DCU Comic Book Reviews

HAWKMAN #27

The Black Bird:  A Past Lives Story

June 2004

Written by Josh Siegal

Pencils by John Byrne

Inks by Lary Stucker

Cover by John Byrne and Michael Bair

Synopsis

Today...Hawkman and Hawkgirl defeat the Maltese Black Hand, a group led by a crime kingpin who steals treasures from history, included a small hawk ring that once belonged to Carter Hall, in another lifetime.  St. Roch, 1917...Pinkerton agents Jimmy and Sam are on the trail of an ancient statue that had been stolen in New York and smuggled through the ports of St. Roch.  The follow the trail of the statue and it leads them to local kingpin Big Louie Moretti.  They are taken hostage at Moretti’s house.  There, Jimmy learns that his former girlfriend, Sheila Carr, is now dating Big Louie.  After Big Louie takes Sam away, he tells Jimmy and Sheila that he is going to kill them both.  An attack by a local gan creates enough confusion to allow Jimmy to escape.  It turns out the statue is a container, with a ring.  Jimmy takes the ring, finds Sheila, and then jumps out the window.  Instead of falling, however, they float in the sky.  In that moment, Big Louie kills them both.  Today...Hawkman tells Hawkgirl that Big Louie was Hath-Set and Sam eventually went to war and did a little writing.

Review

This was not a bad issue by any means and as a fill-in story until the next storyline with the new writers, it does its job very nicely.  However, the ending totally annoyed the daylights outta me.  I am not really sure why.  I suppose I just don’t like the wink, wink, nudge, nudge of the writer, who is telling me how crafty he was to write a story intermixing a fictional character (Carter Hall) and a real person (Dashiell Hammett) without actually telling us who they were until the very last minute.   To me, it came across as someone saying, “Ha! See what I did.  See how it all makes sense!”  Or at least it did to me because one of my favorite films of all time is the Maltese Falcon.  I am okay with writing a story as a tribute to the movie and book, but to turn it into a story about how Hammett came to write the story is just a little too much for me. 

I will, however, give Brubaker credit for writing a good solid Hawkman story featuring the reincarnation aspect and the victory of Hath-Set.  Obviously throughout the ages Hath-Set gets his victories, he is the one to kill the Hawks each and every time.  Actually thinking about, in the story of the Hawks, it is the bad guy who triumphs.  Yes, the Hawks are reborn, but lets face it, at least Hath-Set can say he killed his nemesis. 

The shining light on this issue is the art by Sean Phillips.  I love his stuff on Sleeper and the noir aspects (the rain-soaked setting, the trench coats, the villain’s mansion, the pier) of this issue certainly play to his strengths. 

Dashiell Hammett served as an operative for the Pinkerton Agency from 1915 to 1921 and served during World War I in the US Army.  The Maltese Falcon (featuring the search for a black bird statue) was published in 1930; the main character was one of his best known detectives:  Sam Spade.  Hammett became disillusioned with Pinkertons when a union organizer leading a strike by local miners was viciously murdered in Butte, Montana.  It was widely believed that Pinkerton agents were involved, but no serious attempt was made by the police to catch the murderers.-- Review by MRB

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