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Justice
League Unlimited
Hawk and Dove
Original Airdate - 08/21/04
Once upon a time there were two brothers.
One loved to rush into a fight. His name was Hawk. The other
wanted to find a diplomatic solution before using his fists.
His name was Dove. No it's not Donald Rumsfeld and Al Franken..
It's Hawk and Dove, DC's mostly dead, sometimes gender reversed
duo!
Another week, another team up as generated
by the spinning wheel of random teamups in Bruce Timm's
office.
Ares, the Greek god of war, has commissioned
a suit of armor and sold it to a country warring with its
neighbor. Wonder Woman, Hawk and Dove have been dispatched
to keep the two countries from killing each other.
I honestly
wish that at this point I could give you more of the plot
but I really can't. Hawk and Dove are introduced to fans
this week but they are not given an origin of any kind.
You pretty much just have to figure out that one likes to
fight and the other prefers peace. By the end of the episode
the Justice League team learn that the suit of armor is
fueled by humanity's hatred and only through nonviolent
protest can it be stopped.
I was
going to say that the roles of Hawk and Dove could have
been filled by any two Justice League members and the story
would have been the same, but fortunately Hawk and Dove
tied in thematically with the plot.
That
J'onn J'onzz sure knew what he was doing when he sent Hawk
and Dove on that mission 'cause they would have been up
a creek without a peace loving hippie on the team. And yet
you have to ask -- "How? HOW did J'onn J'onnz know
that this was the perfect mission for those two, especially
while Wonder Woman was herself deciding between savagery
and being a peace loving hippie?"
I can
only hope that this episode continues but does not finish
the idea of Ares as a Wonder Woman villain and that his
true motives are still unseen. Otherwise, it was a plot
line almost identical to Initiation and a ho-hum
introduction of Hawk and Dove.
The
warring brother were voiced by Fred Savage and Jason Hervey,
who played brothers on TV'sThe Wonder Years. What
this episode really need was an epilogue where narrator
Daniel Stern explained to the viewers what Hawk and Dove
had learned that day and how that would forever change the
way they view the 60s, their sister and most of all how
Hawk would never be as in love as he was with Winnie Cooper.
Now that would have kicked ass.
Derek's
Continuity Corner:
Hawk and Dove were originally introduced at around the time
The Wonder Years was set. Created by Steve Ditko,
Hank and Don Hall fought with each other almost as much
as they did bizarre super-villains. A random force gifted
them with their abilities, and whenever danger was near,
they merely had to say (as this episode demonstrated) "Hawk"
and "Dove." But only when danger was
near.
They
lasted a few issues, occasionally guest-starred in Teen
Titans, and made one final pre-Crisis appearance in The
Brave and The Bold. Inexplicably, the issue treated them
as if they had aged naturally since the sixties, and neither
had transformed into their superheroic identities in over
a decade. The next time they would appear, Dove got crushed
by a brick wall in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The
now solo Hawk got edgier and more violent. Grieving for
the brother he had always seemed to disdain, he needed to
find a balance in his life. Literally, for in the late eighties
DC lumped Hawk and Dove in with characters like Dr. Fate
and Amethyst, that is, pawns of the forces of Order and
Chaos. Hawk being an avatar of Chaos, he needed someone
to represent Order.
Thus
the female Dove, Dawn Granger. Together they had a pretty
good run of about five years, until Armageddon 2001.
Once word got out that Captain Atom was slated to turn into
the super-evil Monarch, a villain destined to kill all the
other heroes, DC panicked and earmarked Hawk for the role.
Monarch traveled back into then-present day, killed Dove
and then goaded Hank Hall into killing his future self.
Yeah, it didn't make a lot of sense.
Hank
became Monarch, then later became Extant when somebody figured
out a way to still make Captain Atom Monarch without violating
any previous continuity. Extant triggered Zero Hour, secretly
being manipulated by Parallax, the former Green Lantern
Hal Jordan.
Extant
made one final appearance in JSA, ultimately being
murdered by the hero Atom Smasher in a fitting touch of
poetic justice.
So there's
no Hawk anymore, but there is a Dove. In a recent issue
of JSA, she was revealed to be alive, in a coma, and disguised
as Lyta Trevor. As of this writing, Geoff Johns has offered
no more explanation than that, but you'll notice that WizKids'
HeroClix game has figures of Hawk and Dove, so there must
be plans of some sort. (These figures, by the way, prompted
Goodson to ask -- "hey, I thought Dove was a girl?")
A few
years ago, DC tried a completely different Hawk and Dove,
two teens that could sprout wings, but they were lame. So
lame, we all pretend it didn't happen.
Also,
Hank and Don Hall made a one-panel cameo in The Dark
Knight Strikes Again, still bickering but now as gay
as their outfits make them look.
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