Darkhawk’s origin was always shrouded in mystery. That was part of his charm for lots of folks, but a mystery can only go on for so long, and so we have the “Return to Forever” storyline that featured his origin and an issue with Ghost Rider, who has naught to do with Darkhawk’s origin, but hey, he looks cool as hell and he was appearing in everything else in the 90’s, so why not?
Have fun looking at the origin and some covers from the story!
In the 90’s, there was very little more tantalizing than the barrage of advertisements that permeated every last issue of every last superhero title I would read. Whether it was Mile High Comics, East Coast Comics, Dynamite, and more, these ads were everywhere. They really whetted the appetite of a young man plunging headfirst into superhero lore. I would find ads and just stare at them, mentally circling what I wanted, doing fruitless arithmetic to figure up the shipping & handling prices for orders I would never make. Marvel also did house ads around this time for all sorts of merchandise from bend em figures to posters to all things in between.
The first time I ever saw Darkhawk was in an ad for a t-shirt in a Marvel comic. I loved him from that instant. One reason I got him into him so quickly is that I was starting to get into comics, and he was new. Paul O’ Connor of www.longboxgraveyard.com has said that 12 years old is the Golden Age for anyone, and Darkhawk is a shining example of that. Since he was new at the same time I was new to comics, he felt like mine. I expressed a similar sentiment on my article on Jack Kirby’s Bombast; that work may have paled in comparison to the King’s grand work, but I will always love Bombast and the rest of the Secret City Saga because they are mine.
The other reason I instantly loved Darkhawk is because I was 13 years old when I encountered him for the first time and I was struck by that visual. He just looks damn cool, and if you know anything about 13-year-old young men, you know that stuff that looks damn cool and looking damn cool themselves is the most important thing in the world to them. So when I saw that shirt and then this card, I was awestruck!
Darkhawk owes a great deal to the Spider-Man mythos in many ways. To start with, many Spider-Man villains will be around for the first few issues. Hobgoblin and Tombstone both appear within the first twelve issues and Venom shows up not very long after that. Danny Fingeroth, one of the creators of Darkhawk, was an editor on the Spider-Man titles for quite some time, and maybe even at this time, and that would explain his ability to use the Spider-Man mythos with seeming impunity.
Darkhawk is also a teenager, just as Peter Parker was when he became Spider-Man. Marvel seemed to be trying very hard to recapture that in the 90’s. We have Chris Powell, who becomes Darkhawk through an accident, which messes up everything about his life; Rick Sheridan, who winds up with Sleepwalker in his brain via an accident, which messes up everything about his life; and the New Warriors, which had a similar motif. I will be covering Sleepwalker and the New Warriors here soon! How excited does that make you?!? Whoa, that’s a little too excited…maybe reel that in a bit. Or get excited for Darkhawk’s first appearance!
The other element of Darkhawk that is owed to Spider-Man is the supporting cast. Very similar to early Spidey stories, Chris Powell is surrounded by a group of folks like his girlfriend, his little bothers, his mom, his video pals, and his dad. You can tell that they wanted that Spidey feel where everyone sort of knows everyone else. Sort of like Cheers, but with less cash spent on alcohol rehab. I like much of the supporting cast, but I will say that some of them are woefully underused in a cast that keeps getting bigger. I only saw his pals a couple times, including one named Headset, who gets shot. Other than his girlfriend and family, these guys disappear for issues at a time only to resurface when you have almost forgotten about them entirely, which is highly similar to the memories you have of dates you went on in high school, although Chris’s pals seem to show up when he needs them while your memories of those dates show up when you need them least.
Chris’s family, though, is a big deal. His dad is a cop, while his mom is an assistant district attorney. Chris ain’t the only hero in the family! His little brothers are twins, and they are very annoying in the way twin little brothers of a teen would be in any delightful 90’s sitcom. This being a 90’s superhero comic, a little of those twins goes a long way for me. Cheryl is Chris’s girlfriend, and in true teenager superhero-Spidey trope fashion, Chris has a very hard time balancing his super hero activities with his love life.
