CBR: The Year-of-the-Villain Tie-In Almost Ruined Venditti's Hawkman

Hawkman Vol. V No. 17 (December 2019)

 

   CBR put out an article today about the ridiculous amount of tie-ins that come with events in recent comic events. Instead of helping the event, the tie-ins are mostly unnecessary and ruin other series. The article brings up as an example, Robert Venditti's Hawkman run in 2019. During 2019, DC Comics had a year-long event going on called the Year of the Villain. It started with a group of six heroes who turn evil. Hawkman was one of them. There was a 4-issue miniseries called Hell Arisen that was supposed to feature the six heroes, but it completely flopped and DC lost so much interest that Hawkman (Sky Tyrant) didn't even show up in the last two issues. 

Hell Arisen #2 (March 2020)

   It also affected Venditti's Hawkman run. After the amazing first 12 issues with Bryan Hitch that revealed Hawkman's true origin and the moving stand-alone story in #13, the series had to include the Year-of-the-Villain storyline. Hawkman became the evil Sky Tyrant and the story continued for nine issues. Batman-Who-Laughs, IMHO one of the worst characters ever created, made a two-page appearance in issue No. 20. This gave us the only figure or toy to come from this amazing series. 

Batman-Who Laughs with Hawkman's Wings (Never happened in the series)

  Venditti kept the series from going completely off the rails and was finally able to bring Hawkwoman into the story after the Villain event was over. It is an amazing display of how great a writer Venditti is and how tuned in he was with the Hawkman story. 

   But many other series don't have a Venditti. There have been many other series that shriveled up and just....died after a crossover event. The Justice League of America (2013) is a good example. Maybe DC will figure out that less is more someday. These tie-ins hurt the comics in the long run. Check out the article at CBR by Ashley Land and the comments about the Hawkman series.