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Friday, July 7, 2023

Weird Revisited: High Flyin' Hawkman

This post originally appeared in 2018 and was a follow-up to this post.

HAWKMAN

STATISTICS
F                 EX   (20)
A                 RM  (30)
S                 GD  (10)
E                 EX   (20)
R                 RM (30)
I                   EX   (20)
P                  EX   (20)
Health: 80
Karma: 70
Resources: GD (10)
Popularity: 20

BACKGROUND
Real Name: Henry Carter Hall
Occupation: Inventor, adventurer
Identity: Secret
Legal Status: Citizen of the United States with no criminal record.
Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois
Marital Status: Married.
Known Relatives: Susan Sanders Hall (wife)
Base of Operations: New York City
Group Affiliation: Partner of Hawkwoman, Avengers

KNOWN POWERS
Winged Flight: His artificial wings and nth metal belt (Unearthly material) allow Hawkman to fly at Remarkable speed.
Avian Communication: Cybernetic circuitry incoporated into his cowl allow him to command birds at Remarkable ability.

TALENTS
Hawkman has Remarkable knowledge of aerial combat. He is a brillaint scientist skilled in Electronics, Physics, Biophysics. Orinthology, and Engineering. He also has the Repair/Tinkering talent, and is an armchair Egyptologist.

History: Henry "Hank" Hall, scientist and inventor, was experimenting with a metal of extraterrestrial origin that could be used to produced antigravity effects. He dubbed "nth metal" which had been recovered from a meteorite in Africa. He attended an exhibition of newly discovered artifacts at a local museum to investigate his theory that the  Ancient Egyptians had utilized nth metal in tools.

At the exhibition, Hall surreptitiously exposed a ceremonial dagger he suspected of being nth metal to high frequency sound waves. Energy emitted by the dagger caused Hall to experience a vision of the distant past that felt like he had lived it. He was an ancient Egyptian prince who was slain along with his betrothed by a treacherous and power-hungry high priest. Unknown to Hall, two others present experienced that same vision. Susan Sanders saw it through the eyes of the Prince's wife to be, and Anton Hastor, a Soviet agent who had been monitoring Hall's research, felt he had been the high priest.

The three left somewhat disoriented, but Hastor kidnapped Sanders on her way home, planning to use her to coerce Hall into turning over his nth metal research, then kill the both of them as he believed he had done in his previous life.

Hall agreed to meet Hastor and turn over his notes, but instead donned his experimental wings and nth metal lift belt, a cybernetic helmet he had been working on to communicate with birds, and a makeshift costume. He rescued Sanders in the guise of Hawkman.

Hall and Sanders instantly fell in love. She suggested he continued fighting crime as Hawkman and had him build fight gear for her so that she could assist him as Hawkgirl.

4 comments:

  1. Not my Hawks, I'm afraid. Prefer the "visiting Thanagarian space cops" version that I grew up on. The multiple variations over the years have made almost as much of a mess of these characters as poor Power Girl.

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  2. I prefer the Thanagarian version too, but the high concept of this post assumes an alternate history where that version was never created. The only one Marvel had to riff off was the original.

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  3. Oh, so Marvel is only updating Golden Age DC characters here rather than creating something new in the Silver Age? Gotcha.

    Although I could easily see Marvel coming up with something like the Thanagarian cops version, which might wind up a lot like Captain Marvel/Ms. Marvel only with a law enforcement vibe rather than military. Have Katar show up pursuing some cosmic fugitive, remain on Earth for whatever reason, and wind up becoming entangled with, ah, badass police detective Karol Denver who eventually winds up becoming his partner in superheroics with nigh-identical powers. Plenty of room for Marvel-style character drama with an undercover alien trying to acclimate to Earth and a police officer slipping into a prickly relationship with him. Maybe tell some stories about the very different standards of justice and law between the two worlds.

    With Green Lantern from your earlier post being less of a space cop himself there'd be more room for a Thanagarian officer in the setting, maybe even going on to get involved in a lot of the same types of cosmic tales Hal did.

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  4. My assumption is that Marvel is revising the the Golden Age characters. It doesn't seem likely they would happen upon the same ideas as the DC silver age, but certainly a Marvel version of thr Silver Age characters would work.

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