John Byrne is notorious for claiming that nobody but the creators of the major comics characters (e.g. Siegel and Shuster, Lee and Kirby) truly understands them, so everyone else who handles them inevitably gets it wrong (except of course Byrne himself, the one true heir to the titans). The Hawk and the Dove are a good example of how that’s not true.
Ditko created them in Showcase #75 (though this article says it wasn’t his idea alone). Gil Kane, Steve Skeates and other talented creators worked on the short-lived Silver Age series that followed. But it wasn’t until other creators handled them in the 1980s that the characters became interesting.
This isn’t a unique situation. Jerry Siegel and Bernard Bailey created the Spectre, but it’s the Michael Fleisher/Jim Aparo Bronze Age version that everyone remembers (even though I prefer the John Ostrander/Tom Mandrake take). Lee and Kirby created the X-Men, but it was Chris Claremonet, Byrne and Dave Cockrum who made them superstars. Sometimes the successors surpass the originators.
Like Beware the Creeper, Hawk and the Dove was a surprisingly mundane series for the end of the Silver Age, with Hank and Don Hall fighting thugs even less memorable than the Creeper’s foes. That may be because this was a series about ideology rather than just crimefighting. Hank was a macho jock who supported the Vietnam War, Don a sensitive, anti-war intellectual. When their moderate, centrist father, Judge Irwin Hall, gets kidnapped, the brothers try to rescue him and fail. A voice from nowhere declares that as Hank and Don are a hawk and a dove — terms laden with political weight in the Vietnam era — so it shall be: they have but to say the names to become superheroes, with their natural skills and abilities enhanced. The costumed duo save their father, then continue to fight crime.
When the book went to series, the focus on the philosophical and personal differences between the brothers remained a core of the stories. The bad guys they went up against weren’t the selling point. Unfortunately, the clash of Right vs. Left was seriously unbalanced: where Hawk would charged in and hit people, Dove pondered ethics and avoided violence. In the link above, Skeates says Ditko and editor Dick Giordano simply couldn’t see Dove as anything but a wimp so whatever Skeates wrote to the contrary got rewritten. On top of which the Comics Code didn’t allow heroes to disrespect the government, so Dove couldn’t stick it to the man. He couldn’t even criticize the man. It was a recipe for blah.
The brothers jumped to Teen Titans for a while and would have shown up in Bob Rozakis’ proposed Titans West series in the
Bronze Age. But for an actual good Hawk and Dove story we had to wait for Brave and Bold #181, by Alan Brennert and Jim Aparo, “Time, See What’s Become of Me.” It’s Brennert. It’s good.
In this story, the brothers have retired as heroes, aged in real time and gotten on with their lives … except they really haven’t. Hank clings to the same macho beliefs he had as a teen and can’t understand why his life isn’t working out. Don, despite his brains, is as a low-level clerk in the government bureaucracy; isn’t serving the people superior to the class snobbery of a job that uses his intellect? Circumstances force the brothers back into costume, but things go horribly wrong.
At the end the Voice tells them it failed. Instead of learning to appreciate each other’s perspective, its gift of power convinced each brother his position was right, locking them in place. Dick Giordano said he wanted to give the Hall brothers a send-off as they were too much a product of a specific time and the politics of that time to use any more.
It’s a great story, but Marv Wolfman promptly retconned it away: the brothers show up that Donna Troy’s wedding, clearly not aged any more than the other Titans. This seems to have been an issue with Wolfman as he justified a couple of other retcons with “clearly this character isn’t the right age for that to be true.” I could understand tossing out the Brennert story if Marv had some grand plan for their future, but all he wanted to do was kill Dove in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
With his brother, Hawk became a joke, a macho straw man conservative about one step above Steve Englehart’s psycho
Commie-busting take on the 1950s Captain America; liberal though I am, I still found Hawk’s portrayal clumsily over the top. But then Barbara Kesel, Karl Kesel and Rob Liefeld rebooted the characters with Hawk and Dove: Ghosts and Demons and they became interesting again. Interesting enough to make it through another 28 issues cowritten by the Kesels.
This time Dove is a woman, Dawn Grainger. As Dove she’s quick-witted, clear-thinking and analytical, a perfect counterpoint to Hawk’s acting on impulse. At first Dawn assumed the Doves were some kind of Corps, like the Green Lanterns; when she learns Don’s power passed to her at his death, she’s shaken. And both she and Hawk want to know why.
