Hawkman has been one of my favorite comic characters since I first heard of him back in the early 1970s. You might rightly ask if there’s a comic book character I’ve heard of who is not one of my favorites. A fair question. I don’t like Lobo or the Punisher. Wolverine wears on me after a while. He’s a great supporting character on a team, but I have little desire to read a whole book (or see a whole movie, even starring Hugh Jackman) about him. But if you were to ask me if there was a character created before 1975 who isn’t a favorite, well, probably no. I love them all. Each for different reasons.
In Hawkman’s case, I loved the fact that he came from another planet. I loved that his wife Hawkgirl was his equal partner in adventure. (She was later Hawkwoman, when we became socially aware, and then Hawkgirl again, when social awareness, um… took a cruise? I’m not sure.) I loved that he dressed in red, yellow and green. Not everyone can pull that off. There’s definitely not enough green in the superhero spectrum. If recent films are to be believed, there’s little color at all. Isn’t it sad that, after they went to all the trouble to invent Technicolor, that our films (superhero and otherwise) are now effectively in black and white again, they’re so drab? No, that’s not fair. Black and white films of yesteryear had far more color than many of our films do today.