A nice 12 issue, 8 page story (which would be, what, 4 normal sized issues?) could tell a wonderful Dr Fate story that wouldn’t have to address a self-sustaining storytelling engine, or encompass all (or any) backstory continuity. It could just be a fun story about Fate, or Hawkman, or Atom, or whomever.

It wouldn’t even have to be in continuity with the other titles or the other stories. “Here’s a lost tale of the Batman from shortly after Dick Greyson joined him.”

I guess the big question would be: would it sell?

Theno

I’m kidding.

That leaves about twenty issues’ worth of the post-Zero Hour, pre-JSA Hawkman, which I know almost nothing about except Steve Lieber worked on it and wasn’t that thrilled with it. I admit the covers look kind of cool.

But really, the question is — can I do it for $7.40? We shall see. I’m not normally a collector-type but this is an interesting challenge. Even Julie is interested, it’s awakened her thrift-shopping instincts.

But it went to hell quickly starting in the red costume era/ Flight’s End, then Zero Hour, the loss of Hawkwoman and Thanagar, and the terrible avatar implant– that stuff wrecked the book and the character entirely until Johns created the modern Winged Continuity Handwaving Wonder.

Of course the other thing that should be mentioned is that any revamps that did happen to the Legion didn’t affect the longevity of their various titles at all.

The Pocket Universe was revealed in LOSH V3 #37 and the title continued for another 25 issues.

V4 lasted 126 issues and its companion title, Legionnaires, lasted 82.

Including the two mini series, DnA’s run lasted 56 issues and the current run is still well above the cancellation line at 40 issues, so it’s not like the concept is constantly stopping and restarting.

A closer example would be Teen Titans, who have had more revamps, cancelled series and “rest periods” than the Legion, though its popularity would still be considered greater than those of Hawkman and Dr. Fate.

Perhaps the Doom Patrol would be a better fit?

Writers have tried to address this question in several different ways, with varying degrees of success:

1). “Because Doctor Fate is too busy fighting magical villains to bother with anything else.” This approach has a limited lifespan, if only because battles between characters with infinite levels of power are not very interesting (see: Silver Surfer).

2). “Because Doctor Fate is new, and still has much to learn.” This was DeMatteis’ approach, and it worked well, I think. But eventually (one hopes), the inexperienced hero grows up, and then the writer is back to square one.

3). “Doctor Fate does, in fact, try to solve all the world’s problems.” This was Messner-Loebs’ approach, and it made for great reading while it lasted. Ultimately, however, Fate had to fail, or there would presumably be nothing left to write about.

4). “Because Doctor Fate has so many personal problems to deal with (including being Doctor Fate) that he/she can only take on the world’s problems on a limited basis.” This can make for some interesting character development — it’s basically the approach Marvel is taking with The Sentry. It doesn’t provide much in the way of escapist fantasy, though, and that’s something I’ve always enjoyed about the character of Doctor Fate.

And that brings up another question: does the fact that Doctor Fate is reinvented so often speak to the character’s weakness, or strength? Doesn’t the fact that the character’s core concept can survive so many transmutations say something about its staying power?

And I tend to agree with your overall sentiment. If they’d stayed with the original screw-you-fanboy position they’d probably have been better off. What I object to is the sort of demented hybrid “we’re a do-over but here’s your continuity patch so shut up” story we saw every so often in the 80’s. Hawkworld suffered because of that, and don’t even get me started on Superboy and the Legion. (In fact, I thought about including the Legion — they’ve suffered even more than the Hawks from this sort of desperation — but that’s been revamped so many times it would take a book to try and cover all of it. Actually, now that I take a moment to consider, I think there is one.)

I’d have to disagree with that last bit, Greg. In all of Legion history there has been some major revamps, but only a few that changed the Status Quo in some limited way or only for a short time. The original premise has stayed exactly the same for all of their 50 years of being published. Plus they were never rested in those 50 years and have almost continuosly been pubished in that time, (The longest break was for 6 months after their Action Comics run ended and before they started appearing as back ups in Superboy and that was because editorial didn’t like them, not because they were unpopular with the readers. During that six months they had there own reprint mini-series).

The Post-Crisis revamps such as the Pocket Universe and replacing Superboy with Mon-El/Valor never affected the status quo of the characters, or their popularity. The former left all their Pre-Crisis history intact, (Apart from Supergirl, but then her involvement with the Legion was very limited anyway, compared to Superboy’s) and the latter merely introduced a new character that became a fan favourite. All the Legion’s history, for the most part was still intact and the title was popular enough to add a sister title.

The first reboot didn’t have much effect, both titles were still popular enough to continue, at least until LOSH reached #100, but the thing after that that caused a dive in sales was the quality of the writing, not the origianl revamping. When the title restarted it was still exactly the same, there was no major revamp, with DC looking to give the creative team a new #1 and a name change to satisfy that strange urge to shorten titles that DC had a few years ago.

The latest reboot hasn’t been exactly a success and does support your point better because it appears that the main thing that people complain about with this Legion, their “convoluted history”, was what was revamped, jetisoned in fact. That history appears to be what people want however, if the sales of Action Comics are anything to go by.

The thing is– I’m not even a big fan of Hawkman. It was just all the messing with JSA continuity (which I love) and everyone else’s continuity (because Hawkman had been making appearances in everything even in post Crisis continuity at that point) to make this damn series fit. Even though– as Greg correctly says– the mini could have been treated as a Year One story and integrated into continuity.

Plus, they didn’t even do their research and coloured Carter Hall’s hair black instead of blonde. It was an utter mess. Really, really offended me.

Of course, seven zillion retcons later it doesn’t look nearly so bad. But I wish they had left well alone.

