BB Review Group week 71 - Hawkgirl #50 (spoilers)

**Thudpucker** · 03-22-2006, 12:49 PM

There is no longer a set 'membership'. If you have read the book we are reviewing please feel welcome and join in the reviews

* fine print at the bottom of post

This week we are reading: Hawkgirl #50 (DC) by Walter Simonson and Howard Chaykin, chosen by Doug

Next week we are reading: Savage Dragon # 124 (Image) by Erik Larson, chosen by joespam

Our reviewers this week are:

Raydawggie - 4
SteveZegers - 7.5
The Yankee - 6
itsdlevy - 4
Thudpucker - 3
Boris the Blade - 5
Doug - 6
Kirbys corpse - 8.1
PeteL - 5
Ivan In Da Crypt - 5
Generic Poster - 3
JABSEN - 6.5
joespam - 6
dEnny! - 2

Our Previous 16 weeks of reviews (scores lost during the Image Board crash)

Week 1 - 11/17/04 – Captain America #1
Week 2 - 11/24/04 – Flash #216
Week 3 - 12/01/04 – Darkness Vol. 2 #17 (av grade 3.7)
Week 4 - 12/08/04 – Demo #12
Week 5 - 12/15/04 - Plastic Man #13
Week 6 - 12/22/04 – Goon #10
Week 7 - 12/29/04 - Legion of Super Heroes #1
Week 8 - 01/05/05 – Flaming Carrot #1
Week 9 - 01/12/05 – Majestic #1
Week 10 - 01/19/05 – Human Target #18
Week 11 - 01/26/05 – Conan #12 (av grade 8.3)
Week 12 - 02/02/05 – Black Panther #1
Week 13 - 02/09/05 – Young Avengers #1
Week 14 - 02/16/05 – Ex Machina #8 (av grade 8.4)
Week 15 - 02/23/05 – X-Men #167
Week 16 - 03/02/05 – Ultimate Iron Man #1

