Khufu Kan-Tarr
2213 BCE - Khufu Kan-Tarr is born to an affluent family on Thanagar.
2189 BCE - 24-year-old Khufu Kan-Tarr becomes an officer of the Wingman force on Thanagar.
2180 BCE - 33-year-old Khufu Kan-Tarr, seeing the extent of Thangar's class inequality, begins working to disrupt the corruption of the wealthy.
2175 BCE - 38-year-old Khufu Kan-Tarr's constant persecution of Thanagar's wealthy elite leads to a massive demotion. He is paired with by-the-book, working-class officer Chay-Ara Thal.
2171 BCE - 42-year-old Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal successfully expose the corruption of several major political elites. In retaliation they are sent on a remote assignment, their ship sabotaged to kill them. They manage to survive the crash in ancient Egypt.
2169 BCE - 44-year-old Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal free the local people from their abusive rulers.
2164 BCE - 49-year-old Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal, worshipped as god-kings, choose to accept that role to protect their subjects. They first craft their Nth Metal Armory from the remains of their ship.
2160 BCE - 53-year-old Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal come to rule over northern Egypt from Thebes.
2156 BCE - 57-year-old Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal are married.
2140 BCE - 73-year-old Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal come to the defense of Teth-Adam and Kahndaq after they are attacked by Ahk-ton, forging the soul knife to defeat him.
2100 BCE - 113-year-old Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal lead their armies against Vandal Savage's forces.
2067 BCE - 146-year-old Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal have their daughter Ke-Dre. Her birth is chronicled by a young scribe, Hath-Set.
2050 BCE - 163-year-old Khufu Kan-Tarr & Chay-Ara Thal are murdered in their sleep by Hath-Set using the stolen soul-knife, altering their souls to be reincarnated in the future.
While modern readers know Hawkman and Hawkwoman as characters that have experienced an endless cycle of reincarnation, that's actually a later addition to their story. Originally, Carter & Shiera Hall had only experienced one reincarnation from their original lives as Egyptian Pharaohs, and that's the story we chose to adapt. That meant that eventually, we were going to do the timelines of their original selves, and thankfully we have a decent amount of fun content we can draw from to make these some pretty interesting characters.
Khufu's Comic HistoryTechnically speaking, you could say that the first appearance of Khufu is in Flash Comics #1 in 1940, in the first appearance of Hawkman. In that story, when Carter Hall flashes back to his past life, Khufu was mysteriously a blonde white guy for some reason, but he did use the name. This continued to be the visual we saw whenever we flashed back to Khufu for quite a while.
It's in the pages of JSA when the team made a few trips back in time to actually meet Khufu, he finally looks like he's actually from ancient Egypt. From then on, whenever we saw any references to Carter's past lives that mention Khufu, we saw this new and more accurate version of the character. |
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Our Version of ThanagarFor folks that really miss Katar & Shayera Hol, the Thanagarian versions of Hawkman and Hawkgirl, this is where we've basically hidden them. In continuity, Khufu & Chay-Ara are human pharaohs who discover a crashed Thanagarian ship, briefly meeting with the alien pilots before they die, and who then use the Nth metal of the ship to build weapons, to fly, and to forge the soul-knife that one day will be responsible for their resurrection (A move traditionally called "pulling an Abin Sur".)
We've taken that idea one step further and actually made them Thanagaran refugees. The civilization of Thanagar still exists at that point, and we get to loosely adapt the style and events of Timothy Truman's Hawkworld. I happen to LOVE the look and style of late 80s Hawkman, he was reminiscent of characters like Judge Dredd or Robocop. This is a relatively brief part of the lives of Khufu & Chay-Ara, but We're really excited to include it. |
Our Khufu StoryNotably, Khufu is not actually an original character. He was the second Pharoh of the Fourth Dynasty, who ruled approximately from 2590-2570 BCE. I really have no idea why this specific figure from history was chosen as Carter Hall's previous life, but the name dates all the way back to Hawkman's first appearance, so we chose to use it, even though we made some changes to what period of Egyptian history he and Chay-Ara (not a historic name) hail from.
We talked to some actual Egyptologists about what part of the history actually might best accommodate the idea of a pair of alien cops landing in ancient Egypt and becoming Pharoh, and actually got a pretty quick answer; The Eleventh Dynasty, which began in approximately 2150 BCE. What makes this noteworthy is that it's a relatively sudden rise to power situated in Thebes, a city that has never been the seat of power of any previous Dynasty, which grows to unify almost all of Egypt only to rapidly lose power in roughly 1990 BCE. We've played with the dates a little, wanting to give Khufu & Chay-Ara a vast, epic story to live, interacting with other characters of the era, and ultimately losing their lives to be reincarnated thousands of years later. The results here feel very satisfying. |
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