THE FATE OF...

(Flash Comics v1 016, 1941)

Have you ever wondered what happened to the ancient Dravidians and their kingdom of Dravidia? No, because they're an extant ethnic group and that would be a bit like wondering about the fate of the Caucasians and their fabled land of Caucasia? Excatly. But nevertheless, here's Hawkman flying into Dravidia, somewhere in Mongolia.

Furthermore, the Dravidian king claims that his people originally came from a now-sunken land called Eden. An intriguing concept - that Eden is truly lost because it sank into the sea. Nothing comes of it though.

The really interesting thing to come out of this adventure is the idea that a prior incarnation of Hawkman might have ruled Dravidia as Keft, known as Icaro, the Redeemer. My experience with Golden Age Hawkman is limited to his JSA appearances, so I don't know if the exploration of his prior incarnations is a running topic or if this is a weird outlier, decades before the idea of Hawkman and Hawkgirl being endlessly reincarnated gained steam.

SUPER-VILLAIN YEARBOOK: HATH-SET 1940

What was Hath-Set up to in 1940?

That's actually a tricky question, because Hath-Set is a tricky character! Technically, he did absolutely nothing in 1940, because he died somewhere in the 1200s BC. Because, yes, Hath Set is mixed up in the unholy mess that is Hawkman and Hawkgirl's origin story.

Of course, it didn't start out complicated: Hath-Set was an evil priest of Anubis who murdered Prince Khufu and his lover Shiera and then they all got reincarnated some 3000 years later to do it all over again. Nice and simple. But comic books are comic books, so all three of these fools have been reincarnated more times than any reasonable person would care to count, including retroactively as characters like the Silent Knight. Hath-Set himself doesn't always show up - his piddly number of appearances in any incarnation would probably net him the status of minor super-villain if he wasn't such an integral part of the Hawks' origin story.

As for Doctor Hastor: he electrocutes passengers on the New York subway system in an attempt to extort the city for big bux but before he can get any further Hawkman shows up, there's some back-and-forth that includes an attempt to sacrifice Shiera Sanders to Anubis, and Hawkman shoots Hastor dead with a crossbow.

Don't worry, he'll be back!