Great Moments in Black History #05: Try It
April 13th, 2009 by david brothers | Tags: black history, nighthawk, squadron supreme
from marvel’s supreme power: nighthawk. words by daniel way, art by steve dillon.
(when it comes to supreme power, daniel way > jms. his nighthawk is like batman after waking up on the wrong side of the bed.)
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definitely the best part of the SS universe
He’s rorshach with money and a bar of soap.
He’s definitely cool but not the best part of the universe. The entire universe is cool.
Also, Daniel Way is better only on Nighthawk and even then, it’s because JMS does not have the room to work on him as much as a mini-series.
I rather liked Way’s version here. The first thing I noticed in the comic was that Nighthawk was working with a white police officer. That seemed crazy to me since I had just read JMS’s work, and JMS seemed to have worked really hard to make him an ANGRY BLACK MAN with a “FUCK WHITEY” attitude. Nothing wrong with that portrayal per se, but JMS at some point made it that I couldn’t take him seriously any more. He felt like some poorly constructed “MESSAGE!” character.
Way made Nighthawk a more workable character in my opinion. You can tell he’s still fighting for the same things, but he’s not imagining rednecks wherever he goes.
“when it comes to supreme power, daniel way > jms…”
Really? I mean, there’s no accounting for taste, but I don’t see it. JMS had his problems on Supreme Power (the main one being, obviously, that he decided to leave the series in the middle of a storyline, at a big cliffhanger even; I’m still annoyed about that), but I thought Way’s mini wasn’t nearly as good as the main book. It was a servicable, okay story that explored and fleshed out a character, but nothing more.
Dane: “That seemed crazy to me since I had just read JMS’s work, and JMS seemed to have worked really hard to make him an ANGRY BLACK MAN with a “FUCK WHITEY” attitude. Nothing wrong with that portrayal per se, but JMS at some point made it that I couldn’t take him seriously any more. He felt like some poorly constructed “MESSAGE!” character.”
I suspect that if JMS had continued writing Supreme Power (or Squadron Supreme), we’d have ended up with a much rounder and more interesting character than we ultimately did. I mean, at the start of JMS’s Babylon 5, G’Kar was a rather simple and stereotypical bad guy who was out for revenge and antagonized everyone in his path, but as the series progressed he grew into a fantastic, complex, and rich character. That’s not an excuse for the stuff Joe did with Nighthawk (and I agree with your assessment), but it does lead me to wonder what we would have been talking about now if he hadn’t walked away from the series.