It would also be impossible to enforce. The minute DC announces publicly or even in-house that the character is no longer to be used, parody versions and sideways references will begin to appear as everyone rushes to tease the bear and show their love for this classic character now-hated-by-his-cruel-corporate-masters.

"Why is DC keeping Hawkman from us?" would become a rallying cry across fandom to be answered in multiple forms, just as DC's kicking Donna Troy and Wally West to the curb during the New 52 resulted in a weird sort of uprising in favor of them. 

Nothing is ever left behind. Hey, give me half a chance and I'll bring back Opticus* and Microwave Man, and believe me, no one is calling for their return. I'll find a way to put Peg-Leg Portia and her Space-Hounds back into current continuity as well. 

There is no way the torpor and ennui associated with constantly rebooting and reinterpreting Hawkman would result in his simply being left behind in favor of "cooler" new characters. There's a trademark to protect, if nothing else. 

If DC Editorial were to issue a ban on Katar/Carter, within a few years you'd still be seeing some new take on the name with a ice-cold assassin taking the title or some kid with an interest in ornithology being summoned to the tomb of Horus to receive great powers... Three years after that, the new character would be established as having ties to Thanagar and 'round and 'round the wheel would continue to spin.

* Yes, I know Opticus was an established character in disguise. I have a way around that... :-)

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At his core, "Hawkman" is a good name and that helmet is a good design.  If he were created now, he might be seen as the next Batman or Wolverine.  It's all his continuity baggage that's weighing him down.  Reimagined (not rebooted in comics!) in another medium like TV or movies might be all he needs to "take flight."

I think he's a little bit better than Aquaman, and Aquaman's movie just made a billion dollars.  (Who would have thought THAT possible ten years ago?) 

What they need to do is focus on letting the tortured, mangled continuity go, rather than the character, and focusing on a simple, direct premise for Hawkman that doesn't feel it has to repair the shoddy fixes that preceded it. Having an actual story would be a good start, preferably one that doesn't involve taking elements from the past eight versions, dropping them in a blender, and hitting "puree." 

Pick either Ancient Egypt or Thanagar and simply go from there. Don't kill yourself or the story trying to do both. There is no reason to nod at every previous iteration. That's fanboy logic. We need less of that and more actual substantive content. Create the story that fanboys ten, twenty years from now will want to constantly look back at and slyly reference. 

The character of Hawkman has always incorporated a strange frisson between the modern and the ancient, whether it be a modern-day man reliving a previous incarnation or a space-travelling policeman who arms himself with the weapons of Earth's past. That's fine. That's thematically potent. But make the past the character interacts with actual history and not his clusterf***'ed continuity. 

The next writer needs to think like an author and not a one-stop comics historian, fix-it-man. This character is capable of terrific grace, leadership, mood, and mystery. 

Someone out there has to be able to make that work for modern audiences in a way that doesn't simply tick off boxes that address A.) The Jurgens Conundrum: How to zero out Zero Hour? B.) The Nth Decree: Thanagarian Science or Egyptian Miracle Metal? C.) Dead Again: How do Nighthawk, Cinnamon, Blackhawk, and Patch fit in now? and so on and so on and so on...

***

Exactly. You really can blame everything that f*cked up Hawkman on Mike Gold. Not at all the fault of Truman (or John Ostrander). 

I assume that because Hawkman's history was "up in the air" (ha!) for so long, DC Editorial just assumed that was its permanent state and certainly one more nonsensical reimagining couldn't make things any worse. 

Something I find interesting about the Johns' reboot: it posits Hawkman and Hawkwoman as unfortunates caught up in a perpetual cycle of death, rebirth, confrontation with the evil architect of their misfortune, leading inevitably to their next death and rebirth... This is very similar in nature to JB's "fix" for the history of Donna Troy, another luckless character cast adrift by DC in a rising floodtide of nonsensical, contradictory re-imaginings and reboots.