Another telling element of Darkhawk is the combination of the Spidey mythos with just a touch of Wolverine. Chris Powell becomes Darkhawk when he finds an amulet in an abandoned amusement park (where he caught his cop dad taking a bribe from the mob), so Darkhawk starts his series with a mysterious past that he does not understand, and while the triple-claw on his right hand also works as a grappling hook, there ain’t a good enough liar in the world to convince me it doesn’t owe at least a little to everyone’s favorite Canadian mutant.
But these disparate elements amalgamate into what wound up being a fun, if sometimes confusing, read. I really think that Marvel wanted this to work, hence the firm insertion into the Spider-Man web (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?) and the rest of the Marvel Universe. Darkhawk would join both the New Warriors and the Avengers West Coast during his 90’s run, and he also participated in the Infinity Gauntlet, War, and Crusade. While this ultimately failed to get Darkhawk to catch on in the MU, it was a good move on their part, and I recall always being excited to see Darkhawk show up in other titles, just as I imagine Spidey fans were excited to see Darkhawk batting Hobgoblin in issue #2. First though, he had to master the necessary superhero trick of busting in through a window and issuing a strong command.
A good thing about the panels above is the fact that they demonstrate almost everything Darkhawk can do really quickly. He has super-strength and grapples into places, shoots a force beam out of his chest, glides on his wings, and can make a force field. While we see neither gliding nor the force field here, we do see the fact that normal folks can’t hang with the ‘Hawk! Too bad he will now have to fight Hobgoblin.
Within two issues, we have had a Spidey arch-foe and the trappings of the Spidey mythos, so issue #3 is definitely time for the man himself. Of course, this wasn’t a big deal by this time. Spidey was appearing everywhere from Silver Sable to NFL Superpro to Sleepwalker, so while his visage may have increased sales, it did not do much to increase excitement. He was so ubiquitous at this time that I bet he even had at least a cameo in this one too.
In this case, however, I feel that having Spider-Man in the title wasn’t just to boost sales, but it serves to sort of pass the torch of teenage hero with problems to Chris Powell. Marvel did the same thing over in Sleepwalker around this time, and as I stated earlier, it really seemed like they wanted to re-create that sort of paradigm for the 90’s. Of course, they also just wanted to put Spidey on a cover. I guess we can be thankful it wasn’t Wolverine, but I can’t help but wonder about Darkhawk and Wolverine going claw-to-claw sometime. The kid can grow out of the 90’s, but you can’t take the love of the idea of 90’s clawfights out of the kid. Also, here’s a Darkhawk cover.
Spidey and Darkhawk manage to save the day, but of course, this being the 90’s, Darkhawk has to at least toy with the idea of killing his enemies. People who bemoan 90’s comics often talk about how tiring it is that so many 90’s characters were killers, and while I understand that, I found it much more tiring how so many characters had to hem and haw about it, as though the willingness to consider killing was something that every hero had to consider. Darkhawk chooses not to kill, which is good because anyone who almost loses to a fire because of hubris should probably not be taking lives.
Darkhawk isn’t just dependent upon Spidey’s rogues for fodder; Fingeroth does a decent job establishing a few villains exclusively for Darkhawk. Philippe Bazin is a major crime lord who has extensive ties to Chris’s dad. His named-after-an-allergy-medicine daughter, Allegra, later becomes a love interest for Chris. His first villain that really made me take notice is Portal, a guy who looks quite similar to Darkhawk, but he has the ability to teleport and look cool fighting Darkhawk on a comic book cover.
We also learn in this issue that under Darkhawk’s helmet, he looks grotesque. So grotesque that he not only recoils from it in the mirror, but he looks so hideous that this later becomes a weapon for him to use. For real, in a fight, he takes off his helmet and the other guy is so horrified that Darkhawk is able to get the drop on him. Good thinking, but it is a shame seeing his terrifying visage was the price to pay for this weapon.