It turns out that Hawk and Dove are avatars for two deities of (respectively) Chaos and Order (DC in the late 1980s was doing several series dealing with that cosmic clash). After centuries of battle they’d come to realize they were less Superman/Luthor and more Batman/Catwoman, which was not going to go over well with their respective pantheons. Creating Hawk and Dove was a way to show the gods what Order and Chaos could accomplish working together — and also to give mortal form to the gods’ child (not welcome news as Dawn and Hank were not a couple).
That series was an absolute blast: fun supporting characters, good villains and the cosmic stuff. Switching them away from War and Peace helped too: it’s a lot easier to see Order and Chaos as a duality that can work together. Unfortunately, after 28 issues the cancellation axe fell. Dawn and Hank could have stuck around but nope: due to some last-minute changes to the Armageddon: 2001 event, Hank became the super-villain Monarch and killed Dove, none of which made sense (Monarch is an ultra-lawful type — I’d think a future dominated by Hawk would be more like Road Warrior or Hunger Games).
Dawn did return eventually and Hank got back to his old self, but I’ve yet to see a story with them that didn’t feel pointless. They’re DC intellectual property, co-created by a legend, so they have to show up, never mind whether there’s a reason. And they’re back to War and Peace, which doesn’t work for me either.
But during the 1980s, they were awesome.
#SFWApro. Covers top to bottom by Ditko, Aparo, Sal Buscema and Liefeld.
This is one that irritates the [stuff] out of me. I loved the concept of Hawk & Dove, but have been annoyed by the execution of almost every iteration.
I like the Kesel version (I’ve liked just about everything I’ve read of Barbara’s work), but even then I’m ambivalent about the switching of Don for Dawn because it enforces a really toxic element of toxic masculinity, the notion that being gentle is feminine and violence is masculine.
I stridently disagree with Ditko and Giordano’s assertion that Don/Dove is a wimp. It takes courage and brains to stick to principles in the face of an attack, and that’s what Dove should portray.
My favorite illustration is this: there is a famous photo of Koko, the gorilla who used sign language to communicate. She is sitting, holding her kitten, All-Ball, and gently petting it. Koko weighed 280 lbs, and, like any Western Gorilla, could lift about 10 times her weight. She could tear a man’s arm off with one hand and little effort, but she stroked her tiny kitten’s fur so gently that the kitten went to sleep.
Never mistake gentle for wimpy. Gentle is power under control, and that takes intention.
I’d love to see a version of Hawk and Dove where Don isn’t a wimp and Hank isn’t a psycho, where the difference between them is really just the awareness of collateral damage; Hank thinks “ya gotta break a few eggs,” but Don knows you don’t need to break the ones you aren’t planning to use.
Picture a version of Dove who is a zen master, avoids conflict, and uses his skills to make assailants defeat themselves. He’s the guy who turns to the belligerent drunk and quietly says, with steel in his voice, “listen friend, I can kick your ass without breaking a sweat, and if you look in my eyes, you’ll know it, but I don’t want to do that… so how about I buy you a cup of coffee instead, and you calm down and don’t make trouble? Do we understand each other?” And the guy sizes him up and says “yes, let’s do that. Thanks.”
Hawk & Dove could be a repudiation of 70 years of macho posturing, if the writers actually believed what their character does. Hank Hall was always an ass.
Interesting take.
My idea for a revival (someday I might try it with the serial numbers filed off) was that their regular identities are opposite their costumed selves: Dove is a tough guy IRL who discovers he can understand things more clearly, manage his emotions better, solve problems smoothly. Hawk is someone ultra-repressed and shy who suddenly finds all that goes away when they change. So they both find what they’re doing awfully addicting.
“it enforces a really toxic element of toxic masculinity, the notion that being gentle is feminine and violence is masculine.”
Interesting. You and I come at that from complete opposite directions – I hate it because it enforces the idea of ‘men-bad women-good’; and to me, that comes from the same place that the idea of masculinity being toxic comes from.
Masculinity is not toxic. “Toxic masculinity” does not mean that all masculinity is toxic; it means that there are toxic, destructive, and false messages being circulated under the label of masculinity, that are in fact merely self-serving justifications for cruelty, narcissism, abuse, and arrogance.
Telling little boys that if they are not aggressive and violent they aren’t masculine is toxic. Telling girls they have to expect men and boys to be aggressive and violent, and to just accept it, is toxic.
The load of nonsense about what constitutes the false notion of masculine and feminine ideals absolutely is toxic.
Stuff like “boys don’t cry”; “girls are emotional”; “man who like art or fashion must be gay”; “women who are athletic or mechanically-inclined are lesbians”; etcetera. As well as the notion that women are supposed to be helpless and men are supposed to take care of them. And a whole lot of other lies we’ve been told.
