hawkman and Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman live on the same Earth. Initially, the Silver Age Hawkman and Hawkwoman were kept in continuity unchanged. They took Superman to Krypton (now a gas planet), briefly joined Justice League International, teamed-up with Atom, and helped Animal Man defuse a Thanagarian bomb during Invasion. However, DC reversed this decision and rebooted Hawkman continuity after the 1989 Hawkworld miniseries. Originally, Hawkworld retold the origins of Silver Age Hawkman and Hawkwoman, but following its success, DC Comics launched a Hawkworld ongoing series set in the present, resulting in a complete reboot of Hawkman continuity. By doing so, several continuity errors regarding Hawkman and Hawkwoman's Justice League appearances needed to be fixed.
Post-Hawkworld version
Katar Hol was rebooted in 1989 in the prestige format miniseries Hawkworld by Timothy Truman. A regular ongoing series of the same name followed from 1990–1993, which was then followed up by Hawkman (vol. 3) from 1993-1996.
In this new version Katar Hol was a young police officer on the planet Thanagar, and a child of a privileged family being the son of Paran Katar. Thanagar was a planet which conquered and mined other worlds for their resources to maintain its high standard of living, and Hol realized that this was wrong. He rebelled against the system and favored the old days of Thanagar. He became a student of history and archaeology, and admired Thanagar's legendary hero Kalmoran. Hol became addicted to a recreational drug, and was manipulated by the renegade police captain Byth into killing his own father, and was sent into exile in the Isle of Chance.
During that time, he found one of the island residents in robes fashioned a pair of wings. Katar, disillusioned, killed him and took his wings. He learned the wings were meant for Hol and that the robed man had natural wings on his back. Horrified on what he's done, the brother of the man he killed helped him deal with withdrawal symptoms from his drug addictions and he made peace with himself.
When his sentence was up, Hol was sent to Downside. However, he managed to escape and uncover and defeat Byth, who had gained shape-shifting abilities. As a result, he was reinstated in the force and given a new partner, Shayera Thal - a young woman from a lower class of society.
Just after Fel Andar left Earth, Katar and Shayera were sent to Earth, where they served as goodwill ambassadors for their homeplanet and remained for some time fighting both human and alien criminals in places like Chicago's Netherworld. Dubbed by the press as Hawkman III, Katar and Shayera, Hawkwoman II, had a tempestuous working relationship, and eventually Shayera broke away from Katar, who continued alone.
Katar met Carter Hall and Shiera Sanders who returned from Asgard with the rest of the Justice Society. He learns that his father came to Earth during World War II, under the alias "Perry Carter". The golden age Hawks, Carter and Shiera Hall, were friends with Paran, and were the inspiration of the Wingmen. In one adventure, Carter took an injured Katar to be healed by an old friend, a Cherokee shaman named Naomi ("Faraway Woman"). Katar discovers that she had known Paran Katar, his father. She and Paran fell in love, and the two eloped with the Halls serving as witnesses. Thus, Naomi is his birth mother and Katar is a hybrid Human-Thanagarian.
During the Zero Hour event, Katar Hol was merged with Carter, Shiera, and a "hawk god" creature in a new Hawkman version—a living avatar of the hawk god who adventured for a brief time, continuing to prey on criminals and deal out his own brand of fierce justice. He later went insane (tormented by the voices of all previous hawk avatars in his head), until he was eventually banished to limbo by the combined skills of Arion and the Martian Manhunter.
Because of Carter Hall's return from the dead prior to Infinite Crisis, it has been stated that Katar Hol's soul dissipated from the Limbo/Realm of the Hawk God and is now deceased. Carter Hall currently inhabits a reconstructed version of Katar Hol's post-Zero Hour body, which mostly resembles Carter Hall, but with darker hair and a more barbaric frame.
The New 52 version
As part of DC's 2011 company-wide title relaunch, The New 52, Katar Hol was re-established as the DCU's Hawkman, using the name Carter Hall. His origin has yet to be fully explained since he appears to not know his alien heritage, believing himself to be human. Issue #0 explains that Katar Hol was once a proud member of the Thanagarian race, adopted son of their king Thal Provis and lover to the princess Shayera Thal. Unlike other Thanagarians, he was a pacifist; desiring to find an end to centuries of war, he convinced the king to hold a peace conference. However the Daemonites took advantage of this to spread a deadly disease that quickly destroyed all Thanagarians' wings and killed their king. The new ruler, son of Provis and Katar's adoptive brother, Corsar, came to believe that only the Nth Metal could save them, but this desire for power sacrificed hundreds of lives, which was apparently rewarded when Katar was accidentally fused with it creating a full body armor and regenerating his wings. But seeing his brother's increasing insanity, Katar refused to let the metal power be distributed, leading to fighting between them and the death of Corsar. Shayera then vows to hunt down Hawkman, also blaming him for her father's death. He runs away in a stolen ship that ends up crashing on earth. During the Rotworld storyline Animal Man travels to a post-apocalyptic future where he is attacked by rot-corrupted Hawkman; this version is killed by Steel, Beast Boy and Black Orchid.
DC Rebirth
After his time with the Justice League of America, he returns to his home planet of Thanagar. During this time, Thanagar is framed for an attack on the planet Rann. The two planets enter a war and Hawkman is injured. He is rescued by Adam Strange and reveals to him that the Thanagarians are innocent. The two team up to prove Hawkman innocent on Rann.
Other versions
The Silver Age Katar Hol has made some appearances in out-of-continuity series.
Katar Hol appeared in Superman & Batman Magazine #5, wearing a uniform resembling the Post-Hawkworld version.