Portal and Darkhawk have a very epic fight, and we learn Portal is Native American. He apparently first appeared in Avengers, which was news to me then. I was picking Darkhawk up sporadically, and I recall being asked about Portal by someone in my class. I triumphantly and confidently announced he had been created for Darkhawk. I wish that were the only thing I had been wrong about in 7th grade; I also thought this girl was my girlfriend for two weeks after I had been dumped. The same guy who asked me about Portal was supposed to tell me that she had broken up with me. Maybe he knew I was wrong, and this was his revenge. Whatever happened, Portal is a Native American and he is not fond of breaking stuff in museums.
Darkhawk manages to catch Portal, but all that does is lead us into the second crossover of Darkhawk’s young career!
The team-up here really drives home why I like Darkhawk so much. As the fight commences, we get to see that Chris Powell may have the powers of Darkhawk, but he is still a neophyte at both life and superhero business. ESPECIALLY THE SUPERHERO BUSINESS. I love how Fingeroth doesn’t let us forget either of those elements of Powell, whether it is him making awful decisions in his personal life to alienate his pals, taking a bow during a battle, or just good old-fashioned hero worship!
Fingeroth does a great job keeping it real, and the art is great. Later in the series the coloring will get brighter and it loses something to me. This coloring sets a great mood for the confusion that Chris Powell feels as both Powell and Darkhawk. His world has gotten topsy-turvy in every which way, but again, like a true teenager, even when there is trouble and turmoil all around him, cool stuff remains cool stuff, and there just ain’t much cooler than not just fighting shoulder to shoulder with Captain America, but also have Captain America “Thank Heaven” that you are there. I love that sort of little touch. These are the nuances that often get overlooked and lost in superhero comics. That’s a shame too because the next few issues are completely bereft of subtlety and nuance. In fact, we get arguably the least subtle character in comics very soon after this.
Here we get another major original villain of Darkhawk, Savage Steel. I don’t want to ruin the surprise behind the concept of the villain, but it is pretty sweet. Savage Steel is an armor-clad vigilante intent on eliminating the criminal element permanently. He is basically like Punisher except he brandishes more armor and fewer skulls.
Of course, these two psychos can’t stand one another, and Darkhawk gets in the middle. This is where Darkhawk is exposed to murder and continues the whole “AM I A KILLER OR A HERO” trope that I mentioned earlier. Later in the series, he gets cocky during a hostage situation and a gentleman he was trying to protect dies. That interests me, but this whole “should I kill” thing us about as exciting as a 479-page book detailing the history of your local DMV. Killing is a big deal, and I just can’t imagine even a teenager taking it so lightly. But other than that, the book is pretty solid.
We even get Tombstone and Venom from the Spidey mythos, both of whom I like, but I especially love Tombstone. He looks cool, acts cool, and does cool stuff, like ripping Darkhawk’s chest off. For real!
That’s some Quentin Tarantino-level brutality right there! Gotta love the 90’s! For the next few issues Darkhawk cannot change back and forth between his Darkhawk and Chris Powell forms. This means he cannot heal, so he walks around with some bandages around his chest for several issues. During his quest to get his amulet back, Darkhawk not only has to cross paths with Philippe Bazin again, but this time he does so on a Caribbean island that the crime lord owns. First though, he must face another Spider-Man villain. In fact, he has to face the most 90’s Spider-Man villain of them all.
Of course, one could make the strong argument that Carnage was more 90’s than Venom, but that’s an argument for the comments section (HINT! HINT!) The battle between Darkhawk and Venom definitely reinforces the fact that Darkhawk is a piece of the Spider-Man mythos, as this is Spidey villain #3 in 13 issues! I think this may have hurt Darkhawk in the long run, but the stories were good, and it almost had a Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out feel in that Darkhawk was Little Mac, a newcomer with promise taking his skills to much larger and much larger-than-life opponents.
