The Origin of Hawk & Dove in SHOWCASE #75 [1968]. |
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The Mysterious Voice grants Don and Hank Hall incredible
powers in SHOWCASE #75 [1968]. |
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Origins
Hank and Don Hall were born a year apart. The brothers lived in Elmond, a mid-eastern town where Don later attended the local university. They lived with their father, Irwin Hall, the town judge who encouraged his boys to debate their differences, and their mother, who was the family's calming influence.
A local mobster named Boss Dargo tried to kill Judge Hall by bombing his chambers. The blast injured Judge Hall, and the incident was witnessed by his two sons. Hank convinced Don to accompany him in tailing the would-be assassin back to his hideout in an abandoned warehouse.
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| The Origin of Hawk & Dove in SHOWCASE #75 [1968]. |
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The boys overheard the gangsters' plan to finish off the judge, but a jammed door prohibited them from leaving the building. In desperation, Don wished that they had superpowers of some sort. A mysterious Voice granted them the powers, tailoring them to the individuals. Ironically, after the Judge was rescued, he made known his dislike of such costumed vigilantes.
This situation was set up by Terataya, a Lord of Order, and Tcharr, a Lord of Chaos. The two Lords fought each other endlessly on another world until they declared a truce. They decided upon an experiment that would require two vessels - one for Chaos and one for Order. Hank and Don became the vessels and guinea pigs when this Voice granted them powers which magnified Hank's and Don's natural abilities.
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Hawk & Dove meet the Teen Titans in
TEEN TITANS #21 [1969]. |
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Enter the Titans
Hawk and Dove first crossed paths with the original Teen Titans when the brothers and the Fab Foursome were pursuing the same smuggling spy. All the Titans except for Wonder Girl found Hawk much too abrasive; a jealous Speedy wanted to wring Hank's neck for flirting with Wonder Girl, even after Hawk saved his life.
Hawk and Dove took part in several adventures with the original Teen Titans, including the incident with Dr. Swenson. Like the rest of the Titans, they remained in plain clothes until the true murderer was discovered.
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Dove dies during the Crisis on Infinite Earths - the tragedy is retold in HAWK & DOVE
mini series [1988]. |
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Dawn meets the ghost of Don Hall
in HAWK & DOVE (second series)
#5 [1989]. |
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Titans West & Later Tragedy
After the Teen Titans' first dissolution, Hank enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served on an aircraft carrier called the U.S.S. Tippecanoe; Don transferred to a college on the West Coast. When Mr. Esper raised the U.S.S. Tippecanoe into the air, it brought the West Coast teenage heroes out of the woodwork and laid the foundation for Titans West, which both Hawk and Dove joined at its inception. It was at this time that Dove entered into a brief romantic relationship with the psychic Titan, Lilith Clay. When Robin turned a blind eye to the West Coast members, Hawk jumped at the chance to lead them. Unfortunately, Hank's temperament did not fit this role, and the group disbanded not long after.
During his time with Titans West, Don's personality began to emulate Hank's violent behavior. The two Lords of Chaos and Order realized that Don was too close to Hank to be his anti-pole, so they planned to "terminate" the Dove part of their experiment. Hawk and Dove remained with Titans West until the group disbanded, and Don died during the Crisis while trying to save a child from being crushed by a crumbling wall, the two Lords revoking his powers in order to cause his death.
Henry and Don Hall are opposites in many ways: Hank is athletic, while Don is scholarly. Hank is a militant who believes in physical force; Don is a pacifist who would rather talk than fight.
Magical transformation into a superhuman being with enhanced strength, endurance and agility.
Sources for this entry: DC Who's Who Series, The Official Teen Titans Index [published by ICG in 1985], The New Titans Sourcebook [Mayfair Games, 1990], supplemented by titanstower.com
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The central conflict of their own series,came not from the heroes' battles with the criminal element in their home town of Elmond, but from their differing and extremist ideologies, which had led to the Voice's bestowing upon them their particular heroic identities. Hank Hall, the elder brother by not more than a year, was a militant, believing in physical force as a solution to problems, especially those encountered as a super-hero. As the Hawk, he tended to charge into battle with fists flailing first, and to ask questions later, if at all. His only uncertainty in his heroic role came from the fact that while his strength and agility had been dramatically increased, he still had to contend with a fear of heights, a phobia unaffected in the transformation to his costumed persona. Don Hall, the younger brother, tended to socialize with the young collegiate crowd who could more easily appreciate his philosophy of pacifism.
Seeing violence as an abhorrent last resort in resolving any dilemma, the Dove was the pensive member of the partnership, who tried to use brains rather than brawn to defeat their opponents. His major problem was that his very ideals gave him grave doubts about the entire idea of being a super-hero, and while his quiet reason was often a welcome alternative to the Hawk's quick-tempered reactionism, his indecisiveness in action made him somewhat less than effective as a crime-buster. The running verbal battles between the two heroes were further complicated when their father, Irwin Hall, a tough-minded but highly respected judge, who was unaware of his sons' secret identities, publicly and privately disapproved of the Hawk and the Dove as lawless vigilantes, taking the duties of the appointed police into their own hands without official sanction. Judge Hall's views provided a middle-of-the-road alternative to the extreme and totally opposed beliefs of the two heroes.
A Carmine Infantino Interview from Comic Book Artist Magazine #1, 2000
CBA: It seems that you dealt with just about every single issue except Vietnam.
Carmine: We did in a way with The Hawk and the Dove-only we made it as a Super-hero strip.
CBA: Did you deal at all with Steve Ditko?
Carmine: Yeah, Steve came up to see me and I liked him. He's very opinionated, but that's Steve. He did a couple of books for me but they didn't sell. He could draw, this man!
