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On Violence; Pacifism; the Hawk
and the Dove
(Part Two)
The series' penultimate offering -- issue #5's "Walk With Me, O Brother; Death Has Taken My Hand" -- was (and remains) quite simply, perhaps one of the hard core dozen or so absolutely indispensable comic books of the Silver Age era. [See cover reproduction, at top of page.]
As masterfully conceived by underrated '70's DC scribe Steve Skeates, and evocatively penciled by the legendary Gil Kane... the story serves as a textbook exemplar of everything one might conceivably do right, while laboring in the creative bean fields of serial adventure fiction.
Judge Hall is startled to discover that his closest adult friend -- a mild and inoffensive cipher of a man by the name of Sam Hodgins -- has been arrested for a brutal double slaying (with one of the victims of same being a child, no less) committed during a thoroughly bollixed bank robbery. Although the preponderance of the forensic evidence fairly shrieks of the man's culpability in the affair, Judge Hall remains nonetheless adamant that Hodgins -- "the kindest, most fundamentally decent man I've ever known" -- must, somehow, be the unwitting victim of a particularly devious and loathsome "frame-up" attempt.
Nonetheless: the unbending Judge Hall is prepared to level the death sentence upon the man who once, years ago, saved his life, should a jury of Hodgins' peers so recommend... no matter how grotesquely he may personally feel Justice (in the abstract) is being (mis)served, in so doing.
The two brothers -- troubled by their father's deep and obvious grief over the terrible emotional fires threatening to consume him from within -- investigate the matter on their own, sub rosa. The trail of their joint inquiry (i.e., Dove applying deductive reasoning, and the Hawk simply beating the holy living crap out of stray underworld informants) leads them both, ultimately, to a (supposedly) abandoned warehouse.
Once there, the boys are ambushed when a tonweight of crated machine parts is sent plummeting towards them.
The nimble Dove manages to leap out of the way, just in time...
... but the Hawk, however, was not quite so fortunate, in turn.
His brother being (from all outward appearances, at any rate) stone dead... the normally passive Dove undergoes a truly gut-wrenching emotional transformation, stalking the Hawk's (putative) slayer throughout the shadows and catwalks of the ancient warehouse, alternately sobbing and screaming incoherently. When, at least, he has cornered the two-legged monster in question -- only to discover that it is, in fact, the supposedly guileless Hodgins -- a shrieking Don Hall remorselessly attempts to beat the man to death with his bare hands.
It takes every last bit of effort a grievously-injured Hawk can muster to subdue and sequester his still-hysterical brother from the bloodied, broken, just-barely-breathing remains of the man their father once referred to, simply and quietly, as "the most fundamentally decent man I've ever known."
The final issue of the original THE HAWK AND THE DOVE series had the judge placed in jeopardy yet again (geez... and people complain about Superman having to rescue Lois Lane all the time...!) as a man he'd long ago sentenced to an interminable prison term subsequently managed to effect his escape and -- in a Mikado-ish example of "let the punishment fit the crime" -- imprisoned his much-despised bete noire, in turn, within an electrified cage too small to allow its inhabitant to stand upright, and too narrow to allow him to safely lie down.
Judge Hall, therefore, would remain completely safe and unharmed.... so long as he never tired from standing perpetually a-crouch.
Or passed out.
Or fell asleep. [See cover reproduction, below]
With these two stories, in particular, THE HAWK AND THE DOVE was well and truly on its storytelling way, at last, towards establishing itself as a uniquely noir-ish and nakedly emotional adventure series. Artist Gil Kane was turning out some of the nicest work in his (justly) storied career, and the entire package -- word and pictures; concept and execution -- stood head and shoulders above practically everything else being offered by any comics company of the day.
Alas, however: DC Comics was undergoing a period of fiscal "belt-tightening" at the time... and THE HAWK AND THE DOVE, despite widespread critical acclaim within the comics community, was anything but a renumerative success. The series ended after but a scant, tantalizing half-dozen issues.
The brothers were seldom seen within the confines of the DC universe, from that point on...
... until the little-heralded advent of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #181, more than a decade later. [See cover reproduction, below]
As sensitively scripted by infrequent comics scribe Alan Brennert, and sensibly rendered by longtime BRAVE AND BOLD mainstay Jim Aparo, the story shows us the inervening years -- as well as the concomitant change in societal priorities and attitudes between the activist '60's and the sheep-like '80's -- have not treated either of the two brothers (now fully "adult"; at least, in the strictly chronological sense) with much kindness, overall.
Hank Hall still transforms himself into the vengeful and inplacable "Hawk" whenever the opportunity presents itself, happiest and most fulfilled in scourging the lesser denizens of his own uniquely low-rent "underworld." As a result of these obsessive nightly forays, he remains all but unemployable, and is faced with the prospect of his (now-)wife divorcing him, as a result.
Brother Don, in the meantime, has retreated from the harsh realities of the modern world by deliberately coccooning himself within the safe, structured role of The Perpetual College Student. His refusal to acquiesce, ultimately, to the rigors and challenges of full adulthood may be of a more socially acceptable stripe... but they are no less steadfast a denial, for all of that.
It was an intriguing notion, certainly: to take two characters so inextricably wedded to the passions of the 1960's, and force them to confront both the good and the bad inherent in their having become (by choice) two near-obsolete anachronisms... both as men, and as heroes. Much could have been made of such a storytelling "start," by clever or conscientious enough of a writer; and the aformentioned Mr. Brennert, certainly, seemed inordinately well-suited to the task.
Tragically, however: Don Hall was slain in a pointless (and fairly gratuitous) fashion, within the pages of the much maligned (and for jolly good reason, says I) CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS limited series, in the early 1980's.
And thus are characters and concepts still burgeoning with vast and untapped potential treated, nowadays: as the storytelling equivalent of three day old garbage.
I choose, however, to recall the duo in times which were -- if not necessarily happier ones, either for them or for us -- at the very least, more invitingly open to the prospects for lasting change (societal, or otherwise); and when concepts such as passion and commitment had yet to be replaced in the youthful commonweal by such cheapjack intellectual geegaws and gimcracks as "gangsta rap" and "political correctness."
The era was a more fractious one; I'll readily grant you that much, and then some...
... and yet, paradoxically: it was a more hopeful, optimistic time, as well.
I'm just sayin', is all. 
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