Hi, folks! Rich here. I’ve been taking another extended blogging break to work on some very cool book projects. So here’s another guest post from my pal, Valentina Rossi…
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By Valentina Rossi
I recently came across, while reading the DC Comics Hawkman run from the 1980s, an interesting queer character – Agent Harpy aka Captain Jerry Olcott. Agent Harpy is a straight crossdresser, and the only example of such a character that I can think predates him is Madame Fatal [1]. However, Agent Harpy has been languishing in obscurity, unjustly I think. He is not only one of the first crossdresser characters – I am not counting characters like Jimmy Olsen, who occasionally cross-dress – but he was featured in what I think is the first same-sex kiss in a mainstream DC Comic in 1986, predating the one in Starman in 1998 by about 12 years.
One quick observation: In this essay, I am going to be fairly lax with my pronouns, depending on how Agent Harpy presents as either male or female.
I think part of the reason the character has been unjustly forgotten – he should be an historically important of part of LGBT+ representation in DC Comics – is that creators Tony Isabella and Richard Howell – writer and artist, respectively – had to dance quite a bit around the censorship rules known as the Comics Code Authority. Not all the pieces of who Agent Harpy is are in the same place, and one must read between the lines. Another is that the tremendous mess that the Hawkman continuity became, with its constant reboots, has invalidated parts or all of the story known as ‘The Shadow War of Hawkman’.
The Shadow War of Hawkman storyline comprises The Shadow War of Hawkman #1-4 (1985), The Hawkman Special #1 (1986), DC Comics Presents Vol 1 #95 and Hawkman Vol 2 #1 – 10. Most of it is written by Tony Isabella and drawn by Richard Howell with various inkers. Isabella starts only plotting by issue 8 and passes the writer reins to Dan Mishkin by issue 10. The end of the story feels rushed and was probably full of editorial interference. However, I think it would be worth it for DC to publish the full run in a compendium. The idea of a silent invasion of Earth by the planet Thanagar has permeated other stories, most notably in the animated series Justice League, where Hawkgirl Shayera Hol is a double agent.
I will not get deeply into the Shadow War of Hawkman, and just concentrate on the character of Agent Harpy, or simply Harpy. As the story begins, Hawkman and Hawkwoman – Katar Hol and Shayera Thal – are police officers from the planet Thanagar. They originally came to Earth following a fugitive but eventually adopted the planet and its people. They became recognized members of the Justice League – though I think only Hawkman was a full member. These versions of the Hawks are known as the Silver Age Hawkman and Hawkwoman (previously Hawkgirl).
Via a series of events, the Hawks discover that there is a Thanagarian secret invasion of Earth. Since the Thanagarians have access to the Absorbascon – a device that allows to read any mind that is not Thanagarian – the Hawks are forced to fight them alone, without the recourse of help from their Justice League allies. This situation sets the stage of the shadow war referenced in the title of the story.
The Thanagarians, under the leadership of Deron Ved aka Darkwing, convince or coerce humans to help with their cause. In The Shadow War of Hawkman #4 (1985) we get this notable page:
Captain Jerry Olcott is forced to help the invaders, so his secret crossdressing will not become known to his superiors. Since this comic was published in 1985, everything is heavily implied but not explicitly mentioned to dance around the comics code.
The Shadow War continues, and in Hawkman Special #1 (1986), former friend turned enemy of the Hawks, Joe Tracy, meets Coral Shilak. Coral is Corla Tavo a Thanagarian agent:
She is also the wife of the leader of the invasion, Deron Ved. In Hawkman Vol 2 #5 (1986), he decides to send captain Jerry Olcott to help with the invasion. He is now code-named Agent Harpy, or simply Harpy:
The plan is for Agent Harpy to kidnap George Emmett, an ally of the Hawks, while Corla Tavo activates the enemy of Hawkman, Lionmane:
This is the first appearance of Agent Harpy in her female persona. Meanwhile, the plan to activate Lionmane goes awry, and Corla Tavo gets killed by the feline monster:
Agent Harpy and her goons do manage to kidnap Emmett and Joe Tracy:
Later, Deron Ved is talking to his invading force. This is the only page where Agent Harpy is called by that name. Note that Deron calls her ‘captain’. This is the link to that earlier page in The Shadow War of Hawkman #4. However, one would need to have read that miniseries, since the identity of Harpy is never disclosed in Hawkman Vol 2.
