The Thanagarians visited Ancient Egypt. Piece of cake.
Why Johns has to muddle it up so much is beyond me.
Oh, no, that's right.
It's because he's Geoff Johns.
punk.

As a kid, my earliest comic book influences, alongside Speed Racer and The Thunderbirds, were the Hanna Barbera superheroes. As I was reading your piece, I could hear the old Birdman theme in my head. That steady driving brass, building to the inevitable explosion and shot after shot of bad guys just getting the crap blown out of 'em.
Awesome.
As you say, pure adrenaline.

And Birdman was definitely my favourite of the bunch.

I confess, I'm a fan of the original owner of the Fortress of Solitude.

David Aja's art is incredible, and Brubaker and Fraction are doing an awesome job with the book. Self-contained and they're telling a great story.

Also, John Severin and Russ Heath have done flashback sequences in a couple issues. You cannot turn that down!

They’ve got an Iron Fist title out at the moment.

Well, I suppose I should put my money where my mouth is.... but I glanced at it at the shop and it didn't look like very much fun, to be honest.

The thing that made the kung fu books fun -- in my opinion, anyway -- was their relative isolation. Shang-Chi, especially, spent most of his career doing his own thing in his own little chop-socky corner of the MU, and when he crossed over it was either A) in other people's books or B) with other kung fu guys like Iron Fist or the White Tiger. There were only one or two exceptions I can remember off the top of my head, the Dr. Doom story being the only big one.

I'm really not interested in a new book that would have to be jammed in to all this Civil War Initiative crap. Really that's what put me off Iron Fist, the certainty that it would have all this unnecessary continuity crap shoehorned into it. If it turns out I'm wrong, hell, I'll probably pick it up then. But for one thing I am trying to go trade-only, and for another, bigger thing, the burning need to be in-continuity is, to my mind, the single biggest liability on Eternals and White Tiger, two other books that I otherwise like quite a bit. But it feels like every so often they pause to do their Contractually-Obligated Continuity Acknowledgment Page and that really gets on my nerves.

The original Iron Fist, and then later Power Man and Iron Fist, worked best when it was in its own bubble. I really think more superhero books should be conscientious about staying in their own weight class. What I remember most about Shang-Chi meeting Spider-Man or Dr. Doom back in the day is how ridiculous it was and how much it didn't work. At their best, the Marvel kung fu books were all about NON-superhero adventure -- like Milton Caniff's "Terry and the Pirates" with a 70's James Bond spin.

Re Birdman and the other Toth madness on TV. If you weren't there, you missed staring at the square tube of miracles.

Latersville.

(Greg, best to your wife and you.)

Just for the record, the original '60s "Herculoids" show, unlike the others but like "Shazzan" and "Young Samson" seen on that comic cover, consisted of two even--length cartoons, rather than three six--minute shorts. The '70s revival, combined with new Space Ghost and Galaxy Trio toons (as well as Space Kidettes segments that were in the Jetsons style of humor design and may have been all '60s reruns) during the original Star Wars craze, were shorter. THAT version even had cross--overs/team--ups.

I talked about the '80s Hawkman series on one of Brian's Urban Legends boards, but will repeat it here. Despite having categorically promised the readers he would explain why the Thanagarian absorbacon did not work on Police Commissioner Emmett, Tony Isabella quit the book without doing so, and this was also just as HIS Shadow War plot was approaching its climax. His successors never addressed the Emmett question. In the letter column, the editor said Tony's departure was because the writer felt he had done all he wanted to do with the series, which, obviously, was a LIE! There was no comment on this in subsequent letters there, or, to my surprise at the time, in the "Amazing Heroes" 'zine, my chosen comics news source then. Never understood this situation, but speculated on the CBUL board that there was some understanding throughout organized fandom at the time to say nothing. Anybody got a better explanation?

You want an in-story reason, I suspect, though. There you go beyond my reach, I can’t even come up with a plausible-sounding piece of doubletalk for you.

