Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Death of Hawkman #4 Review and *SPOILERS*



Screwed To The Nth Degree


Written By: Marc Andreyko
Art By: Aaron Lopresti, Rodney Buchemi, John Livesay, Norm Rapmund, Sean Parsons, Blond, Josh Reed
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: January 4, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Let's jump back into space and see how Adam Strange and Hawkman are faring now that Thanagar and Rann have gone all cuckoo with Despero's attack.  When we last left our heroes, they were heading off to Kalador to find Despero because they discovered that the villain had somehow gotten out of his cell on Earth and used the zeta-beam to take him back to his home world, where he then proceeded to slaughter all of the elders, who originally banished him before claiming himself the ruler of the planet.  Too bad that it seemed that all of the people were all about it too because now Despero has a army on his side and all the Universe has is Hawkman and Adam Strange standing in his way.  Let's jump into this issue and see if Alanna Strange in her grief for her father's death has gone and made matters worse between the Rannians and the Thanagarians and hopefully find out what Despero's master plan is.  Let's check it out.



Explain It!:

Our issue begins the way that every issue of this mini begins, with us getting a glimpse of what's going on currently with our heroes and their plight of what once looked like Rann and Thanagar having an all out war and what now looks like Despero's complete takeover of Rann.  Yeah, it seems that he's building himself a Stargate, but what actually turns out to me a mega structure for him to be able to zeta-beam a whole army at once to any destination he sees fit to conquer.  Thankfully though it seems that our two heroes will have themselves some backup finally and while it isn't much compared to a Kaladorian army, we do get Katar's partner Rayn Kral and the Thanagarian Green Lantern Isamot Kol showing up to help our heroes out........... even though we won't see it here.


Moving back in time, Hawkman and Adam Strange make their way to Kalador and get the lowdown on what Despero is up to thanks to a little mind meld from a surviving elder, but really it's just to catch our heroes up with what we already know.  The only thing I find odd about this section is that Despero apparently was able to zeta-beam all of his army off the planet, but the way that he would need to do this is by creating the super zeta beam that he's making in the future of all this........ and maybe I missed something since it was revealed here that Sardath, Alanna's super scientist father is still alive and under the control of Despero and maybe somehow put something together for him to do this, but it came off odd to me.


In the end, it is revealed that the super structure that Despero and Sardath are making is to actually zeta-beam the newly found reserve of Nth metal out of the Thanagarian moon Ryngor so that it washes over Despero entirely.  While this seems like an awful situation right off the bat, it's made worse when that action also causes the moon to explode and rain down on Thanagar, killing a shit load of people.  Yeah, we end on a low note in this issue as we find out that not only has Thanagar been devastated, but also because Despero on top of being the over powered bad ass that he is also now has the power of Nth metal on top of it and as he claims....... He's now eternal.


That's it for this issue of Death of Hawkman and while this installment certainly seemed to up the stakes with what we were dealing with, a lot of this issue was filler just getting our heroes to have the same knowledge that we had during the previous issue.  Yeah, you needed this, but from a reader's standpoint it just became rehash.  I like where this mini is going though because the threat has become even bigger than I originally thought it was and it's an interesting turn of events.  The art continues to be the strongest part of this series so far and while I hope the story blows me away in the next issues, I hope the art remains as strong as it's been because I just love looking at this book.

Bits and Pieces:

While this series maintains its slow pace, it's finally paying off with this issue and showing us the real threat facing our heroes.  Yeah, it's big and over the top in a fun way, but because we have to sacrifice pages to rehash what we already knew, the pacing of this book feels a bit off.  Luckily though the art remains strong and I look forward to where this story is taking us.

7/10

1 comment:

  1. Im-a like this book. I'm not throwing shade at it at all. I hope Hawkman and Adam put Despero on blast for going all YOLO with the Nth metal. I agree with the 7 out of 10. Hoping for a good conclusion to the mini.

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