Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.
I have to admit, I am completely torn this week.
On the one hand, the Manhawks are blitheringly stupid. First off, the fact that their enemy is Hawkman is just all kinds of dumb – Man-Bat was already pushing the “reverse name” villain concept to its utmost, but at least Man-Bat has a decent concept attached to him. The Manhawks are… giant hawks.
From outer space. With spaceships, which they apparently invented with their talons. And they’re telepathic. And they can fly through space (which kind of begs the question why they ever needed spaceships, but I guess they’ve got them). And they wear humanoid masks. Which shoot eye lasers. And their entire modus operandi is that they just really like stealing things a whole lot. (Because they don’t really need money. Because they are giant hawks.)
It’s like DC’s bullpen was getting drunk one night and decided that this time, they really, really had to see how far they could go before some kid looked up from his comic and said “Mom, what the hell is this shit?”
But on the other hand, I know that when I was eight I would have eaten this shit up with a fucking spoon. And I am a big proponent of the theory that superhero comics should be accessible to – and indeed, whenever possible, targeted at – eight-to-twelve-year olds. Plus, there’s some nice touches in there, like the fact that the Manhawks change masks every time they rob a planet, so their new masks match the appearance of the race they’re robbing. You have to admire an evil kleptomaniac alien race that just decides to fuck with other civilizations’ heads.
I’m going split decision on this. The Manhawks actually manage to make less sense than a Nazi vampire gorilla or Ice coming back from the dead. But they’re still kind of cool, in their way.
EDIT TO ADD: I am only rating the Silver Age Manhawks here, not the updated Manhawks, who reek of “we can make this cooler! To the EXTREEEEEME” and are everything that is wrong with comics.
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I like the parenthetical aside in the last paragraph: “Where the Manhawks came from is unclear.” Meaning the vodka ran out, the sun came up, and the shame started seeping in before we could come up with any further batshit crazy ideas.
I much prefer the Greymiotti version.
So…. Thanagar had no concept of theft before the Manhawks came? But I’m fairly certain their entire civilization was founded on the concept of beating the living crap of weird stuff with freaking huge maces, so I’m a bit shocked that they politely agreed to let the Manhawks “borrow” their VCR.
I bet their space junkies. I bet they pawn your shit at space pawn shops and run off to get another hit of space smack.
NCallahan: the Silver Age Thanagar was supposed to a big space-utopia. Everyone was a peaceful scientist, kind of like Krypton minus the blowing up.
It’s the post-Crisis Thanagar that was all about cultural appropriation and beating people up with maces.
The Manhawks were created and primarily featured in the Silver Age (although it should be noted that there are post-Crisis versions of them, where not only do they have a slightly clearer origin, but their masks are made of the flesh of their dead enemies, which in my opinion ought to ratchet up their Rex The Wonder Dog score by at least 5%).
I am now officially a HUGE DORK for actually knowing and caring about this. Excuse me, I have to go do something cool to balance this out. I’ll be styling my fauxhawk on my Vespa scooter while listening to my iPod if anyone needs me.
NO VCR ESCAPES THE MANHAWKS!
The spaceships I put down to the same logic as Wonder Woman having an invisible plane, even though we can fly: I can walk all day if I have to, but I’d still rather drive. Or cycle, being the good, environmentally-conscious, fitness freak that I am.
The masks… okay, they were blatantly perfectly happy robbing people with their regular faces on, until one day they observed the existence of the Mohawk. After which feathers just didn’t seem to cut it anymore.
… Wait a minute. They’re hawks… with Mohawks! That’s awesome.
You gotta admire the literal-minded insanity of the concept. The purity of the design is impressive.
“Let’s reverse Hawkman! Man-hawk! Instead of a man with fake hawk wings, he’s a hawk with a fake man head! And instead of being a space-cop, he’s a space-thief! And instead of one dude, there are lots of ’em!”
How telepathy and laser-shooting eyes work into it, I’m not sure. Because they’re cool, I suppose.
Man-Bat appeared six or seven years after the Manhawks, so pretty much could not have been “already” pushing the reverse name villain concept to its utmost.
“How telepathy and laser-shooting eyes work into it, I’m not sure. Because they’re cool, I suppose.”
Going along with the “opposite day” aspect of these critters, the answer is obvious: they have telepathy and shoot lasers from their eyes because Hawkman can’t.
you need spaceships to carry all that loot, especially if your home planet was annihilated by lizardmen. and they probably stole them anyways. maybe from a biologist sent to survey their world? or they could have used their telepathy to make a vassal race design them and the masks.
i could see a rogue manhawk joining like the outsiders and running about with metamorpho and other cosmic/bizarre dc silver age rejects, and becoming an interesting character under the hands of a decent writer. sort of like if catwoman was a giant bird equipped with alien technology, who fought crime.
Manhawks showed up semi-recently in Hawkman’s book. They tore the crap out of him, and it was that fight that made me like Hawkman as DC’s Wolverine. There’s an image of them here: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v636/JMPTX/Hawkworld/Manhawks.jpg
I really didn’t see that those were masks till you said it now. Those weird heads are kinda creepy, but what do they look like underneath? Just hawk heads, then?
If the Manhawks are selling stuff for space-smack, would they use a middle-man?
“Who hawks the Manhawks?”
Hmmm… Something isn’t right there.
I liked them because I was reading ‘Showcase Presents Hawkman’, and it was bugging the crap out of me that the Thanagarians were just now learning about crime and policing. I kept asking myself, “So what, did they just wake up one day and say, ‘Hey! I’ve invented a new idea! Theft!’ or something?”
Then they introduced the Manhawks, and it all (barely) made sense. Thanagar was a society that really didn’t have a concept of theft (difficult to believe, but that might be because our society always has) and the Manhawks’ arrival was an example of cultural contamination, the same way that Japan went through rapid changes after contact with the West. They might not be believable, but they made Thanagar more believable, and that’s all that counted to me.
The West lost out in the long run for daring to “contaminate” Japan and it’s pure, super moral people who would even hurt each other before meeting terrible round eye gaijin dogs. In fact, just now consulting wikipedia, it appears that the Japanese people had no words or conception or war or weapons or harming other living things until the West made contact and sullied their pure, harmonic culture.
“Going along with the “opposite day” aspect of these critters, the answer is obvious: they have telepathy and shoot lasers from their eyes because Hawkman can’t.”
Hmm . . . so that must mean that Manhawks are masters of pleasing women, sexually.
Oh yeah. I went there. Super classy.
Does this mean the Manhawks are swiping Blu-rays now?
Is it wrong that I think they’d work better as silent predators, a la the cockroaches in Mimic? I mean, they’ve already got the masks for every occasion…
“Does this mean the Manhawks are swiping Blu-rays now?”
THE MIGHTY MANHAWKS DESIRE IPODS!
@Piranhtachew:
Er… I’m pretty sure he just meant that ideas from the West (like, you know, good guns) caused rapid changes to Japanese society. Not that the Japanese were Utopian the same way Thanagar is sometimes presented, so that’s a great totally uncalled for rant.
I recommend now ranting about something else nobody has actually said! I’d suggest something but that would defeat the point.