Angry Birds

Okay, I’m sure Sterling Gates is a lovely person, and while I’m sure many people have enjoyed his Supergirl comic between 2008 and the New 52 reboot (Besides Brian Wood, but that’s another story), let’s start with a little basic science, shall we?

The Washington Monument is 555 feet tall (For reference, the Empire State building is 1,250 feet tall). This airplane…

…is MAYBE 15 feet higher than the monument when THIS line is uttered:

Now, I’m not an air pressure doctor or a botanist or anything, but even I know that you only pressurize an airplane at 580 feet if you hate uncrushed testicles, attached retinas and unboiling blood.

This sequence occured on pages 7 through 10 of the new Hawk and Dove book by Gates and our old friend Rob Liefeld.

It is the high point of the book.

———–

Let’s start with the writing, for which I’m willing to forgive Gates at least a little bit. After all, Hawk and Dove was released in the first week of the New 52, meaning that if your local comic store owner is anything like MY local comic store owner (Who knows me by name and asks me to please urinate in either the bathroom or the quarter bin), he shelved this with the tourist bait first issues like Action Comics and Detective Comics. Only unlike names like “Superman” and “Batman,” for the comics uninitiated, “Hawk” and “Dove” sound like message board handles for Internet pederasts.

So Gates undoubtedly was saddled with the task of introducing those readers (read: rubberneckers) to Hawk and Dove, even though those people skipped the book because only a fool would buy what probably appears to the uninformed like an long-form advertisement for some brand of soap and / or body spray.

So we get the entire life story of Hawk and Dove, formatted in only the finest talking-head, long form exposition such as:

“The voice told us if we said the magic words…”

“HAWK!”

“DOVE!”

“…We would have incredible powers.”

Yup, them magic words “Hawk” and “Dove.” Go ahead: try shouting either one of them and see if anything happens. Probably not, unless you’re in a men’s room stall at the San Francisco airport.

But that’s not even the worst dialogue in the book. Check this out:

Hawk, to his dad: “You remember a criminal named Dargo?”

Hawk’s dad: “How could I forget him? He tried to kill me before I could send him to jail –“

Really? REALLY? Let’s put that sparkling repartee into real world context, shall we?

Any sentient living human being on the planet, to Sharon Tate: “You remember a criminal named Manson?”

And then, after all that ham-fisted exposition, we end the book with a splash page introducing a character who I’m guessing is the old Hawk and Dove nemesis Kestrel. I’m guessing it since I’ve seen Kestrel before, but if you’re one of those ephemeral “new readers” that I imagine the preceeding exposition was for, all you know is he looks exactly like a brown Hawk, as if Hawk went planking in a cesspool.

And as if to reinforce that image, the penultimate line of the book is: “You smell like…”

And then there’s the art. The Rob. Liefeld. art.

Look: in the short life of this Web site, I’ve repeatedly linked to this little piece of genius, and for good reason: he has skewered the art “stylings” of Rob Liefeld better than I could do if I lived to be a thousand. So go there and read the whole thing, then come back and see my meager offerings. Such as:

Page 7, panel 4: Hawk is so badassed, he has fangs!

NEXT FUCKING PAGE: Fangs are for continuity geeks!

Look at my right hip! It's in the driver's seat of this... car? Roof? Whatever it is, I HATE it!

And finally:

It’s a Goddamned good thing that Hawk is bulletproof. Because if I saw this misshappen, asymmetric… THING come around the corner, I’d shoot it in the face. I think Rob cut the panel off at the bottom lip so we wouldn’t see the derp drool.

Skip this one and use the money you saved to buy a pack of smokes. It’s better for you.