He’s been a member of the Justice League and a fixture of the DC Universe since his debut, but Hawkman’s history extends even further into the past. As the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian prince, DC’s winged hero has had several incarnations throughout history. This clever twist has allowed various creators to come in and put their own unique spin on the character.
Hawkman has often been a continuity nightmare in DC Comics lore. Various contradictory versions of the character have floated around throughout the years, and their conflicting histories have only been exacerbated by continuity-changing events like Crisis on Infinite Earths. In attempt to streamline Hawkman’s history, it was later explained that all previous versions of the character stemmed from the Egyptian prince Khufu. The prince and his lover Chay-Ara (the ancestor of Hawkgirl) are killed with an Nth-metal dagger by rival priest Hath-Set, which causes all three of them to be reincarnated over and over again across the centuries.
This concept of continuous reincarnation provided a rich opportunity for creators to fill in the blanks of Hawkman’s history. One such incarnation was detailed in 2004’s Hawkman #27, a one-off story by writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips. The creative team come in for this single issue to do what they do best: namely, hard-boiled noir. The reincarnated “Hawk” in this instance is Pinkerton detective Jim Wright, who arrives in the city of St. Roch in 1917 on the trail of a black bird statue. Things are complicated when Wright also has a run-in with his old flame Sheila Carr, currently the mistress of mobster Big Louie Moretti. As it turns out, Sheila is the reincarnated Chay-Ara, and Big Louie is the reincarnation of Hath-Set. The crime boss is the only one of them to realize the truth, and orchestrated events to bring them all together so he can enact his revenge on the doomed lovers. Wright and Sheila remember who they are once the detective lays hands on the bird statue that brought him into town, revealing that it contains a ring made of Nth-metal. It winds up being too late, however, as the story ends the only way it could: in tragic, classically-noir fashion.
Coming in between “seasons” of Brubaker and Phillips' critically-acclaimed series Sleeper, the creative team ably riff on the hard-boiled classic The Maltese Falcon. In the story, Jim Wright has a partner he calls “Sam,” who bears more than a passing resemble to Falcon author Dashiell Hammett. The real-life Hammett (whose first name was in fact “Samuel”) actually worked for the Pinkertons from 1915-1922, heavily drawing on his experiences when embarking on his writing career shortly thereafter. With works like The Maltese Falcon, Hammett is often considered to be amongst the “founding fathers” of the literary and film movement that would later be classified as noir. Brubaker and Phillips use their story here to pay tribute to Hammett, perfectly encapsulating the tough-talking dialogue and doomed romance that has its origins in the author’s detective fiction.
In a clever nod to Hammett, Brubaker and Phillips even go so far as to imply that it was the case of the missing black bird statue that would later inspire his seminal work, with present-day Hawkman Carter Hall stating that Wright’s old partner eventually “did a bit of writing” as the last panel depicts a shelf housing a copy of The Maltese Falcon. While it may not have happened quite like that in our reality, the world of DC Comics is far richer by tying the history of Justice League member Hawkman to a classic of literary noir.