Random Happenstance

We'll close out the week with one more book with a shiny foil cover: from 1993, Darkhawk #25, "Return to Forever Part Five: Death and Life" Written by Danny Fingeroth, pencils by Mike Manley, inks by Mike Manley and Aaron McClellan.

The cover proclaims "The Mind-Blowing Origin Finale!" Maybe a bit over-hyped, and I think it's been retconned or revamped a bit to boot. Teenager Chris Powell had discovered a mysterious amulet, which allowed him to become the mysterious Darkhawk. Sort of: if you're old enough, perhaps you recall this 1993 trading card:

Over the course of his book's first two years, Chris came to realize he was trading places with Darkhawk, which was actually some kind of android he controlled with his mind somehow. But he had no idea where the amulet or Darkhawk come from, or where he went when they switched, until now. And it's not the simplest possible explanation--well, maybe not anyway. It involves an alien criminal's conspiracy to collect a bunch of scientists to extort or bribe them into building him "expendable--yet repairable--agents." The scientists put together teleportation, weaponized androids, extra-dimensional storage, telepathic control and more into the Darkhawks, then realize they can't let the crime boss get them. The ensuing rebellion ends up with the crime boss trapped in an android that would later take the name Evilhawk, and one of the scientists mind-transferred to the extra-dimensional ship. (The latter, all the better to deliver exposition to Chris!)

To explain how a Darkhawk amulet got to earth in the first place, there's also a telepathy-broadcast subplot, involving two homeless guys that had been following Chris's progress: they had been scientists before that. It's pretty convoluted! And it's mostly wrapped up pretty quickly in a fight on the extra-dimensional ship, as Evilhawk tries to take Chris's human body, but he manages to resist enough to grab his amulet, change places back into Darkhawk, then reflect Evilhawk's disintegration ray back, seemingly killing him. Again, pretty quick after all that backstory, but this had been building up for two years! Still, I know there's a "Brotherhood of Raptors" now, so at least some of this may have been altered since. There's also multiple subplots still running as well: I think Chris is expelled from school and his house burns down. Can't have a clean win, huh?

I almost put this away and missed the Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation here: Paid circulation, actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 181,750. Not too shabby, for what I would've considered a mid-tier book!