Black Adam’s Hawkman gave Aldis Hodge wild DC comics lore to chew on

Superheroes are well-known for having convoluted backstories, however even for the costumed set, some stand out as absolute clusterfucks. Cable of the X-Males. Donna Troy of the Amazons. Ben Reilly, Spider-Man. However solely one in every of them stars in Black Adam: Hawkman, the costumed adventurer who’s finest recognized for being a contemporary archeologist, a reincarnating adventurer, or an area alien, relying on who you ask.

Actor Aldis Hodge, who performs the character in Black Adam, may be very conscious that his character is form of a large number.

“It was type of a working joke for a bit after I first began dipping into analysis,” he instructed Polygon by way of Zoom forward of the movie’s launch. “All proper, which story? I do know all the tales, all the backstories.”

What’s Hawkman’s backstory?

Picture: DC Comics

Really, Hodge is a courageous man. In the event you’re conversant in the Hawkman of DC Comics (or TV’s Arrowverse), you most likely know Hawkman one in every of two methods: as Carter Corridor, a contemporary adventurer who occurs to be the reincarnation of the traditional Egyptian prince Khufu, or as Katar Hol, a cop from a planet the place all people wears wings.

Otherwise you may know Hawkman and Hawkwoman from the Justice League cartoon, which slams each of those backstories collectively into Carter Corridor, the trendy human reincarnation of an alien fowl warrior who crash-landed in historical Egypt and have become pharaoh and stuff.

So which one in every of these fellows exhibits up in Black Adam? Hodge didn’t wish to give an excessive amount of away (although to be truthful, the film doesn’t have a lot time for Hawkman’s backstory both, provided that the main focus is on its titular character). However he talked about his personal private quest, earlier than the film started capturing, to discover a “stream of synergy” between all of the variations of Hawkman.

“For me,” Hodge mentioned, “it was Carter Corridor, the model that the majority of us are fairly conversant in. […] I beloved the character of his reincarnated state coming from the unique […] who was a pharaoh. I related with that probably the most.”

Carter Corridor additionally allowed Hodge to discover a parallel between his character and Black Adam’s mercurial protagonist, performed by Dwayne Johnson. “Each he and Black Adam come from a wholesome line of legacy. They’re each warriors in a brand new age and a brand new area, however their ideas come from a really totally different time interval. So there’s a regal nature. These are the weather that impressed me probably the most when it got here to who this particular person is.”

What does all of this should do with hawks?

Picture: Warner Bros.

In Hawkman’s first look in Forties Flash Comics #1, author Gardner Fox and artist Dennis Neville have him tackle the guise of a hawk in homage to, quote, “the traditional hawk-god, Anubis.” (Who, uh, famously has the top of a jackal, not a hawk, or some other form of fowl.) So, finally… Hawkman clothes like a hawk as a result of some guys in 1940 thought it regarded cool. (To be truthful, it does.)

Hawkman’s powers have normally amounted to warrior abilities, principally within the medieval sense of getting a large morning star to swing round. He can even strap on an anti-gravity belt and a set of monumental wings manufactured from the paranormal Nth metallic, so as to fly.

That’s proper: The wings should not part of his physique, and he can take them off. Over time, Hawkman’s costume has run the gamut from a full tunic to a barely-there leather-based harness. He’s positively a superhero who believes within the maxim of “sun’s out, guns out.” However after I requested Hodge whether or not he was dissatisfied that Carter’s film look was going to cowl up all of the laborious work he’d executed to attain a superheroic physique, he laughed it off. And once more, he confirmed that he had executed the analysis.

“By no means! So the Hawkman armor is all made out of Nth metallic. There are totally different iterations of the armor, and there are some with a cuirass, which is what I put on on this movie. The factor I beloved about it was that we acquired to essentially see the full-on expertise of our artwork workforce, the designers Kurt and Bart, after which additionally Legacy Results studio, that truly made the armor — this man Darnell Isom, who was superb, he modeled the helmet and the armor and the gear.”

Hodge’s appreciation for the costume is available in half from learning to be a designer earlier than his performing profession took off. He nonetheless retains a foot within the design world.

“I’m actually sporting museum-piece artwork!” he mentioned of his Hawkman costume. “I really like having the ability to see that, as a result of I co-own an artwork studio myself. […] We labored alongside the workforce from DC’s Blue Beetle, so I get to see from a special perspective. I get to understand the work in its full depth, and I feel it’s superb.”

It simply goes to indicate that on the planet of comics, it typically doesn’t matter how convoluted a personality’s backstory is, so long as they appear dope in motion.