Hawkman #14: Dark Days Ahead

As is often the case when a major, break-through creative team is disbanded, the quality of Hawkman took a significant hit with this month’s issue. While Venditti continues to be a great writer with a clear vision of where he wants to take Hawkman, the art in this issue was far below acceptable quality. Perhaps I’m merely spoiled by the sustained brilliance of Hitch, but this issue seemed unnecessarily ill-defined and still managed to include a large number of unnecessary and unappealing splash pages, the best of which is presented below. Even the continued excellence of colorist Jeremiah Skipper couldn’t manage to save this issue from itself.

The story itself felt extremely hampered by having been roped into the YotV event, although Venditti did find limited to space to work around that editorial necessity and begin to explore the trauma of absorbing Carter’s past memories, giving me hope that soon– perhaps only an arc– the book will return to form and we can continue with what has been thus far the most intriguing Hawkman series to date.