Polite Dissent

Hank and Don Hall had planned to meet their father for a ride home after an afternoon of studying at the library. Instead, they arrive just in time to see someone dragging their unconscious father down an alley. Don provides first aid while Hank chases after the criminal. Despite changing into Hawk, Hank still cannot catch the criminal.

The next day, the boys return home after school to find their house ransacked, their mother on the floor and their father kidnapped. Hank changes into Hawk and starts beating any criminal he can find until he manages to locate one who was going to attack the judge himself, but instead watched somebody else do it – and can name who that person was. Meanwhile, Don is looking through his father’s voluminous court records and pulls a file on a criminal who recently died in jail. He realizes that this man’s son had done some gardening work for the Halls and immediately becomes suspicious.

Arriving at the gardener’s house, Don changes into Dove and discovers his father caged in the basement with the armed criminal gloating nearby. It seems the kidnapper’s father died in jail, and he blames Judge Hall for it. Don notices electric eyes protecting every door and window. He climbs the nearest utility pole to cut power to the building. Suddenly, Hawk barges in and breaks through the door. The criminal begins firing his gun wildly, but Dove manages to cut the power and Hawk is able to subdue the gunman in the dark.

The next day, the Judge mentions how is inclined to be lenient on the kidnapper because “he couldn’t help what he was doing”. He then goes on to say that he would never be lenient on the Hawk and the Dove because their interference almost got him shot.

At the end of the story, both Hank and Don leave the house wondering if it’s worth being Hawk and Dove. The last caption reads: Is this the end of the Hawk and the Dove??

There are no art or writing credits anywhere in the issue. The Standard Catalog of Comic Books lists Gil Kane as the artist and Kane and Dick Giordano as the writers. The art is standard good Kane art with clever use of angles and excellent action scenes.

The story is a little lacking as the coincidences are way too convenient: Hawk just happens to find a criminal who was going to assault the judge, but instead spied on the actual perpetrator; Don just happens to find the right file out of all of his father’s records. On the other hand, this is undeniably a story written for the Hawk and the Dove; no other characters would work in this comic. Both characters stay true to form – Hawk is “action first, think later” while Don is “think first, action later”. The ending seems contrived, with the brothers suddenly deciding to stop being Hawk and Dove. Their father’s lashed out at Hawk and Dove many times before, why do they decide to quit now?

Notes:

1. Once again, the cover bears little resemblance to any scene inside the comic. The text on the cover suggests that someone knows the identities of Hawk and Dove, but it’s not true. The only electrical wires involved in the story are the ones Dove cuts, and there are no policemen involved in the story. Kane draws some truly dramatic covers, but they seem to rarely convey an actual scene from the comic.
2. This isues marks the first time that ?thletic Hank actually refers to playing a sport – of course he’s hitting on a girl at the time so he could be lying…
3. Don’s Fashion Scene: Blue blazer, yet again. This time the yellow tie from issue #3 is back.
4. Why does Judge Hall blame both Hawk and Dove in the end when he only saw Hawk? As far as he knew, Dove wasn’t there (he was on a utility pole nearby).
5. Here’s a good website with excepts from interviews with many of Hawk and Dove’s creators.
6. This is the final issue of The Hawk and the Dove series but it’s not the end of the characters. Hawk and Dove show up in several issues of Teen Titans, and then as members of Titans West. There’s an apocryphal “last Hawk and Dove story” in The Brave and the Bold #181 and then there are the tragic events of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Hawk has some scattered appearances of his own for a few years after that and then joins with a new Dove in the Hawk & Dove mini-series (1988) and then the regular Hawk & Dove series (1989 – 1991). But these are all topics for later posts…