That’s where I plan to leave you for now, folks. Scope out the Friday Follow-Up for more on Darkhawk’s origin. All in all, I like the book. I find it to be fun, and while I think there was an overreliance on the Spidey villains and guest stars, you’d have been crazy not to take advantage of the exposure if possible. Darkhawk has remained a cult classic hero since this time, but he is higher up for me. He’s one of my top 75 heroes ever, because of his look, his human self, and the fact that he and I were young and in comics at the same time! Join us next week for Angel Hayes’s return to The Unspoken Decade!
Welcome to another installment of The Unspoken Decade! I hope you enjoyed Angel’s work here last week, and if you didn’t, I reckon you might ought not tell me, what with me being her brother and all!
Over at Longbox Graveyard, I recently penned an article on one of the Punisher’s appearances in the 1970’s in Marvel Preview #2. I am unsure when it will be published, but as I was writing it, I started thinking about how I needed to get to Punisher sooner rather than later in my own corner of the blogosphere here at The Unspoken Decade.
Punisher has been my favorite comic book character since I was in 4th grade, and he is arguably my favorite character in anything ever, regardless of medium. I recall the first time I stumbled upon Punisher was a Saturday morning after spending the night at my friend Carse Peel’s place. Carse was and most likely is as strange as his name suggests. He was a cool guy, but he also showed me my first porno, talked about sex all the time, showed me his dick constantly, and he told me his mom gave him hickies. He had an NES and lots of games, though, so I basically had to be his pal then; I would have been violating 4th grade Omerta otherwise. (We will hear more about a different sort of Omerta later, where the stakes are higher than just Holly Phillips not returning my “Will You Go Out With Me? Check One of the Boxes.” note.)So I tolerated the weirdest 4th grader not in a Village of the Damned movie because otherwise I would have been bereft of late nights watching USA Up All Night and playing Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.
He also had a big stack of comic books, and while I would not dive headfirst into the superhero swimming pool for a few years as of yet, I was already familiar with many superheroes from cartoons like Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, Super Friends, Incredible Hulk, the 1966 Batman show, and many more places of origin. Hell, I had even bought a comic book or two! I had never seen this guy in the skull though, and while I was tempted to just dismiss this as one of Carse’s weird books, I instead made the greatest decision I could, which was to open up the book at the risk of it being full of perversion. Instead, I found the violent glory of Frank Castle, The Punisher.
I asked Carse about him, and he told me he was an Australian hero who killed bad guys because his family had been killed. So, despite Punisher being my favorite character, I went around for about two years believing that Australia had provided me with Punisher. I think this misinterpretation came from the fact that the Dolph Lundgren Punisher movie was filmed in Australia, or maybe Carse was just pulling one over on me; where is a great detective like Dakota North to find this out when I need her?
I will tell you some other Carse stories later sometime if you are good, but for now, we have to get to our first gimmick cover of The Unspoken Decade…PUNISHER: WAR ZONE #1!!!
(Frank Castle would not be the only 90’s character to sport the gun, trenchcoat, and pouches combo, but no one else did so with this sort of panache.)
John Romita Jr. would be responsible for at least 80% of the panache shown here, with much of the rest filled up by the fact that having a laser sight on an Uzi is amazing. The cover is Die-Cut, in many ways the least offensive of the gimmick covers that saturated the early 90’s, and it sometimes made covers better. In this instance, I am in that club. Just take a gander at the wraparound and inside cover!
(I like to pretend that the story here is that Punisher is actually shooting those guys with a giant gun as they stand in awe of the longest teeth in the history of The Punisher skull.)
Being somewhat of a gun nut, I appreciate the realism on the cover where Punisher is holding the two Uzis. If you look, you can see the fold-up stocks on the guns. Attention to detail like this has made not just John Romita, Jr. one of my favorite artists of all time, but it has also made Chuck Dixon one of my favorite writers ever. He’s one of the more underrated writers in the business, and he certainly was one of the more underrated writers of the 90’s. I don’t think he ever wrote a masterpiece other than the first arc in Punisher: War Zone, but he did a great job on many titles dealing with street level heroes, such as Batman, Robin, and Nightwing. He somehow had an ability to make these turf wars, seedy warehouses, and mob families seem so real one could almost smell the gun grease. He was also able to maintain a rather lofty workload; it seems at almost any given point he was writing at least four monthly titles in the 90’s.