The cold hard fact is that men do cry, it’s healthy to express your emotions instead of trying to be stoic, a man can be a ballet dancer or fashion designer and still be heterosexual, a woman can be a car mechanic or shot-put champion and still be cis-het, and none of it is anyone else’s business anyway.
Every single trait that society labels as “masculine” or “feminine” is actually just a human trait that everyone has to varying degrees.
It’s toxic when somebody like Dick Giordano or Steve Ditko declares that Don Hall/Dove is “a wimp” because he’s anti-violence and tries to solve problems intelligently, that busting heads is what “a real man” would do. Especially when a huge percentage of their audience is much more likely to be like Don than Hank, and their work is permeated with messages that shame and humiliate those kids. That’s toxic.
Right. The phrase “toxic masculinity” has never meant that all masculinity is toxic, any more than the phrase “hot chocolate” means that all chocolate is hot.
Buttler, all things being equal, I’d agree with you.
Unfortunately, there’s a group in England (Oh, and apparently Australia), named ‘The Samaritans’, whose entire remit is doing good deeds.
https://thesamaritans.org.au/
What’s the connection?
The name. When Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, he was sticking it to the racist attitudes of the time: ‘You think pharisees are good, and Samaritans are bad? Then I’ll tell you a story about bad pharisees and The Good Samaritan’.
But, over the years, we basically never heard the word ‘Samaritan’ without the word ‘good’ in front of it, so the two ideas have become conflated in our minds, until we think ‘Samaritan = good’; when, to the original audience, the idea would’ve been shocking.
I hear and think about chocolate all the time, without thinking about hot chocolate.
Jim, Buttler, when was the last time either of you used the word ‘masculinity’ without also using the word ‘toxic’?
Jim, I, with some nuance, agree with everything you said – though I also think there are differences to the ways men and women are wired, and some traits are more common in men (therefore, masculine) and some are more common in women (therefore, feminine). I wouldn’t go from that to say ‘anyone who strays from that path is gay’, of course.
Pretty sure I saw a man cry last night, and my only reaction was to be distantly understanding.
Also:
“Telling girls they have to expect men and boys to be aggressive and violent, and to just accept it, is toxic.”
Who tells girls that? Specific, real life examples, please.
“Telling girls they have to expect men and boys to be aggressive and violent, and to just accept it, is toxic.”
Who tells girls that? Specific, real life examples, please.
Seriously?
How about every cop who ever told a rape victim “you went out dressed like that, what did you expect?”
How about every parent who ever warned their daughter “boys only want one thing”?
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LieBackAndThinkOfEngland
“Rape is kinda like the weather; if it’s inevitable, relax and try to enjoy it.” – Rep. Clayton Williams (R-TX)
How about every parent who ever said “boys will be boys” instead telling their sons to behave?
How about a culture that teaches women to never walk to their car at night without a male escort, or that the only way to get a man to leave you alone is to tell them you have a boyfriend?
Better yet, just go ask any woman you ever met if she was taught to expect boys to be violent and aggressive. I think they will answer that better than I can.
Why do you think women go to the bathroom in groups when they are out at a club? Hint: It’s not so they can gossip about the guys. It’s for protection.
Why do we have to teach our daughters how to avoid being roofied? It’s because they should expect someone to try it, just like they should expect randos on the internet to send unsolicited photos of their penis.
All of this starts in preschool, when we tell little girls that the boy is harassing her because he likes her, and that’s just how boys are, and you have to deal with it.
Another example from real life, a friend of mine, born in 1953 (I was born in 1962), routinely claimed to me that any woman walking alone at night must be a prostitute. I flat out disagreed with him, asserting there may be any number of reasons a woman would walk alone at night, just as there would be for a man to do the same, regardless of how dangerous it may be for a woman to do so due to so many predatory men out there who may see her as easy prey. I’d also muse that with my bad luck if I tried to pick up on a woman walking the streets alone at night, she’d most likely turn out to be a vice cop!
I have never read a Hawk and Dove comic, but your opening statement about John Byrne reminds me… whoever compiled Byrne’s Wikiquote page is a genius. Perfect sequence of Byrne hot takes about others’ work and self-contradictory defenses of his own stories…
Thank you for steering me there. That was an interesting read.
Love the Brennert story and enjoyed the Kessel series (only time I ever liked Liefeld’s work) and hated the way it ended.
The were handled in a relatively decent manner, in an early JLU episode, where they were voiced by Wonder Years “brothers” Jason Hervey and Fred Savage.