In the next page, Deron Ved proposes that Agent Harpy take the role of his late wife in operations, but he also wants her to be his new partner. That is why she reacts – “I;m not… Ohh!”, and what she is not is presumably, a (cis) woman or gay. Deron Ved even plots to fake the death of captain Olcott and hints at a new life for Agent Harpy. What could be that new life? We might never know for sure… or might we? Please read on…
I should say here that Hawkman Vol 2 #7 is the last issue where Tony Isabella is fully credited as writer. Probably due to editorial interference, Isabella only has plot credit, while Dan Mishkin has a dialog one for issues 8-9, as the story rushes to conclusion.
In Hawkman Vol 2 #8, Devon Ved and Agent Harpy are having an elegant dinner. Here, she is dressed – and drawn by Richard Howell – to resemble Corla Tavo:
As the Hawks attack, Agent Harpy decides to try to escape the Thanagarians. She tries to take Joe Tracy as a hostage:
Poor Joe Tracy looks *terrible*! He must have gained at least ten kilos between Hawkman Vol 2 # 5 and #8! He is going through a breakdown, having seen killed two women he cared about, Mavis Trent (in The Shadow War of Hawkman miniseries) and Coral Shilak.
Joe disarms Agent Harpy and sacrifices himself to let Emmett escape. However, there is this notable exchange first:
I would argue this kiss between Joe Tracy and Agent Harpy is the first same-sex kiss displayed on-panel in a mainstream DC Comic, and thus a landmark of LGBT representation. It is not a gay kiss, since Joe is a hetero (cis) man who is not aware of the true gender of Agent Harpy. And Harpy is straight crossdresser. This is cleverly referenced in the comic, since one needs to know the full context to know this is not a kiss between a man and a woman.
Joe steals a kiss from Harpy, but why did he have to punch her afterwards? Well, to be fair, he is not well mentally, has slid down into alcoholism and Harpy looks like the woman he loved. He will sadly meet his death in the next page.
Going back to that kiss, I think the consensus is that the first mainstream DC Comics same-sex kiss happened in Starman (1998), written by James Robinson, between Mikaal Thomas (one of the many heroes known as Starman) and his boyfriend Tony. That would still count as the first gay kiss.
In terms of LGBT+ representation, the first openly gay character in mainstream DC Comics was Extraño, one of the New Guardians, in an issue of Millenium (1987). He was created by Steve Englehart and Joe Staton, but I think the Hawkman issues predate this appearance by a few months.
Later, Hawkwoman finds the body of Joe, without his clothes, plus, the female clothes and wig of Agent Harpy:
So, did Agent Harpy escape both her Thanagarian oppressors and the Hawks? I would like to say yes, but unfortunately, I think not:
In this scene from Hawkman Vol 2 #10, the ill-fitting clothes seem to indicate that this is Agent Harpy in male clothes. It is not completely clear (and the hair color does not completely correspond to his first appearance), but I think this exchange sort of implies it:
I wish the Gentleman Ghost could have explained those reasons, but Shayera – and us – are left to wonder, after an explosion interrupts the conversation and it is never mentioned again. I should say that Tony Isabella is no longer listed, and that Dan Mishkin and Barbara Randall have dialogue and plot/co-editor credits.
This scene always bothered me. Nobody realized the identity of Agent Harpy, and she could just have disappeared. Plus, she had no loyalty to the Thanagarians, so no reason to attack Shayera. But I think this is just a minor problem among many big ones in the last issues of the Shadow War of Hawkman. The story hastily finishes, and all loose ends are tied in a similar rushed fashion, or simply ignored. The actual ending happens in Action Comics #588 written by John Byrne, as this small announcement indicates at the end of Hawkman Vol 2 #10:
I have always liked the Shadow War storyline and have been intrigued by the possibilities of the truncated arc of Agent Harpy. So, I reached out on Twitter to Tony Isabella, the original writer, and he was kind enough to answer some of my questions while I was fangirling. Here his comments, slightly edited for clarity and references:
“I want to make it clear I had nothing to do with issue #10, including the kiss. [The then-editor] ordered Barbara and Dan to, essentially, run over everyone with a truck so there would be no trace of the Shadow War, despite good sales and reader reaction. I have considerable regard for the work of my friends Barbara and Dan. But issue #10 was horrible. The story was ugly and unsatisfying.
