Showcase #75
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeShowcase #75 (June 1968) marks the first appearance of Hank Hall and Don Hall as Hawk and Dove, two superpowered brothers whose fundamental philosophical conflict — aggressive force versus pacifist restraint — was directly drawn from the era's Vietnam War debate between political 'hawks' and 'doves.' That real-world political framing gave the characters an unusual ideological weight for a superhero debut, and the premise proved durable enough to sustain multiple revival series across five decades. Steve Ditko, fresh off his Marvel years, brought his Objectivist-inflected interest in ethics to the visual storytelling, making the issue one of the few Silver Age tryouts where the argument of the concept is as important as the adventure. The characters went on to join the Teen Titans, anchor their own ongoing series, and remain fixtures of DC Universe-wide events through Crisis on Infinite Earths, Armageddon 2001, and beyond.
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The book's genesis is genuinely disputed. Carmine Infantino, then DC's editorial director, claimed he originated the concept and handed it to Steve Ditko; Ditko's collaborator Steve Skeates later recalled in Comic Book Artist #5 that it was 'developed by committee'; and the Jack C. Harris retrospective in Amazing World of DC Comics #10 (1976) credited the idea to Ditko alone. What is agreed is that Ditko handled the plot and art while Skeates scripted, with Dick Giordano — who had just arrived at DC from Charlton, partly at Ditko's own recommendation — coming in as editor partway through production and writing the issue's editorial text page explicitly citing Vietnam. Notably, Skeates later expressed frustration that dialogue had been altered, reportedly by Giordano or Ditko, to make Dove appear more passive and ineffectual than Skeates had written him, a behind-the-scenes tension that mirrors the characters' in-story ideological conflict.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Hank Hall (Hawk) and Don Hall (Dove), brothers whose powers are granted by a mysterious disembodied 'Voice' when they are trapped by mobsters threatening their father, Judge Irwin Hall.
- Created by plotter/artist Steve Ditko and scripter Steve Skeates; Dick Giordano served as editor and wrote the issue's explanatory text page, which explicitly cited the Vietnam War as creative inspiration for the 'hawk' and 'dove' terminology.
- Cover date: June 1968; the issue is a single-story tryout in DC's Showcase series — the same series that had launched the Flash, Green Lantern, and the Atom — with Hawk and Dove's ongoing title following within months.
- The ongoing series The Hawk and the Dove launched in 1968 but was cancelled after six issues due to poor sales; the characters subsequently became semi-regular members of the Teen Titans beginning with Teen Titans #25.
- Don Hall (Dove) was killed during Crisis on Infinite Earths; Hank Hall (Hawk) continued solo and later became the villain Monarch in Armageddon 2001 (1991), then Extant in Zero Hour (1994), before eventually being restored as a hero.
- The issue has been reprinted in: Superman Presents World's Finest Comic Monthly #95 (K.G. Murray, 1973); The Steve Ditko Omnibus Vol. 2 (DC, 2012); Teen Titans: The Silver Age Omnibus (DC, 2016/2017); and The Hawk and the Dove: The Silver Age trade paperback (DC, 2018), which collects Showcase #75, Hawk and Dove #1–6, and Teen Titans #21.
- Hank and Don Hall as Hawk and Dove appeared in Justice League Unlimited, voiced by Fred Savage and Jason Hervey; Hank Hall also appeared in the live-action Titans television series, played by Alan Ritchson.
- Bat Lash, Superman, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor are cataloged in connection with this issue but do NOT appear in its story content — Bat Lash's first story appearance is Showcase #76 (August 1968). Any Superman-related characters indexed for Showcase #75 appear only in house advertisements within the issue, not in the main feature.
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Hank spots "The man who threw the bomb!" The boys follow into an abandoned building, but are trapped. Mobsters plan to assassinate Judge Hall. Don wishes for super-strength, or power... A "strange, disembodied" voice offers the bickering boys power. Hank gets an angry red-white hawk costume. Don gets a baby-blue dove outfit, and doesn't want it! "Whenever injustice strikes" they need only call the names "Hawk" and "Dove", but the powers will fade when not needed. Smashing free, they run, swim, and climb the hospital walls to save their dad.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
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