CBA: Do you remember the genesis of that idea?
Carmine: That was mine. It didn't work. I had Steve Ditko come in and I threw the idea at him. I called one the Hawk and the other the Dove. It was a clever idea and Steve wrote it and drew it but it didn't work. In those days, we were not afraid to try anything. That was my promise over there, to just try. I didn't care what the hell they were about, just try 'em all. Keep trying. It's the only way you're going to find winners-and we did and I think we had a good time.
A Dick Giordano Interview from Comic Book Artist Magazine #1, 2000
CBA: You were with The Hawk and the Dove and Beware the Creeper right at their inception.
Dick: Actually, I came in as editor right in the middle of The Hawk and the Dove story in Showcase. Steve Ditko already had the rough plot worked out. Steve Skeates worked from that plot and came up with a script. The Showcase was okay because Steve followed basically what Ditko wanted him to do. But from that point on it was terrible for them both.
The basic idea for The Hawk and the Dove was Steve Ditko's and that concept was a triangle; father as the moderate and the extremes represented by the two kids, and all the other things were put together to make that triangle work. The powers were discussed secondly. The "hawk and the dove" was, at that time, a term that was being used very often, was very popular and referred to where people stood regarding the Vietnam War; there were hawks and there were doves. These two boys represented such extreme opposites we thought that in order for it to work we had to offset both of their extremes, so we used their father, the judge, to be the third part of that triangle. That was the original idea that we started off with. Their names, Hank for Hawk, Don for Dove, were chosen to make everything clear. It was simple and clear; almost a parable. I'm not sure where Skeates fit in there but I think he leaned towards Hank.
Ditko would pretty much eliminate whatever was in Steve Skeates' scripts that he didn't feel belonged there. At that point, I think that Ditko's agenda was more the furthering of his philosophical views than writing and drawing entertaining stories. Mr. A, which immediately followed, illustrates that point to some degree. I have no problem with his beliefs - whether I believe in them or not is irrelevant - I just don't think that comic books per se are the proper vehicle for a forum. I don't think we should promote the existence or non-existence of God.
A Steve Skeates Interview from Comic Book Artist Magazine #5, 1999
CBA: What was the genesis of The Hawk and the Dove?
Steve: It was developed by committee. There was Dick [Giordano], Carmine [Infantino], [Steve] Ditko and me. Carmine came up with the title and he attended all the meetings. Part of the concept was to directly appeal to, I don't know, the counter-culture. My main contribution was that they had to say their names to change into the characters.
They were trying to come up with a "Shazam," a magic word and I said, Why don't we have them just say their character names?" They went along with that. I also created the community in which they lived, the college town. Steve Ditko came up with the major concepts, the costumes, the powers, the characters - just about everything. The judge was definitely his idea.
CBA: Were there changes made in your stories?
Steve: It was strange. A lot of changes would happen after I turned in a script. Quite often, my idea of what to do with the Dove was have him do brave stuff - and then it would be changed by either Dick or Steve into the Hawk doing that stuff.
They'd say it was out of character for the Dove. They seemed to be equating Dove with wimp, wuss, coward or whatever. And I don't really think it was because they were more hawkish. I just don't think that they knew what a dove was. There was all sorts of problems along those lines but since I was doing it from a distance - I was upstate living on a college campus, which is why I made it a college town - so, basically any complaint I had would be after the fact. As a matter of fact, [Steve] Ditko and Denny [O'Neil] would have more fights over Beware the Creeper than I had with Steve over The Hawk and the Dove.
That's because Denny was right there and would go in, complain and yell at Dick or Steve. What could l do long distance? Complain about the book after it was published? Fait accompli. There were all sorts of problems with the Showcase issue. Although a lot of people have said that they really like that issue I think a major problem with it was that Dick was trying to please the Comics Code.
One of the rules was that you couldn't question authority so every time I had the Dove say something against the U.S. government, Dick would change that to some sort of nebulous "they." To me it comes off as terribly written with a lot of pronouns without any nouns that they are referring back to.
CBA: Was it more comfortable working on the title after Steve [Dikto] left?
Steve: Once Steve left and Gil Kane came in I tried to bring the conflict to a head and change the direction of the book by making the Dove such a loser that he had to change. Gil never understood where the characterization was going and thought I was a raving hawk myself. I felt that the only way to solve the problem that had been set up in the series was to take it to its absolute worst and bring Dove to the breaking point and bring him back up from there.
That was where I was going but the book didn't stay around long enough to do that.
CBA: Why did Steve leave the book?
Steve: From what I understand, Steve left because he was sick. That is what I was told.
CBA: You had a reputation as DC's resident hippie. I was surprised to realize that worked on them.
Steve: I had people like Roger Brand, who was working in under-grounds, meet me and say, "Gee, you're not the raving hawk I thought you were. Because he thought I was from reading those books. The first book I wrote full script, and then Ditko redid it, extending some scenes and cutting out others. So then I had to go back and do it Marvel-style even though I had already done the script. That was sort of a hassle. The second story (The Hawk and the Dove #1) we did do Marvel-style from the start and they changed so much of my plot that I told them to write the plot themselves for the next one.
I said, "I really don't want to write these plots because you're just going to change them anyway. So you write the next one" Ditko took me up on it and the next issue was the jailbreak storyline. When the book went to Gil, it went back to straight scripts and I felt more in control. I was trying to make some sense out of the characters.
The story called "The Sell-Out" was inspired by the movie, "The President's Analyst." I hadn't seen the issue with "The Sell-Out" for a long time and somebody only recently sent me a copy. I was surprised how much I like that story.
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