Death Hawk
Encyclopedia
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
character, a self-styled salvage expert in the 25th century. The character starred in a namesake, three-issue series series published by Adventure Publications from 1987-1988, created and written by Mark Ellis
Mark Ellis (writer)
Mark Ellis is an American novelist and comic-book writer who under the pen name James Axler has written scores of books for the Outlanders paperback novel series and other books, as well as numerous independent comics series....
. He first appeared in a five-page back-up feature in Star Rangers
Star Rangers
Star Rangers was a four-issue American science-fiction comic-book series created by writer Mark Ellis and artist Jim Mooney, following the adventures of a military spaceship crew in a 25th century controlled by corporations.-Publication history:...
#2-3, by the same writer.
Publication history
Death Hawk ran three issues cover-dated May to November 1988. The first issue was pencilled by artist Adam HughesAdam Hughes
Adam Hughes is an American comic book artist who has worked for companies such as DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Lucasfilm, Warner Bros...
, succeeded with issue #2 by Rik Levins
Rik Levins
Rik Levins was an American comic book artist and penciller, best known for his work on Marvel Comics' Captain America, where he worked with writer Mark Gruenwald for over three years ....
. The first two issues featured painted covers by Dave Dorman
Dave Dorman
Dave Dorman is a science fiction, horror and fantasy illustrator.-Background:Dorman's parents are Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jack N. Dorman and Phyllis Dorman. Both parents are deceased. Dorman is married to award-winning TV/video producer, writer and publicist Denise Dorman of WriteBrain Media...
, the third by Steve Hickman.
Although initially planned as an eight-issue limited series
Limited series
A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....
, Death Hawk was canceled after the third when the publisher went out of business. A fourth issue was completed but went unpublished at the time.
In September 2008, Ellis' Millennial Concepts (with Transfuzion Publishingg) published a 128-page trade paperback, Death Hawk: The Soulworm Saga Volume One, that collected the published Death Hawk stories and the previously unpublished fourth issue. It included an introduction by Douglas Clegg
Douglas Clegg
Douglas Clegg is a horror and dark fantasy author, and a pioneer in the field of e-publishing. He maintains a strong Internet presence through his website and LiveJournal.-Biography:...
and incidental art by Darryl Banks
Darryl Banks
Darryl Banks is a comic book artist. He worked on one of the first painted comic books, Cyberpunk, and teamed with the writer Mark Ellis to revamp the long-running The Justice Machine series for two publishers, Innovation and Millennium....
, Jim Mooney
Jim Mooney
James Noel "Jim" Mooney was an American comic book artist best known as a Marvel Comics inker and Spider-Man artist, and as the signature artist of DC Comics' Supergirl, both during what comics historians and fans call the Silver Age of comic books...
and Robert Lewis.
Fictional character biography
The 25th century as presented in Death Hawk and its companion series Star Rangers was a dystopiaDystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
of solar system
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
-spanning corporation
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
s that held the true power behind the centralized government of the Sol 9 Commonwealth. His true name unrevealed, the protagonist was the surviving member of a group of corporate outcasts who called themselves the Death Hawks. When the group was betrayed by one of their own, Death Hawk escaped in his 50-year-old spaceship the Peregrine. With the aid of his bio-engineered sidekick, Cyke, Death Hawk traveled the spaceways eluding arrest warrants and creditors, his eye always out for ways to keep his salvage business going — often when legality was questionable.
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
protosymbiote produced by the Biotek Corporation. Although Death Hawk referred to Cyke as "he", the creature was sexless. However, it possessed the ability to morph into a variety of sizes and shapes. Not only was Cyke extremely intelligent, it was far more knowledgeable than his human partner and wasn't above reminding Death Hawk of the fact.
The story arc "The Soulworm Saga" revolved around the quest for a mythical alien object of immense power.
Other characters included:
- Brigid O'Shaunessy/Vanessa Bouvier, a beautiful con artist who claimed to be an exo-archeologist.
- R'yex, an Arcturan mercenaryMercenaryA mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
who first opposed Death Hawk then out of necessity joined forces with him. - Anton Chane, a director of the mysterious Biotek Corporation, whose agenda has far-reaching implications for the evolutionEvolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
of humanity. - Takaun, one of the "high daimyos" of the Sol 9 Shogunate, who was just as crafty as Chane and as greedy as R'yex, but in his own way.