I'll give it a shot. In JLU, Hawkman was the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian ruler, but the ruler in question was in fact a stranded Thanagarian who was worshipped by the Egyptians. Just apply that origin to the regular DCU. If he was a Thanagarian to begin with, then it's understandable that after generations of being reincarnated on Earth, his soul would eventually find its way back to his home planet.

I don't know if this would confict with the existing backstory of the DCU Prince Khufu, but it seems plausible enough to me.

Incidentally, a similar schtick was used on "Lois & Clark," where it was revealed that Kal-El had had multiple past lives on Earth, so the 'Last Kryptonian' was actually a reincarnated human.

Oh, and tell Julie to get plenty of rest; hopefully the recovery period will go smoothly.

P.S. Greg, I absolutely *adored* "The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril", possibly the most fun I've had reading a book in quite some time. Thanks for pluggin it a couple of weeks ago.

What I’ve never got about Hawkman - well, apart from the whole thing - is why some Egyptian God type thing chose to be reincarnated on some other planet somewhere.

Anyone?

You'd have to ask Geoff Johns. My guess? He had to provide some sort of nod to Thanagar so everyone would shut up about it, and that seemed easiest.

You want an in-story reason, I suspect, though. There you go beyond my reach, I can't even come up with a plausible-sounding piece of doubletalk for you. Post-Hawkworld Hawkman continuity was such a nightmare, especially after Zero Hour -- still is, I don't think they ever really fixed it -- that the only viable option left is to ignore it and start over.

Except the modern marketplace will not accept that. You have to give an explanation. That was actually what prompted me to pick up the JSA "Return of Hawkman" trade in the first place, I was really curious to see the solution. I ended up liking the book way more than I thought I was going to, largely because "get rid of Thanagar and the SF angle" was number one on Kurt's and my own list of Hawkman fixes.

Really I think Johns had the best take on the character since the 40's. Crusading archaeologist and winged warrior. The mythology of the past collides with the present. It should be a book about exotic ruins and ancient curses and wizards and sorcery and stuff. Conan with wings and living in New Orleans. That's a Hawk book I could really get into.

Here's the catch though - if this title fails, it will be decided that Kung Fu titles don't work, and you'll have to wait years until the next attempt.

So you'll have to buy multiple copies of this one so that they decide to do more.

Then you just have to hope that the other Kung Fu books aren't like this one.

(Did anyone else hate it when Scott Lobdell and Carlos Pacheo had Shang Chi in X-men? Man that sucked - Shang Chi did nothing, hell nobody did anything. They all just talked. Occasionally they flew to another location, but then they just talked there as well. What the hell?)

Anyone?

They've got an Iron Fist title out at the moment.

And man, lots of good stuff in this column... ack.

Birdman *is* cooler than Hawkman. The reason I love the new Harvey Birdman so much is because I remember the old Birdman, along with all the other Hanna-Barbera superheroes. Space Ghost, Herculoids, Galaxy Trio (thank you, I can never remember their name), Shazzan, Atom Ant, Dynomutt, Captain Caveman, the Impossibles, Mightor... Back in the glorious 90's, when Cartoon Network was the greatest channel of all time, they had Superhero Saturdays, and I ate these shows up. Let's not forget later material like Thundarr the Barbarian (well, that was Ruby-Spears, but, you know) and my honest-to-God favorite cartoon, the 70's Godzilla animated series. Hanna Barbera was a wonderful, glorious thing, and I miss watching all their cartoons. Loved Captain Planet and SWAT Kats too in the 90's. The good ol' days...

That Cartoon Super-Heroes book looks lovely, and I want one. Ha. I don't think I've heard of Young Samson and Goliath, so that's neat.

Billy Jack? For a dollar? Hot damn, I wish I was there, man. Marvel should really bring back some kind of Kung-Fu title. Shang Chi, at least, needs a small coat of revamp and a sprig of nostalgic joy.