We'll start off with a personal favorite of mine: Hawkgirl.
Now this will require some discussion and differentiation. For more than twenty years I'd been reading comics of all kinds, and Hawkgirl was never more than a minor character in any of them. She was only sort of a member of the Justice League of America, and only then because she was the wife of, and partner of, the more well known superhero Hawkman.
And as such, I paid little attention to her. It wasn't until this decade when the outstanding animated show, Justice League (and later Justice League Unlimited), begain airing on the Cartoon Network that I started to notice her after she started hanging around in this company.
This "Big 7" is a little different from the traditional JLA line-up from the comic books, as seen here.
Most people expected the original Big 7 to appear in the cartoon, but instead of Hal Jordan, or even Kyle Raynor, as Green Lantern, they gave us John Stewart. That made sense, because it gave the League more ethnic diversity whereas either of the other available Lanterns would have given the team too much of a white bread feeling, if you know what I mean. But it was Hawkgirl's inclusion that really made me scratch my head.
I knew that, obviously, Aquaman had been taken out of consideration so they could add another female to the group, but I couldn't understand why they wouldn't go with either the Black Canary or Zatanna, and instead included such an obscure character as Hawkgirl. It just didn't make sense.
Then I started to watch the show, and it made total sense. This version of Hawkgirl, Shayera Hol from the planet Thanagar, was fierce, was a warrior, and had that tough girl attitude that I always find so attractive. She quickly became my favorite member of the team and my all around favorite part of the show. Episodes that featured her prominently became my favorites. Episodes where she didn't appear didn't interest me nearly as much.
At the end of the second season it was revealed that she was really there on Earth in advance of a Thanagarian invasion, and even though she'd pretty much "gone native" by that point, she was still complicit in the invasion ... until she had a change of heart in the third act and helped save the Earth. Even so, she'd been tarnished by the events, and while the rest of the League was voting on whether or not to kick her off the team, she decided to leave on her own.
At this point the show became Justice League Unlimited. Instead of two-part stories, the shows were mostly done-in-ones, and instead of focusing on the Big 7, the spotlight was often given to lesser known heroes. Some of them, like Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Supergirl, I welcomed to the show. But a lot of the others I could have done without. I felt the show was too crowded. And with Hawkgirl, still my favorite character, off the team and out of the show, I ended up not watching most of these episodes until much later.
She didn't reappear until somewhere around the 13th episode, as kind of an outsider, working with other characters along the fringe. Some of the Leaguers had forgiven her, and others still didn't trust her. And during the rest of the show's run she slowly worked her way back into the team and regained the trust she'd lost.
There is a Hawkgirl currently in the comic books, but she's a character I'm not all too familiar with. She seems like a fine character and all, but she isn't the Shayera that I came to really appreciate from the animated series.
That's the Hawkgirl that I love.
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