Polite Dissent

After visiting the seriously hurt Rodger in the hospital, Hank walks home, blaming himself for Roger’s injuries. He stumbles across a drug deal and wastes no time in trying to break it up. He can’t change into Hawk because it would be out in the open and everyone would see. He fights strictly as Hank and does well at first, but then one of the drug dealers pulls a knife. Luckily, Dawn was concerned about Hank’s state of mind and had been following him. She changes into Dove and quickly takes care of the drug dealers. She then delivers a stern –- and mostly tongue-in-cheek — warning to Hank about letting those with powers handle crimes.

Watching the melee across the street is former beach bum Sudden Death (remember him from issue #5?). He wants a rematch with Hawk and figures that if Dove is around, Hawk can’t be too far behind. He strolls into the fracas, pushing Hank aside to confront Dove. Unfortunately, Sudden Death shoved Hank straight into a tree, knocking him out. Dove realizes that she’ll have to buy time for Hank to recover. She dodges Sudden Death the best she can, then pulls that hoary old comic book cliché “overload the villain.” Sudden Death explodes, ripping a great hole in the ground. He is stunned, but Dove and Hank fall down the hole into a Metro tunnel. Seeing a train barreling down upon them, Dove manages to wake up Hank just in time for him to turn into Hawk and stop the train.

Hawk jumps up to the surface and pummels Sudden Death again and again. As Sudden Death nears critical mass, he throws him at a tree in the distance. The tree explodes, but Sudden Death mysteriously disappears.

All in all, this is a fairly light comic with well done guest art from Steve Erwin. This issue is mostly a set-up issue, as the storylines and villains of the final six issues of the series are introduced. Velvet Tiger appears, first as someone who’s killing mob bosses, then as the rescuer and potential employer of Sudden Death. (For those of you who don’t remember the Velvet Tiger, she was one of Batgirl’s foes from the 1980s.) The last two panels of the issue set up a cliffhanger that really drives the remainder of the series: Hank receives a message on his new answering machine from Don, his dead brother.

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