That output wasn’t hurting him anywhere here. I often hear that “no one ever got Punisher before Garth Ennis,” and while I do believe Mr. Ennis is a fine Punisher scribe, to say such a thing is to hurl a hydrogen bomb of an insult at guys like Steven Grant, Mike Baron, and my man, Chuck Dixon. There are several really good Punisher stories waaaaaay before Ennis crossed the pond and anyone who thinks otherwise is either being self-delusional or they just worship Garth Ennis, and as much as I enjoy some of Ennis’s work, the idea of him being a deity is about as pleasant to me as a rug burn to the face. If you have read his work, you know why. If you haven’t, read his Marvel Knights Punisher and his Punisher Max stuff. It’s really good.
This blog isn’t about how good Ennis is, though, but it is about how good a team Dixon/Romita Jr./Janson is here. Dixon writes Punisher as the driven psychopath he is, and Romita does a great job having Castle’s body language convey that outlook. Take a look at Punisher’s eyes as he mows down an informant who has gone nuts and shot a cop.
(The only thing emptier than Punisher’s eyes is a Sears store at the mall.)
This is the first thing you see when you open the comic book, and already the creative team has established that Punisher is a psychopath with little regard for others…or himself. Lynn Michaels is the cop that raises her gun against Punisher but doesn’t fire; she becomes an important member of Punisher’s supporting cast and eventually serves as Punisher herself for a bit following the events of Suicide Run, which I am sure I will cover at some point here at The Unspoken Decade.
This arc also explored the relationship between Punisher and his partner, Microchip. Yes, his name is really Microchip. My girlfriend did not believe me, so she certainly did not believe me when I told her that Microchip’s son is named Microchip, Jr. For real, to this moment, she does not believe me. I understand why not, but come on! Why would I lie about this? Anyhow, Microchip is like Punisher’s Alfred in a way, if Alfred was a fat, balding computer genius who didn’t mind that Batman killed folks. Microchip tries to reason with Punisher about not overdoing it, but this was as effective as kindly asking a rabid skunk to leave you alone while you enjoy a sunny day.
(I think Punisher bought those Craftsman tools from the same Sears store at the mall I mocked earlier.)
Microchip has been going out a bit, and Punisher is bothered by it. Since they’re good friends who have been mired in a hellacious war on crime together, Punisher decided to follow Microchip rather than ask him what is going on. For a fat guy, Microchip is a subway ninja. All Punisher finds out is that Microchip has been talking to someone. Since Punisher was all sneaky about finding out where Microchip was going, perhaps he will be sneaky about letting Microchip know he has the information. OR HE IS THE GODDAMN PUNISHER.
(Punisher sounds a little like a 7th-grade girl. “Did you tell him about me? What did you guys talk about?”)
Microchip leaves, and he does not return for awhile. The way Punisher interacts with Micro and basically disregards his feelings other than how it works for Punisher is emblematic of what is so great about this character. He has no feelings for anyone. He cares not for himself, Microchip, his dead family, or the cops he saved earlier. He cares only for his war. All that matters is his war. I admire that sort of that dedication. I wish I had a sliver or two of it in my life.
The issue then jumps to what appears to be a generic banana republic, where a scared tyrant is listening to an injured solider tell him how one guy killed 101 of the best men in the tyrant’s army. As the tyrant expresses incredulity at this, the man kills both of them, lets us know his name is Shotgun, and then vocalizes that his body count is now up to 103.
Jumping back to NYC, Punisher takes out some mooks (man, I love that word) that have decided to engage in an extracurricular hit on a restaurant that doubles as a bank for Triad casinos. The mooks get in and out, but Punisher is waiting for them with more firepower than he needs.