Week 17 pick - Shining Knight #1 (Morrison & Bianchi) av grade - 7.8
Week 18 pick - Invincible #21 (Kirkman and Ottley) av grade - 6.3
Week 19 pick - Expatriate #1 (Moore and Latour) av grade - 5.4
Week 20 pick - Temporary #2 (Hurd & Smith) av grade - 7.4
Week 21 pick - GLA #1 (Slott and Pelletier) av grade - 6.8
Week 22 pick - Nightwing #107 (Grayson and Hester) av grade - 5.8
Week 23 pick - Iron Ghost #1 (Dixon and Cariello) av grade - 4.9
Week 24 pick - City Of Tomorrow (Howard Chaykin) av grade - 6.2
Week 25 pick - Villains United #1 (Simone and Eaglesham) av grade - 5.7
Week 26 pick - Desolation Jones #1 (Ellis and Williams III) av grade - 8.9
Week 27 pick - Guardian #2 (Morrison and Stewart) av grade - 6.1
Week 28 pick - Adv. Of Superman #640 (Rucka and Kerschl) av - 6.1
Week 29 pick - Son Of Vulcan #1 (Beatty and Grant) av grade - 3.7
Week 30 pick - JLA #115 (Johns, Heinberg, Batista) av grade - 6.9
Week 31 pick - Wildsiderz #0 (Campbell and Hartnell) av grade - 2.9
Week 32 pick - Astro City: The Dark Age #1 av grade - 7.3
Week 33 pick - Albion #1 (Moore and Oakley) av grade - 5.0
Week 34 pick - Gotham Central #33 (Rucka, Brubaker, Kano) av - 8.5
Week 35 pick - Mutopia X (Hine and Medina) av grade - 5.2
Week 36 pick - Athiest #2 (Hester and McCrea) av grade - 6.9
Week 37 pick - JLA: Classified #10 (Ellis and Guise) av grade - 6.9
Week 38 pick - Justice #1 (Ross, Krueger & Braithwaite) av grade 7.9
Week 39 pick - The Winter Men #1 (Lewis and Leon) av grade 5.3
Week 40 pick - Batman: Journey into Knight #1 (Helfer & Huat) av - 4.4
Week 41 pick - Jack Cross #1 (Ellis and Erskine) av grade 6.1
Week 42 pick - Runaways #7 (Vaughan & Miyazawa) av grade 7.8
Week 43 pick - Ghost Rider #1 (Ennis and Crain) av grade 6.4
Week 44 pick - Thor: Blood Oath #1 (Oeming and Kolins) av grade 7.1
Week 45 pick - Wolverine #32 (Millar and Andrews) av grade 8.2
Week 46 pick - Losers #28 (Diggle and Wilson) av grade 7.4
Week 47 pick - FF/I M : Big In Japan #1 (Wells & Fisher) av grade 5.6
Week 48 pick - F N Spider-Man #1 (David and Wieringo) av grade 7.3
Week 49 pick - Fin Fang Four #1 (Langridge & Grey) av grade 8.8
Week 50 pick - Book Of Lost Souls #1 (JMS & Doran) av grade 5.6
Week 51 pick - Hero At Large #2 (Hogan and Treece) av grade 6.3
Week 52 pick - DMZ #1 (Brain Wood) av grade 7.7
Week 53 pick - The Thing #1 (Slott and DiVito) av grade 7.5
Week 54 pick - Walking Dead #24 (Kirkman & Adlard) av grade 8.4
Week 55 pick - Generation M #1 (Jenkins and Bachs) av grade 7.3
Week 56 pick - Marvel Team-Up #15 (Kirkman & Medina) av grade 6.0
Week 57 pick - Amazing Joy Buzzards 2 #3 (Smith and Hipp) av grade 5.1
Week 58 pick - Testament #1 (Rushkoff and Sharp) av grade 7.4
Week 59 pick - New Avengers #14 (Bendis and Cho) av grade 7.6
Week 60 pick - Sable & Fortune #1 (Cahill and Burns) av grade 4.4
Week 61 pick - Ares #1 (Oeming and Foreman) av grade 8.2
Week 62 pick - SGT. ROCK: THE PROPHECY #1 (Joe Kubert) - 7.7
Week 63 pick - Nextwave #1 (Ellis and Immonen) av grade 9.1 Bendis deleted the thread

Week 64 pick - Betty and Veronica Digest #163 av grade 4.2
Week 65 pick - Fables #46 (Willingham and Fern) av grade 7.5
Week 66 pick - Daredevil #82 (Brubaker and Lark) av grade 9.6
Week 67 pick - Ast. X-Men #13 (Whedon & Cassaday) av grade 8.5
Week 68 pick - Ms. Marvel #1 (Reed and de la Torre) av grade 7.3
Week 69 pick - American Virgin #1 (Seagle & Cloonan) av grade 7.1
Week 70 pick - Annihilation Prologue (Giffen & Kolins) av grade 6.3

Our higest average grade so far was for Daredevil #82 with 9.6
Our lowest average grade so for is Wildsiderz #0 with 2.9

Our Sponsors:

Isotope Comics (SF Bay area)

(If any other retailers would like to sponsor our reviewers in your area, I'd be happy to promote your store in the thread too )

What we do: This is a fanbased review group, open to everybody.

As people post the reviews, I will add your name and score to a list in the main post and at the end of the week average the scores for an overall grade on the book. We grade on a scale of 0-10.

THERE IS NO OBLIGATION TO PARTICIPATE EVERY WEEK. Please join in as little or as much as you like week to week. If you are uncomfortable giving a grade then just join in the discussions and ask questions.

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**Thudpucker** · 03-22-2006, 04:06 PM

Noone? I was home sick today so no books til tomorrow. Was looking forward to some news on this one though, pretty amazing creative team.

Can't help but wish it was Simonson on art and Chaykin writing though.