Best part of the JLU portrayal: Savage and Hervey switched it up. Savage played the bully Hawk and Hervey played wimpy Dove, in a reversal of their Wonder Years characters.
Kesel inked Liefeld on that series (I think?), and he really does have a huge influence on it.
Thoughts on the version that appears in the TITANS live action series? (That would be the Dawn and Hank, only in that series they’re a couple, which you said they weren’t in the comics?)
I never got around to catching that one. The reviews were not enthusiastic when there’s so much other comics-based stuff I can watch.
And no, they weren’t a couple though in at least one timeline they did end up having that baby.
I’ve only just recently read that Brave And The Bold story. It’s not bad, but I don’t like the idea of teen characters ageing. I mean, that’s just not realisti–
Okay, but in a world where the Teen Titans were Teens for about twenty years, why them?
I also have the Kessel² / Liefeld mini- (and some of the ongoing), and it’s not too bad.
“his brother, Hawk became a joke, a macho straw man conservative”
Frankly, I thought in the original mini, they were both strawmen. (Addressing that was one of the things I liked about the Aparo story, like you.)
“none of which made sense (Monarch is an ultra-lawful type”
Not to mention, Hawk and Dove was one of only about two Armageddon 2001 annuals where the title characters actually deal with Monarch. So, literally almost anybody else would’ve made more sense.
“At first Dawn assumed the Doves were some kind of Corps, like the Green Lanterns”
It’s spelled ‘corpse‘, Dawn.
…
I’ll show myself out.
As noted in my post, Dick Giordano said he wanted to wrap up Hawk and Dove’s story for good. Showing them locked into their roles on into adulthood was part of that.
Oh, they were definitely both straw men, but I think the 1980s made Hawk even more a man of straw.
““Telling girls they have to expect men and boys to be aggressive and violent, and to just accept it, is toxic.”
Who tells girls that? Specific, real life examples, please.
Jesse Kelly, right-wing pundit: Men are innately aggressive and can’t suppress it. if women (and society) don’t encourage them to use it fighting bad people, men will use it for evil.
Rush Limbaugh: male mass shooters are reacting to the way feminists dump on masculinity. Men were never predatory and destructive before feminism!
Scott Adams (yes, Dilbert guy): it’s perfectly natural for men to rape women, just like lions attack zebras. Outlawing rape is like making it illegal for lions to attack zebras — they’re still going to do it but now it’s a crime!
And pretty much every “boys will be boys” defense of rapists because the subtext is that this is what guys do, don’t expect anything better (e.g. some of Brett Kavanaugh’s defenders who insisted even if he’d committed the assault on Blasey Ford it was just typical teenage behavior).
Good examples. (Though I can only hope Adams was being ironic.)
I was expecting ‘girl you have to marry a man who’ll beat you,’ but you’ve answered what I asked.
Though, I’ve personally never heard anyone using ‘boys will be boys’ to defend rape. (I’ve heard people complaining about people doing that, but I’ve never heard it happen.) I’ve only heard it covering things like climbing trees, dragging mud across the carpet, or wrestling with each other.
If anyone does use it to cover rape, they’re a (random typewriter symbols), who deserves to (censored) until they need a doctor to pull it out, and (you get the picture).
While you have a point about “good Samaritan,” I don’t see the usage of toxic masculinity as anywhere near the same. Unlike Samaritan, masculinity without the modifier is still a topic and term in common use.
BATO used a freelance spy called the Bad Samaritan. I swiped the name for a villain in a story I wrote some years back, “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” (“I’m the guy who gives back evil for good. Think of me as, oh, a bad Samaritan.”).
No, Scott Adams has been sharing misogynist thoughts (we don’t give women equal rights for the same reason we restrict the freedom of the mentally handicapped!) for a while as well as becoming an enthusiastic Trump supporter.
He and Dave Sim have some real weird ideas about women.
I’ve always found it a bit odd how most of the retrospectives I’ve run across about Liefeld or McFarlane completely leave out their early work for DC. I realize that it was at Marvel that they both blew up, but Liefeld’s work on Hawk and Dove is what really first got him attention within the industry, and McFarlane’s Infinity Inc run was a rather remarkable real time showcase of a talented newbie learning the ins and outs of sequential storytelling.
I never read Hawk and Dove except in their appearances in the big crossovers, but man, I remember finishing Armageddon 2001 and thinking how angry I’d have been if I’d actually been a fan of Hawk and Dove, with how abruptly and ungloriously those characters were dismantled.
And then I couldn’t help but to remember those thoughts when Emerald Twilight hit a couple of years later.
Oh yes, Emerald Twilight. That one did not sit well with me at all.