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Hawk and Dove

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Hawk and Dove

Hawk and Dove are a superhero team appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Steve Ditko and Steve Skeates, they appeared in Showcase #75 (June 1968) during the Silver Age of Comic Books. The duo has existed in multiple incarnations over the years across several eponymous ongoing series and miniseries, and has also appeared in a number of recurring roles and guest appearances in titles such as Teen Titans, Birds of Prey, and Brightest Day. The duo originated as teenage brothers Hank Hall as Hawk and Don Hall as Dove. Following Don's death in Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985), Dawn Granger assumed the role of Dove in Hawk & Dove #1 (October 1988). The mantle of Hawk would later be taken up by Dawn's sister Holly Granger in 2003 after Hank was killed during 1994's Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! until her death and Hank's resurrection in Blackest Night (2009). An unrelated team consisting of military cadet Sasha Martens as Hawk and rock musician Wiley Wolverman as Dove also appeared as the focus of a 1997 miniseries. The pairing of Hank and Dawn serve as the current and most commonly published incarnation of the team.

Inspired by the emerging political divides of the 1960s between pro-war hawks and pacifist doves, the central concept traditionally revolves around two young heroes with contrasting personalities and diametrically opposed ideologies who, by speaking their superheroic aliases, are transformed and granted power sets of heightened strength, speed, and agility. With Dove embodying reason and nonviolence and Hawk embodying force and aggression, the two heroes complement one another to effectively fight evil. With the introduction of Dawn Granger, it was revealed that Hawk and Dove's powers are derived from the Lords of Chaos and Order.

Though the duo's ongoing titles have all been relatively short-lived and their guest appearances in other titles sporadic, the heroes have experienced a storied and sometimes tragic history. Multiple characters have worn the respective titles of Hawk and Dove at one time or another and the legacy has experienced death, resurrection and even Hank's own descent into madness and subsequent transformation into the mass-murdering villain Monarch and later Extant.

Hank Hall, Dawn Granger, and Don Hall made their live-action debuts in the television series Titans, played by Alan Ritchson, Minka Kelly, and Elliot Knight, respectively. Furthermore, Fred Savage, Jason Hervey, Greg Ellis, and Dee Bradley Baker voice the duo in Justice League Unlimited and Batman: The Brave and the Bold respectively.

Spinning off from their Showcase debut, Hank and Don Hall received their own series titled The Hawk and the Dove. Created by plotter/artist Steve Ditko and writer Steve Skeates, with Carmine Infantino coming up with the title, Ditko plotted only the first issue and left after the second. In a 1999 interview, Skeates expressed dismay with changes that would be made to his script by Ditko and editorial, citing a tendency to neutralize Dove's abilities as a crimefighter in favor of Hawk's:

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 [Giordano] 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.

Although Skeates attempted to change the direction of the series after Ditko left and artist Gil Kane joined the creative team, Skeates himself left after the fourth issue, leaving Kane to take on both writing and art responsibilities until the book's cancellation due to low sales after only the sixth issue.

The original Hawk and Dove made sporadic appearances in different DC titles throughout the 1970s and 1980s, primarily within the Teen Titans and New Teen Titans, joining the original incarnation briefly from Teen Titans #25–30 (January–October 1970), under the guidance of writers Dick Giordano and Robert Kanigher and artist Nick Cardy. Skeates also provided scripts for some of these issues they appeared in. The brothers also teamed up with Batman in The Brave and the Bold #181 (December 1981) in an out-of-continuity tale written by Alan Brennert and drawn by Jim Aparo.

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