Who is Skeets?

We’ve made it most of the way through 52, with World War Three now looming. Plenty of plot points have been wrapped up, but lots more questions remain unanswered (one Question, though, is dead). One of the biggest questions is who is Skeets. As we saw in week 37, he isn’t Skeets. At least, that’s what Booster Gold/Supernova said. And, as we’ve seen throughout the series, Skeets has done some bad, bad things.

I’m not the first person to offer this particular answer to the Skeets question. But, when I say that Skeets is really Hank Hall (or at least running his errands), I mean that as an answer not just to one of 52’s mysteries, but to most of them. Confused? Follow along.

We have a lot of disparate elements in 52 that are coming to a head: 1. Skeets, angry about time, chasing Booster and Rip Hunter. 2. Intergang deploying the four horsemen to attack Black Adam. 3. Mad scientists creating said horsemen. 4. Ralph Dibney is seeking to revive his dead wife Sue with the helmet of Fate. 5. Renee Montoya is becoming the new Question. 6. Lex Luthor is becoming a new Superman. 7. Those weirdos are in outer space nearly dying. 8. Lobo is still lame.

Before I go through these, let’s have a brief introduction to Hank Hall for those unfamiliars. He was the original Hawk from Hawk and Dove. In Armageddon 2001, he thought Dove was killed by the evil Monarch (from the future) and killed him, only to find that Monarch was a future version of himself. He was defeated, only to return in Zero Hour as Extant, teaming with evil Hal Jordan to try and rewrite time. Apparently, he was killed off.

So, an explanation for No. 1 is pretty apparent. Monarch/Extant/Hank has time traveling powers and was obsessed with restoring time to perfection. Skeets, in 52, is obsessed with fixing time. Then, it’s obviously easy to revive a time traveling character, but Superboy Prime’s reality-shaking could have easily done the trick. Or, simply, it could have freed Hank (as I’ll call him).

Now, going a little deeper, Skeets seeks out and destroys Waverider. This has been mentioned elsewhere, but Waverider is from a future ruled by Monarch. He came back through time during Armageddon 2001 to find out what hero turned into Monarch and stop him. Revenge much?

My only real question is whether Skeets was taken over by Hank, or if Skeets was always controlled by Hank and just used Booster all along to get into the right position to make another play for power. Or maybe a backup plan? Some last points: Skeets acts with unbridled rage in 52. As Hawk, Hank was the vicious side of a balance with Dove. Without Dove, he had nothing to hold his rage in check. Skeet’s armor/coating/whatever is pretty much the same color as that of Monarch.

So, is there any precedence for Hawk’s return? You bet. He was one of the zombified Teen Titans to return in Teen Titans #31, which was written by Geoff Johns, who, as we all know, is a massive DC history junkie and also writes 52. (Johns also rebooted Hal Jordan from his heel turn during Zero Hour, when he teamed up with Hank aka Extant.)

Now, how does this work in with point No. 2 with Intergang? This one’s going to be more speculative. But, if Hank was going to return, he would obviously be bent on global domination, as he’s gone that route twice before. What better way to accomplish that than by embroiling the earth’s heroes in a massive war? And, both Intergang and Hank have a history with the New Gods (a shaky one, but still).

Why, then, would the scientists/Intergang go after Kahndaq first? It could be a matter of simple choice, as Intergang had a spat with Black Adam and two of the mad scientists (Dr. Sivana and Mr. Mind) have a not-always-pleasant history with Black Adam. This takes care of No. 3.

There’s also the curious reappearance of Intergang’s original leader, Bruno Mannheim. Curious because he should be long out of existence by now, as his first appearances go WAY back. How could he be brought to the present? Well, time travel seems an obvious answer. Now, who has powers of time travel? Oh yeah, Hank.

I’m going to jump out of order now and address Nos. 5-7, which I think aren’t directly causally related to this central plot. Renee and the Question is simply about rebooting two heroes into one, who will come back to save the day, or at least help out. Lex is always up to no good, so it’s not like he needs any justification for his actions. He does have some history with Intergang, but during Up, Up and Away (OYL) the two groups were distinct. And the outer space people… I don’t have a clue. Sorry.

The one that really interests me is No. 4, the plight of Ralph Dibney and Dr. Fate. At first, this struck me as wholly unrelated. Then I found a curious tidbit about the history of Dr. Fate. When Monarch killed Dove during Armageddon 2001, he didn’t actually kill her. She was saved by some evil wizard-type called Mordru, who took her away and later reunited her with Hank. For his own world-conquering purposes, Mordru had Hawk and Dove do the nasty, creating a child named Hector Hall.

Wouldn’t you know it, but Hector Hall later took the mantle (and helmet) of Dr. Fate. Eventually, Hector Hall turned bad (apparently. I’m a little fuzzy here) and was sort of banished off to hell along with his wife, Lyta, after being defeated by the Spectre. Venturing back into the realm of the speculative, we’ve heard that the helmet and Ralph are going to encounter some ghosts in the coming weeks, but that it might not be what Ralph expects. So, what if the helmet is somehow under Hank’s control, and it’s using Ralph’s grief to tug him along into helping free Hector and Lyta, who then will help Hank with his plans?

A loose thread is the place of Captain Atom. In Battle for Bludhaven, Captain Atom returned from the past (where he was banished with Extant or Monarch, I can’t remember which) and is outfitted with an updated version of Monarch’s armor. He rampages off after destroying the city, and apparently will be seen from again. Could it be soon?

So, anyway, that’s my theory. It’s taken a while to come up with a good one, but there you go.