Hawkgirl Review #6 by Tim Board

   

Amancay Nahuelpan

Derrick Chew

Jess Taylor

   The place where Hawkgirl ended up at the end of this series isn't bad, but my gawd what a convoluted way to do it. I tried to put out a review for issues #1-4, but I finally just skipped issue #5. I'm doing this review more as a way to wrap up what has turned out to be the absolute worst series involving any Hawk character in history. So if you thought this series was in any way good or competent, you might want to skip this review. I'll try to make it brief. 

   Kendra Saunders, with the help of Galaxy of course, manages to use the power of her past lives to save both her dimension and the dimension of the Nth World by sacrificing the memory or presence of her past lives. A king knights her, proclaiming her to be the Knight of the Nth World and Kendra happily returns right back to where she started in the series. 

   There's no reason to get into the story of how and why she was in the Nth World to begin with because the whole story is just too pointless and convoluted to go over. You can try to read it for yourself, but it will probably send many readers back to their college days when they were pulling an all-nighter for a final exam. The whole thing just seemed like a tsunami of words that washed over you and made you put the book down to come up for air. 

   For the writer who calls herself Jadzia Axelrod, I suppose it was mission accomplished. She was able to vent her own personal issues with men through Kendra by tarnishing all the previous men in Kendra's life, rage at couples who in her imagination had left her behind by tearing down Hawkman and Hawkwoman, and making her Galaxy character the co-star of the series. She also managed to cram the character into the DC mainstream by pulling in Superman, Batman, and other DC  characters. Although the DC mainstream isn't such a great place to be right now. She also managed to alienate most of the Hawkfans on the site formerly known as Twitter. Well done. Well done. 

   So we're left with Hawkgirl in Metropolis with a powerful Nth metal mace, freshly knighted to do who knows what, and a great big group of lesbian friends and one Welsh Corgi that talks. I suppose that's as interesting a support group as you could ask for. 

   It appears that DC Comics is going with Hawkgirl/Kendra Saunders for the foreseeable future. She is appearing in some other books over the next few months (Godzilla vs. JLA, Green Arrow, etc), while Hawkman/ Carter Hall and Hawkwoman/Shayera Hol have almost completely disappeared from DC's lineup. 

   This series was to set up her character in the DCU and get fans interested in her, I think. I've seen some positive reviews on Comic Book Roundup so you might want to check those out, but I'm sad to say that for this Hawkfan, this poorly written series left me feeling like I had been hit the the Thanagarian Equalizer plague. I pray that a more competent writer without a personal agenda will bring a cure and that Axelrod will never be allowed to come near a Hawk character again. 

Hawkgirl Vol. 2 #6 (February 2024)
Script: Jadzia Axelrod
Artist: Amancay Nahuelpan 
Colorists: Carrie Strachan, Alex Guimaraes
Letters: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou 
Editor: Kristy Quinn