John Byrne finished off the Shadow War in a Superman team-up. He decided Thangarian ships each had a button that would incapacitate the entire fleet and banish them somewhere or other […] I had nothing to do with Hawkman #10 or the John Byrne conclusion. Indeed, I’ve never read any issue of that run after issue #9.
[Here is what] I planned with the Harpy in Hawkman. I had to dance around that the officer was, at the very least, a crossdresser and probably trans. […] He dressed for relief from the strain he was under with his military duties. Both the editor and the artist were in on this, but it would not have been accepted by DC Comics in general.
I was dancing around Agent Harpy’s situation because I didn’t want DC Comics to interfere with my story. Maybe the Comics Code would have objected if we had been more clear, but I wanted to stay under the radar.
The Harpy was a tragic heroine. She was blackmailed into being part of the Thanagarian plans for Earth. Her military career would have ended. Which happened anyway because of her resemblance to the villain’s late wife. I was trying to figure out how to quietly work into the series that he had taken her for his wife and had surgical procedures done on her […] Darkwing’s twisted plan was to turn the crossdressing officer into a virtual double of his wife in every way and make him his bride.
Think of the hitman turned into a woman against his will in the movie (and graphic novel) The Assignment [Walter Hill, Matz, Jel, 2017]. Agent Harpy would be out for revenge against the Thanagarians.
My Hawkman series was pitched as a five-year plan […]. Had my plans gone forward, Hawkman would have found a way to protect humans from the Absorbascon’s ability to read their minds and start taking allies in his shadow war. He would have driven the Thanagarians off Earth.
The Harpy would have joined the Hawks. As would have several heroes and even villains. Eventually, the Hawks would take the war to Thanagar to set their home world right. Joining them would be several of the heroes and villains who wanted payback for what the Thanagarians had done to them or their loved ones. The Harpy would have been among them.
At that point, the stories would have gone in two directions. Some would focus on the war on Thanagar and some would focus on Earth’s new Hawkman.
New Hawkman? Yes. And you saw him in one of the published issues of my series. See if you can guess who.”
Here Tony is talking about Icarus, a new character introduced – and apparently killed by the Thanagarians – in The Shadow War of Hawkman #2:
As far as I know, the character has not surfaced again.
So why is this seminal run of Hawkman not more widely known? Part of the reason is the tremendous mess that the Hawkman continuity became. Even this compact run has consistency issues. It all starts with Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985), the series that was supposed to streamline the DC universe, but ended up creating a lot of inconsistencies. For example, the Superman featured in DC Comics Presents Vol 1 #95 is the Pre-Crisis Earth-1 one. But the Superman that shows up at the end of Hawkman Vol 2 #10 is the Post-Crisis one. More problematic was the mini-series Hawkworld (1989) by Timothy Truman. The series retells the origin of the Hawks, ending in how they get sent to Earth to capture the fugitive Byth. However, the series was supposed to happen in the past. DC Comics decided to set it into the present day, making inconsistent years’ worth of Justice League stories of Hawkman and Hawkwoman. Eventually, the original Silver Age Hawks were set as Thanagarian spies, greatly damaging the characters. The “Hawkworld” Hawks were set as the true, Post-Crisis Hawkman and Hawkwoman. It was all fairly confusing, but then Zero Hour (1994) made matters much worse. I will stop here, since trying to explain the Hawkman continuity would require a book, and not this meager essay. But suffice to say, that the Shadow War of Hawkman might not be in continuity anymore – or maybe it is – it is really not clear.
Which is a shame, both for the full storyline – that I think is ripe for rediscovery and for the seminal LGBT representation of Agent Harpy. I would say it is unlikely this character might get rescued from Comic Book Limbo, but who knows? In a world where Twin Peaks: the Return, Miracleman: The Silver Age and Orson Welles’ It’s All True exist, maybe there is hope we will see The Shadow War of Hawkman as it was intended to be told… I mean, stranger things have happened.
[1] Madame Fatal (or Madam Fatal) was created in 1940 as part of an anthology series published by Quality Comics – later bought by DC Comics.
Robotics engineer boy by day, cinephile comics fangirl by night, Valentina Rossi is a queer genderfluid Latinoamericana currently living in Switzerland. She fell in love with comic books in general, and DC characters in particular, when her grandfather lent her his large collection of Editorial Novaro Spanish translations of US superhero series.
Her favorite excuse for everything is “English is not my native language” which unfortunately only works in the US/UK. She can be found on Twitter – still functional as of this writing – and Post.news, a micro-blog site – as @rossi_tg.