Hawkman, like Aquaman, usually gets the short end of the stick within the context of the DC Universe, but now that he's got his own ongoing comic, no one's laughing. Written by Robert Venditti (Green Lantern) and drawn by Bryan Hitch (Adventures of Superman Annual #3), the new series focuses on Carter Hall, the first-ever iteration of the hero, who was introduced in 1940's Flash Comics #1 by writer Gardner Fox and artist Dennis Neville.

After the events of Dark Knights: Metal, Hall is on a personal journey to discover more about his many reincarnations (the man has lived 1,000 lifetimes) over the years while, at the same time, learning more about an ancient prophecy. So far, his globe-trotting adventure has thrust our hero back in time to battle with his original former self, the ancient Egyptian prince known as Khufu.

For the upcoming Issue #3, Hawkman is going to fight a dinosaur. That's right, a giant prehistoric lizard on Dinosaur Island, and if that wasn't enough, he's also gotta defeat an army of bird people. Just to make things even more awesome, Venditti re-introduces a familiar Silver Age face that we can't (and won't) spoil here. Just trust us when we say that the character's got something to do with Hawkman.

We've got an exclusive first look at the issue for you, including the first five pages of that epic dino battle!

Credit: DC Comics

Hawkman #3 flies onto shelves August 8.

In the intervening few days before that happens, however, you can check out the first five pages of the issue, as well as the main and variant covers, below. The main cover was handled by the series' main artist Bryan Hitch, while the variant was done by Stjepan Sejic.