(Jesus, if Punisher says he used too much firepower, what could he have used? A nuclear submarine?)
Punisher kills all these mooks, but he saves one. You see, Punisher has a plan to take down the Carbone mob, and all he needs is a scared wise guy to help him infiltrate the family. Mickey Fondozzi finds himself both the unluckiest and luckiest guy in the Marvel Universe at this point; he has survived a fight with Punisher, but now he must work for Punisher. That would be like Cthulhu not eating you, but instead he makes you manager of a restaurant where he eats other people. I mean, it is good to be alive, but no way could one feel secure at all.
Mickey stands his ground as best as one hanging upside down by their feet can, even dropping the Big O on Punisher.
(Buttcheeks is too nice of a term for Feds. I prefer fascist buttcheeks.)
Mickey daring to drop Omerta on Punisher is both brave and ever so funny. It becomes even funnier when Punisher has apparently gone to genealogy.com and found exactly who Mickey Fondozzi is and what he is all about.
Mickey continues to play tough guy, and so Punisher, in one of the more famous scenes from Punisher lore, decided to make Mickey cooperate the old-fashioned way by asking nicely while using a blowtorch on him.
Or does he?
(These mobsters sure talk loosely on the phone. I have known pot dealers with strict phone code, and yet here they are just openly discussing murder. Wow.)
The comic then ends with Mickey bringing Castle into the Carbone Family under the alias Johnny Tower. Punisher does a lot of cool stuff, but his aliases are never cool. He always uses some variation of his last name. I have also seen him refer to himself as Charles Fort and Charles Rook. I guess some idiosyncrasies are allowed to a psychotic vigilante though.
All in all, this is a great comic. It serves as a great comic in every which way. It is a great story with great art. It’s a great #1, and it does a great job introducing any new readers into the dark, cold, and calculating world of Frank Castle, The Punisher. When folks badmouth the 90’s in general, and 90’s Punisher in particular, as being bland crap designed just to have gimmick covers to sell books, the first arc of Punisher: War Zone is almost always my first thought to contradict such nonsense.
Of course, this issue holds a special place in my heart, as it hung on the wall of my local comic shop for months when I first got into collecting. I got heavily into comic books just after Punisher: War Zone started. The first issue I picked up was #5. Since the other Punisher titles were so deep in their numbering, I sort of clung to War Zone as “My Punisher Title” and decided to grab all of them from #1! All the other issues of Punisher: War Zone were there on the shelf back to #2 at my LCS, but #1 was sold-out, and the copy they had on the wall was five dollars. FIVE DOLLARS! I pined for that book, but could never get it b/c it would have cost me all my weekly comic book cash. One day I went in and it was gone. I was so bummed. I went home and yelled and was incorrigible because there was no way I would now ever get my hands on that comic that had A PRINT RUN IN AT LEAST THE HUNDRED THOUSANDS!
As it turned out, my mom had snagged it for me for my birthday, so thanks Mom! She didn’t even hold it against me that I threw such a large fit, and she also never knew that I found the comic under the car seat about a week before I was supposed to get it. Microchip may be a subway ninja, but I promise no one is a present ninja like me. I almost always figure out what folks are getting me before I get the actual goodies, much to the chagrin of my girlfriend!
I hope you have enjoyed a little Punisher here at The Unspoken Decade…because you are getting more next week! I will cover Punisher War Zone #2 and the rest of this arc! We will never, ever be too far away from my favorite mass murderer here at The Unspoken Decade, because hey, he was the decade in many ways! After that, though, we will hear from Angel again and finally get into some 90’s DC with Justice Society of America!!! Yes, I love both Punisher and the old WW2 superheroes! The 90’s were complex, man. Ask any Smashing Pumpkins fan! See you back here real soon!!!
The Unspoken Decade: 90's Comic Book Blog Extraordinaire 