Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
On Violence; Pacifism; the Hawk and the Dove
Stick around this hobby long enough, and -- eventually --
you'll hear quite a lot of moaning and groaning, re: various comic book
series' which were (to hear their more ardent [and vocal] supporters tell the
tale(s), at any rate) simply too good for their own... ummmm... good.
The argument is advanced thusly: "the reason that [Insert Title of Comic
Book Here] failed to catch on with the readership wasn't because it was brain-bogglingly
lackluster in conception, or written and drawn by refugees from the Willowdale
State Home for the Terminally Cretinous. No, no; it failed because" --
get ready; here it comes -- "[the book] was too wonderful, too much the
rara comics avis for the greater portion of the readership to
be able to decently appreciate. Those clods."
Obviously, ninety-nine times out of every one hundred, this is -- push come
to shove -- a big ol' load o' hooey.
The very first time I ever heard this particularly threadbare excuse advanced was on behalf of the original SILVER SURFER series, during the early part of the 1970's. "Too bold and original!" was the collective fannish bleat, once the series -- after one of the most relentlessly hyped and ballyhooed premieres within the history of the genre, mind you -- staggered and collapsed in its storytelling traces after a mere year and a half. "Too intellectual for the readers! They simply couldn't relate to its marvelously adult storytelling concepts and execution, goshdarn it!"
This was, mind, a series about a nekkid bald guy who flew through outer space
on a surfboard. And whined a lot. While fighting other
Marvel super-heroes. A lot.
From that day forward, this particular plaint has become the rationale du jour for any number of comics which -- for one reason or another -- failed to coax a sufficiency of comics readers to part with a portion of their allowances on an ongoing basis.
Marvel Comics fans, in particular, have -- over the years -- shown a decided genius for applying this particular brand of whitewash towards virtually every single offering from that company which Couldn't Make the Fiscal Grade. (My all-time favorite example would have to be in the case of Adam Warlock, whose three regular series berths to date -- THE POWER OF WARLOCK; WARLOCK; and WARLOCK AND THE INFINITY WATCH -- have all been the recipients, in greater part or lesser, of this peculiarly ameliorative alibi. Apparently, the notion that the character in question may simply be moronically conceived and/or a crashing, thundering bore is too heretical by half for serious consideration.)
In actual point of fact -- and regardless of how much resentful mewling and bleating the notion might raise within the ranks of the fannish herd -- there simply aren't all that durned many instances of an ongoing super-hero comics series so intellectually vigorous in concept and demanding in its execution that it risked sailing much over the head of a reasonably bright ten-year-old.
That's a large, hard pill for the average comics-fans-are-the-chosen- people aficionado to choke down, I'll grant you... but: let's at least agree to be honest amongst ourselves, if nowhere else. Stories concerning the overheated exploits of grown men darting about in skintight footie 'jamas really, truly are not the sort of fictive fare which may (honestly) be compared to the efforts of Hemmingway; Faulkner; or Melville.
I mean... come on, people.
DC's brief, abortive THE HAWK AND THE DOVE series of the '70's -- Oh, look! The actual, for real, no foolin' subject of this entry has finally crept up on us! What were the odds of that happening, f'chrissakes? -- comes up similarly short of shrift inn this regard, to be brutally frank...
... but: this series, at least, can (and has) had the claim advanced
on its behalf without its adherents looking as patently foolish
in so doing.
The series concerned a pair of brothers: Hank and Don Hall.
The two weren't as far apart, morally and philosophically,
as were (say) the biblical Cain and Abel... but: it certainly wasn't for
any real lack of trying on their respective parts.
Hank Hall was a loud, strutting, swaggering pillar of distilled high school machismo; his brother Don, by way of comparison, was bookish, reclusive and something of a condescending little twerp, all told. The pair spent the greater part of their time sniping and spluttering at one another over the various "hot button" issues of that contentious era: chiefest among these being the Vietnam War (in particular) and the larger, concomitant issue of Justifiable Violence versus Passive Non-Aggression.
