Longbox Review

Your guilty pleasure comic or character.

Currently, that’s Hawk and Dove.

I say guilty pleasure in the sense that I feel guilty for reading such a poor comic book. I’ve made it no secret that I do not like Rob Liefeld’s art. He seems a nice enough guy based on interviews I’ve listened to, but his art just does nothing for me. Also, the story so far is not so great, and with Liefeld now writing the series (at least for a few issues) . . . sigh. Yet I will read this title until they cancel it (and DC will) because–and here’s the pleasure part–I love Dove (I like Hawk, to a point).

My first exposure to these characters was in a Best of DC digest featuring the Teen Titans, which had a reprint of Teen Titans #21 (1969). I took an instant liking to the bickering brothers and their nebulously defined powers and simple bird theme costumes. Fast forward a few years and DC comes out with the 1988 Hawk and Dove miniseries drawn by, interestingly enough, Rob Liefeld, whose art in that series I did not mind. Now, of course, Dove was played by the lovely Dawn Granger (Don Hall having been killed in the Crisis a few years earlier). She basically saved Hank from self-destructing, and used her wits to defeat the bad guys. I really hated it when they abruptly ended the series to make Hawk the bad guy (Monarch) for that year’s event. Worse, they killed Dove in the process! I was so mad at DC for that. Fortunately, Dove got better and showed up in the pages of JSA. Eventually, she even played a major role in the Blackest Night/Brightest Day events (though not to the full potential I thought Geoff Johns could have used her, but at least he did). There is definitely no guilt in the pleasure I feel when reading Dove (that sounded a bit dirty, didn’t it?). :D