I think it was JB who pointed out, once, that he thought Carter's helmet/cowl either should/shouldn't be higher than Carter's eyes. I can't recall which, but it always seemed cooler to me if Carter's looking out from under the thing, rather than through the eyes. It becomes more a warrior's dress and less a "mask", kind of like the wearing of bearskins/wolfskins.

Probably my favorite Hawkman image. This also speaks to a barbarian attitude, since Hawkman has about as much chance against Superman as snowball/hell, but he's just busted his mace trying!

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The above drawing notwithstanding, Kubert used to render the "mask" much more as a helmet, with Katar often tipping it back casually on his head when in conversation with someone from whom he did not need to hide his face.

In the Kubert pages I have (and I KNOWN that reads like bragging, but COME ON!! I have Kubert HAWKMAN pages!!!) the eyes are definitely higher on the mask than Katar's eyes would be. Almost as if he is looking out thru the "shadow" under the eyes.

Example:

Much the same effect in that Superman/Hawkman splash.

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Undisputed master of that, I would think! One of the pages I own has Hawkman fighting a big black bear. From where I sit, six feet away, it's a bear. From six inches away, if blobs of ink with a bear face in the middle.

And the %#$#%# isn't losing it as he gets older! GAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

This is, of course, the same FF which is now deemed "second only to Lee and Kirby" -- proving, I suppose, that the "old stuff" rests on a sliding scale, and basically refers to whatever was before whatever I am doing NOW.

(The best effect, of course, is when someone sees a recent drawing, mistakes it for an old one, and says "See! His old stuff was so much better!")

I think it was JB who pointed out, once, that he thought Carter's helmet/cowl
either should/shouldn't be higher than Carter's eyes.
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I remember talking with someone about that back when JB drew Hawkman
back during his WW run. Joe Kubert would be proud!

You really can't beat Kubert when it comes to rendering Hawkman, can you? Just stunning.

That said, I had no real knowledge of Hawkman beyond his visuals until JB's issues of Action Comics starring him, shortly after Crisis. That was when I was discovering DC in general, so of course I also stumbled into Hawkworld not to many years later. I remember being iffy on the original miniseries (though I loved Truman's art), but I really got into Ostrander's ongoing based on it.

I still have a great deal of fondness for it, too. In many ways, it's "my" Hawkman (and Hawkgirl - she was completely vital to the series). It's also very much a product of its era so I don't know that I'd want to see it again, but it remains the best persistent writing I've seen in association with the character.

Would love to see a really engaging new book showcasing a more classic take, at this point. I tried Johns's one, but the reincarnation stuff was a snoozer for me. Actually, same goes for the series as a whole, though I loved Rags' art.

I think my best times with more classic variants of Hawkman were JB's Action issue and the moments we got in Generations.

Chad,

You're mis-reading that scene out of context and putting in your own preferences. Hawkman thinks he's fighting a Superman robot, not the man himself. From JLA 200, Superman is mind-controlled into retrieving a meteor that is covered with kryptonite. Hawkman, correctly surmises that because of that, he'll use his Superman-robots to retrieve it. The robots are apparently not too tough as Hawkman dispatches one with relative ease using a crossbow bolt. What he doesn't know is that Superman also coated himself with a thin, transparent layer of lead to get the meteor if the robot failed.

I disagree about the barbarian personality. To me it's part of what passes for much of modern revisioning characterization, taking a small part of the past and elevating the relative importance over all else, and ending up with a characterization that can be argued as being supported by the source material but largely violates the overall history and spirit of the character. See also Bucky, Robert Downey Jr's Sherlock Holmes.

The GA Hawkman has killed, but he now regularly maims and tortures criminals and opponents, things that we associate with villains and war criminals. Yes, he lived in a barbaric past, but the current history is that he has lived bunches of lives, that time was just a small part of his overall history. Especially considering his relative youth when he died whereas he lived for at least 60 years in the 20th Century, spending most of it as a man of science and leader of the JSA. The personality they've saddled him with is completely at odds with someone that was leader for decades of the JSA and the ret-con history as mentor of the JLA.