Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Rob's Room: Hawk and Dove Series circa 1968

Hawk and Dove Series circa 1968 (via Wikipedia):
Spinning off from their Showcase debut, Don and Hank Hall received their own series titled The Hawk and the Dove. Created by Steve Ditko and Steve Skeates, 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.

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