My pitch for Hawkman would have been a little from column A and a little from column B: A guy working at the Midway City museum as a curator (with a shadowy past) finds Katar Hol dead or incapacitated and takes the wings and mantle of being Hawkman and goes on wild earth-crossing adventures, Because I kind of think Hawkman should be Indiana Jones with wings and I think a Thanagarian Hawkman is kind of boring while an earthborn one using Thanagarian tech is interesting. I suspect Geoff Johns used similar math.

The Pasko/Simonson version appeared in First Issue Special #9 (1975). It was a one-shot in a Showcase-esque one-shot book. The subsequent backups by Pasko, Gerber and Giffen in The Flash started in issues cover-dated 1982 (but actually printed in ’81)– 6 years after the Pasko/Simonson effort.

The DC Implosion took place in 1978, and had nothing to do with any of it!

All of it were eventually collected in a Baxter reprint book (which you display) in the ’80s, which may be why you think they were one unified work.

The result is that EVERY writer HAS to pitch a character who is (a) pre-existing and (b) not currently sustaining their own book.

Damn. You know, I KNEW that, and I completely forgot it. I think you must have hit it. Of course that’s where most of this is coming from. Thanks for pointing it out.

Whether you’ve worked for them in the past or just starting out, it’s considered bad form to go up to a DC editor and pitch yourself as a Superman or Batman writer. Or ANY super-hero who is currently successful. Why? Simple, because if that hero is popular enough to appear in a monthly book, then there’s already a writer writing that monthly book, and it’s uncouth to propose that they fire that guy and hire you instead. It’s ALSO uncouth to pitch an original character, which is considered too presumptuous. The result is that EVERY writer HAS to pitch a characters who is (a) pre-existing and (b) not currently sustaining their own book.

This is a weird rule. It means that DC is hearing HUNDREDS of Hawkman pitches right now and Marvel is hearing HUNDREDS of Dr. Strange pitches. And you know that each one of them is proposing not “the same thing that you cancelled a few years ago” but a RE-INVENTION of the character.

Remember a few years ago when DC simultaneously launched Bruce Jones re-imaginings of Warlord, Vigilante and, who was it? Deadman? They all belly-flopped, but I remember all those press released coming out and thinking: “Jesus! Bruce must have been awe-struck to walk into that pitch meeting with those three ideas and somehow sell ALL THREE!”

This is one of those times you just come across as a cranky old nerd Greg.

I’ve never actually denied it. But moving on…

Are we even talking about the same thing? Do you really claim that there’s no qualitative difference between a well-done superhero story told as part of an ongoing franchise and an actual one-off attempt to do something literary?

Nobody wants BAD stories. I’m not talking about continuity. I’m talking about PREMISE. I thought I was careful to spell that part out and put it in bold type. I consider it an irresponsible act for a commercial writer to take a commercial property and drive it over a cliff so that it’s effectively ruined for the next guy to work on it. Are you offended because I dared to suggest that Superman and Batman and the rest of these corporate merchandised properties’ print adventures are being published on a for-profit basis to a schedule and not merely in response to someone’s creative muse? Come on. Is that really news to anyone here?

If you ask me, trying to force any concept into a “perpetual motion machine” of licensing is the real “moron’s jihad”.

Don’t tell the producers of the James Bond films. Or the Star Trek people. They’re doing pretty well out of it. So did Rex Stout with Nero Wolfe. And Edgar Rice Burroughs with Tarzan. And dozens of other examples.

The point that you seem to determined to miss is that generating a continuing series of adventures is exactly what ongoing series characters are DESIGNED TO DO. No, it’s never going to be capital-A Artistic. At best you have exquisitely-crafted pastiche… All-Star Superman, say, or something like that. But you are a bigger fool than you think *I* am if you think DC is going to let Grant Morrison destroy the company’s cash cow in the name of Art, or even that they should. I’m saying the folks that work on those properties should know that going in and act accordingly. This is hardly blasphemous.

And I’d add the corollary that if you have a series that’s tired, the best solution is to either retire it or get some fresh blood in there, as opposed to jerking the actual core concept out of it…. because when you do that you get the bad examples listed in the column.

I could never get into the Hawkworld version largely because of that hideously unattractive armored costume. A character whose primary power is flight should have a graceful costume design, not something that looks so heavy and cumbersome. A large part of Hawkman’s visual appeal is that shirtless look. It mixes the visuals of a Tarzan or a Conan with the iconography of the superhero and makes him look like no other character out there.

The question that I think Greg raised is an interesting one, namely “what makes a character both interesting enough to get constantly re-visited and weak enough to get canceled repeatedly?” Neither Hawkman, nor Dr. Fate, have ever had the “neat little nerd box” moment of luckier characters. They are not going to show up in the top 100 runs, nor have movies made about them. However, a lot of people LIKE these characters and want an excuse to give them a chance.

Buy Hawkworld 10-25 or so (before they got red costumes) and enjoy. Don’t think about how it all fits. Who cares, if the comics are good?

I probably will, actually. I really enjoyed #1-9. I’m just waiting for the next time I’m around a bunch of quarter boxes. Probably at Emerald City. I have this bet with myself that I can get every Hawk title between 1975 and 2000 for under twenty dollars total cash outlay. So far I’m at around $9 and I’m about 2/3 there.

And I tend to agree with your overall sentiment. If they’d stayed with the original screw-you-fanboy position they’d probably have been better off. What I object to is the sort of demented hybrid “we’re a do-over but here’s your continuity patch so shut up” story we saw every so often in the 80′s. Hawkworld suffered because of that, and don’t even get me started on Superboy and the Legion. (In fact, I thought about including the Legion — they’ve suffered even more than the Hawks from this sort of desperation — but that’s been revamped so many times it would take a book to try and cover all of it. Actually, now that I take a moment to consider, I think there is one.)