**Ray G.** · 03-22-2006, 04:14 PM

I was not impressed. Choppy start, mediocre art(yes, from Chaykin), and a story that tried to be mysterious but just came off as wierd and off-putting. I think Simonson may have sort of lost his touch. I hated his WW arc, and this isn't much better. There's potential to grow here, but I don't know how many people will be coming back. One of the less impressive OYL books.

4/10

**Doug** · 03-23-2006, 04:38 AM

I won't be getting my books until later, but I was really looking forward to this book. I kind of agree with Thud that the team should have been reversed. I enjoyed the hell out of Simonson's Orion series, and I can't wait to read this book.

**PeteL** · 03-23-2006, 04:43 AM

I'm late in picking up this week's books, too. I'll be going to the shop tonight though.

I don't know squat about Hawkgirl, but I'm excited about checking it out.

**SteveZegers** · 03-23-2006, 04:49 AM

I wasn't following Hawkman before. He's one of those characters that I really like (What a cool costume! Love the reincarnated through time setup!) but have never really got any monthly book. He's more of a great supporting character to me.

Got this based on the creative team alone.

I liked it quite a bit. The story wasn't completely clear to me, maybe because I'm not familiar with the supporting cast, but I still enjoyed it. I liked the out of costume moments because I'm not really used to seeing this charcter like that. She's just a belly shirt and Hawk head most of the time. I think I would have liked it more if Carter was around just because I really like the dynamic between the two characters.

And the art was really nice. Great sort of moody stuff. Really liked it.

So while it wasn't the best book I've ever read, I liked it enough to buy the next issue.

I'll say... 7.5

**Olivier E.** · 03-23-2006, 02:20 PM

Haven't read Hawkman since, the Black Reign crossover,it's OYL and nothing hs changed, okay Hawkman is missing, but that was the case with every superhero who had his own series.

Storywise in this issue nothing happened, it isn't even an introducing issue, because nothing has been introduced, there's nothing here that makes you pick up the next issue.

The story was well written, especially for an old-schooler like Simonson, the art was good, but in the end ypu spent your money on something without real content.

6 points

**ItsDLEVY** · 03-23-2006, 05:41 PM

I almost didn't buy this because it's an expensive week and I just don't care at all about this particular character, corner of the DCU, etc. But I'm loyal to the review group and like the creators involved.

I should have trusted my instincts. Not knowing anything about these characters, I was pretty confused about what was going on, who these people were, what their relationships to each other were, and why I should care. I know that LOSH was criticized for giving too much backstory in their first OYL issue, but this was the opposite. Chaykin's art was fine, but a little lifeless at times. Loved the dream sequences, though, which balanced out some of the flatness eslewhere. But Ask me a few hours later what this book was about and I can't tell you.

4/10

**Thudpucker** · 03-23-2006, 06:24 PM

This wasn't an enjoyable book for me. I don't know much at all about the characters and this issue did nothing to make me interested in them. I also have very little knowledge about the events going on at DC right now so I felt pretty lost reading this.

The art was more than a little disappointing too. It seemed rushed and I didn't like the coloring at all. I'm a big fan of Chaykin but if this was the first example of his work I had seen? I would quickly forget him. Not going to read the rest of it, and a 3 seems accurate to me.

**Boris the Blade** · 03-23-2006, 06:57 PM

I'll have to admit that the writing was more in the style of older comics, what with the thought bubbles explaining the use of any powers or abilities, announcing each situation in detail. Chaykin's art was passable, and could have been a lot better with more defined inks and colors. Just didn't come off as sharp or detailed as it could have been. I found the adventure in the issue to be a little entertaining. Exploration and mystery in the way that you could imagine her dad was involved in (if I remember, he was an explorer and adventurer in JSA, wasn't he?). Enh, can't say I'll stick around for another issue sadly. One of the few OYL titles that's not really making the cut for me.

5/10