Very good issue! This was a good moral dilemna with clever interwoven plotting. Ultimately, I think it was the appropriate decision for Hawkman, although at great cost.
Hawkman was written out of the series because of the looming launch (that never occured) of
Justice League of America. It was a satellite era concept team, with the likes of Green Arrow and Black Canary, along with Red Tornado and Zatanna rounding out the cast. I know there were other characters called dibs on, but their names elude me now. It was an evolution of the
New Outsiders concept, "promoting" characters from that street level (and utterly, devotedly DC2) team into Justice League heights, but as with other titles in that failed relaunch period, it didn't come to fruition. It was marginally frustrating because I had wanted to use that character for
ages and have an actual, lasting effect on him, but as he was one of David's core cast of characters (he had the Hawks, the JSA, et al; I had The Question; Don had the Danger Trail types; John had the Suicide Squad, etc) nothing could happen to him outside of one of David's stories. That's not a slight, but it's just the nature of our serialised work.
The way I see it, team books can't affect solo characters. Batman can't have anything lasting happen to him in
Justice League if there are twelve Bat-books running parallel. "Minor" characters, like Big Barda and Mister Miracle, Animal Man and Doctor Light, etc, they don't-- and probably will never-- have a solo title, so changes
can happen to them in a team book. I always thought Hawkman was one of the characters that could really benefit from some events that struck close to home in
Justice League, but I could never deliver them.
Funnily enough, with him leaving the title, I did something to him that still impacts him to this day. His guilt over his actions in this issue recur across the series... when he later returns. Because when I was told that
JLA wasn't going to materialise, I had to get the character back under my umbrella ASAP, and funnily enough, I think it benefited the final story a whole lot better than if he'd stuck around after this chapter.
Funnily enough, I was just searching for some missing content for
Justice League Annual #3, and found Don's proposal for
Justice League All-Stars, a series to fill the gap left by
JLA and somewhere for Hawkman to "land", which quickly became it's own thing when I was able to get Katar back in
Justice League.I've never been a big fan, or read many issues, of Hawkman. It's cool to read more about him on this site! Right now I will say that Hawkwoman feels a little too much like an appendage; I might just feel that way given that Hawkgirl was my first introduction to the Hawks on Justice League, and thus feels like the mroe developed version of the two.
I've actually had a mad fondness for the character since the
JSA arc
"The Return of Hawkman". I know it's not Katar, but the character was so cool to me when I was reading the book at that age, and the opportunity to play with our own version of the guy in the DC2-- who was a noble space knight-- was hard to pass up. Interestingly, if you like Hawkgirl from the
Justice League [Unlimited] show(s), you may very well be in for a treat when we hit the
Justice League RIP storyline I've been teasing elsewhere.
Interestingly, I've literally never read an issue with Kobra in the comics. This is the first time I've heard of them! Kobra is a great villain for the Justice League! You can't quite punch your way out of any given situation with them, but have access to heavy hitters for the occasional battle. They're insidious and evil. I look forward to their eventual defeat!
For me, Kobra was a major player in the
JSA relaunch, killing Atom Smasher's mother before being put on trial for his crimes. He eventually escaped and was shown a very specific brand of justice by Black Adam, but that's beside the point... for me, it was the
JSA Vs. Kobra miniseries by Eric Trautmann and Don Kramer that made me want to use them. My first act was to whittle down the
amount of Kobras in the DC2 over in
Secret Society of Super-Villains, and then it was to introduce the new Lord Naga who I first used in the former title into
Justice League. I wanted them to be big and scary and completely impossible to predict, and I'm really pleased with the results. I can't wait to use the concept again. I also highly recommend
JSA Vs. Kobra, which came out after
Blackest Night and is a really cool artefact from the era of DC Comics that means the most to me.