Their constant (and somewhat exasperated) referee for these verbal title bouts was their father, Judge Hall, whose own unbending black-and-white judicial worldview as passed down from the bench ("The fact that you are now sorry for the crimes you have committed is of no relevance whatsoever. The courtroom is a place where dispassionate logic alone merits our sympathies, our concerns. You have been found guilty by a jury of your peers. Sentence is as follows...") earned him the enmity of more than a few luckless plaintiffs, over the years.
Said enmity became something more than merely theoretical in nature when the judge was violently abducted after passing summary judgment on one particularly noxious crime boss, in particular. The two brothers -- still spitting invective towards one another, all the while -- nevertheless put their marked ideological differences aside long enough to track down the hideout of said gangster and his goons... only to promptly get themselves captured, in turn, and ingloriously imprisoned within the storeroom of an abandoned warehouse.
An enraged Hank Hall loudly proclaims that he'd "do anything to have the power" to rescue his father, and bring ruination to his abductors...
... and is astonished, along with his brother, when a mysterious, disembodied voice responds to his hoarse epithets, in turn.
The Voice -- noting both Hank's eagerness for venggeance, and Don's marked distaste for the exacting of same -- remarks, with obvious bemusement: "We have, it seems, both a hawk... and a dove"...
... and -- just like that; with no further preammble -- the brothers found themselves transformed.
As the voice explained to the startled pair: "Your powers are but extensions of those abilities you already possess. Whatever you could do, moments ago... now, in costume, you can do infinitely better, with greater ease and consummate skill." The practical effect of this was that the athletic and aggressive "Hawk" became a virtually unstoppable physical juggernaut... while the compassionate and cerebral "Dove," in turn, found his intuitiveness and reasoning abilities similarly accelerated.
The Dysfunctional Duo -- who, it should be noted, never
did discover the true identity of their bodiless and unseen benefactor;
although the straightforward and unsubtle Hawk, on several occasions, opined
that he firmly believed The Voice to have been no less than God Almighty, His
Own Bad Self -- promptly broke free of their joint durance vile; rescued their
father (without telling him who they actually were behind those funky,
Steve Ditko-designed face masks, of course); and bounded away triumphantly
into the sunset, squabbling all the while.
However: it's not as if the Bi-Polar Birdmen (sorry; I just felt the need to do that, is all) were simply incapable of treating one another in reasonably civil fashion.
When warranted by circumstance -- such as, say, their first fractious face-to-face
with fellow costumed adolescents, THE TEEN TITANS
-- they could be (and were) just as thoroughly capable of treating everyone
else to the very same displays of mule-headedness and disdain, as well.
[See cover reproduction,
below]
The Titans/Hawk and Dove relationship was a scratchy, uncomfortable affair for all concerned, right from the get-go. There was an instantaneous, nearly palpable attraction between the confident and aggressive Hawk and the Amazonian teen Wonder Girl; an attraction which, needless to say, sat poorly with the equally in-your-face (and Wonder Girl smitten) Speedy.
This led to the two spandexed "alpha males" locking horns over the matter,
of course... with the Titans' resident bow-slinger faring rather the worse in
the resultant confrontation (i.e., he got his clock cleaned).
Nor did it help maters overmuch that the cerebrally-advantaged Dove was seldom shy in dispensing a non-stop running commentary re: everything his fellow teens might be doing wrong or ineptly, gratis, once all of the inter-team pushing and shoving had been decently attended to, overall.
The brothers were introduced into the ongoing TITANS continuity with a good deal of accompanying fanfare and fooforaw; but -- perhaps because they always seemed to be more of a self-contained "team" unto themselves, rather than an integral component of the larger Titans "gestalt" -- they quickly faded out of both the group's roster, and (thus) the limelight such regular exposure would surely have afforded them.
Meanwhile: matters were proceeding apace, back within the pages of their own
monthly title... as we shall observe together, on the following page.
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