He was supposed to be the next big thing- the cool new super hero to usher in another wave of success for Marvel in the ’90s.
They teamed him up with Spider-Man for a period and even had him square off against popular foes like Hobgoblin and Venom. But in the end, the character never took off like Marvel had hoped.
Darkhawk.
The reason why many of you are asking yourself who Darkhawk is as you read this, is because he’s a pretty obscure character. The fact is that the dude from “War of Kings” with the cool costume has been around longer than you think. In spite of some excellent art by Mike Manley [through the series’ first 25 issues], the series lasted only 50 issues before Darkhawk was inserted into a bench-warming role with the Avengers. Sparse appearances over the next 15 years until CB Cebulski penned his WOK miniseries on the character gave him a bit of a push, but overall, he’s a character that will always be regarded as a failure.
That failure started in the first issue.
While the splash pages in that issue by Manley are fantastic, as only Todd McFarlane has managed to draw a scarier version of Hobgoblin, the writing by Danny Fingeroth is too silly to take serious.
By 1991, comic book fans were asking for more and even though Darkhawk kills a mobster in the issue (the series did try to be darker and grittier than the other books Marvel was publishing at the time) the story makes no sense. Why would an intergalactic amulet be in the basement of a worn-down amusement park? Chris Powell, Darkhawk’s alter-ego is also as charismatic as a wet mop. The fact that his father is a crooked cop and his mom is a lawyer fighting the mob gives him little reason to wage a war against crime.
Okay, maybe it does, but it’s not compelling. The fact that Powell looks like a younger version of the mullet-sporting John Stamos from “Full House†only makes readers take him less serious.
Even funnier is the homeless man that ends up playing a role in how the character gets his name.
“Powers got to be used, not abused, by a Darkhawk.”
Reading it nearly 20 years ago as an eight-year-old was one thing, but now, any relatively-intelligent comic book fan reading would have to wonder, what the frack is a Darkhawk and why is this homeless man suddenly throwing out cliches like a Nancy Regan anti-drug ad?
Because of this ludicrous writing and the addition of Evilhawk, Powell’s boring main nemesis, the series eventually tanked. You can’t blame the creative team though. They were telling a story the way they were all told during that time. Plain and simple, they were exactly visionaries.
The character is worth a retcon one day though; maybe then it’ll live up to its potential.
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