Hawk and Dove

Hank Hall is originally the superhero Hawk of Hawk and Dove. Hawk represents "chaos", while Dove represents "order". His brother Don Hall dies during Crisis on Infinite Earths and is replaced with Dawn Granger.^[1]

Armageddon 2001: Monarch

Monarch is an oppressive tyrant from a bleak, dystopian Earth fifty years in the future. The people are unhappy with his rule, particularly scientist Matthew Ryder, an expert on temporal studies, who is convinced he can use his technology to travel back in time and prevent the maniacal ruler from ever coming to power. He learns that forty years ago, one of Earth's strongest and most powerful heroes eventually turns evil and becomes Monarch, and ten years from that event he conquers the world. During a time travel experiment, Matthew is transformed into a being called "Waverider", and begins searching the timestream for the hero who becomes Monarch. Monarch follows him and comes into battle with the heroes of the present day. In the ensuing battle, he kills Dove, and her enraged partner kills him for it. Removing the villain's mask, Hank discovers that he is Monarch, and dons the armor.^[1]

The reveal of Hank Hall as Monarch led to some controversy amongst the fan community; Monarch was originally intended to be revealed as Captain Atom, with clues in the story pointing towards this which had to be discarded when it was changed at the last minute. This change was due to the premature leaking of Monarch's identity. While Monarch was always supposed to be Captain Atom, this was supposed to be a secret. When Monarch's identity was prematurely leaked, DC decided to preserve the surprise of the story by switching Monarch's identity to that of Hank Hall.

As many fans pointed out, Hawk and Dove (vol. 3) Annual #2 has Hank Hall fighting Monarch face to face in 2001 with Hawk being the destroyer of Monarch.^[3] Dove allows Waverider to see a multitude of futures and realize Hawk is Monarch.

Armageddon: The Alien Agenda

When hostile aliens encounter Monarch and Captain Atom in the past (sometime between 230 and 65 million years ago), they attempt to enlist both (with each figure having no knowledge of the other involved) to assist them in creating a wormhole. The wormhole's creation would destroy the universe in which the primitive Earth existed, but would allow the aliens to travel freely.

Zero Hour: Extant

Hank Hall as Extant during Zero Hour, art by Eric Battle.

Shortly after returning to the present, Monarch confronts Waverider and uses his power to see the past and future, becoming aware of the power within him. It is explained at this point that when Monarch killed Dove, her powers went directly into Hawk. Realising this, Monarch unleashes his hidden powers and becomes Extant.^[4] Extant then removes Waverider's timetravel device and joins forces with renegade Green Lantern Hal Jordan, now known as Parallax, in a plan to alter time as they saw fit.^[1]

His first act is to alter the future so that he can have a metahuman army at his disposal, mostly consisting of members of the Teen Titans; his plan is to amass an army so powerful that no one can interfere with his efforts to control time itself. Several armies of heroes band together to stop his plans before they began in the 30th century, and alter history so that his followers never come to exist in the future.

Down, but not out, Extant begins to strike back at the heroes at Ground Zero, the beginning of time. Parallax warps several metahumans from various time periods together for the ultimate assault, and Extant hits the Atom with a chronal blast, de-aging him into a teenager. Sensing defeat is imminent, he escapes the fight, promising vengeance at a later date.

Extant first reappears in the 1999 one-shot "Impulse: Bart Saves the Universe".^[5] In it, Extant picks a fight with the original Justice Society as a means of tricking the Linear Men into saving the life of an innocent bystander who was destined to die. The man they saved would now go on to develop a nuclear weapon that, when tested, would shift the Earth out of its proper orbit, causing massive changes in the timelines of some of Earth's greatest heroes. Among these changes, Hal Jordan never becomes Green Lantern, thus he never becomes Parallax, and never stops Extant from destroying all of time. Fortunately for the citizens of time, Impulse arrives and is barely able to defeat Extant and prevent the Linear Men from saving the doomed scientist.

He engages the Justice Society again on a later date as he seeks to acquire the reality-warping power of the Worlogog, recently dismantled by Hourman, who fears its power. Although Extant succeeds in his goal with the aid of Metron's stolen Mobius Chair, Doctor Fate learns from the imprisoned Mordru that when Hourman dismantled the Worlogog, he retained a small fragment of it, thus creating an infinitesimal flaw in the prime Worlogog that the JSA can exploit.

After the resurrected Dove sacrifices herself to distract Extant, Hourman divides his Hour of Power amongst his teammates, granting them all immunity to Extant's reality warping powers for four minutes, each of them attacking him on a different temporal plane until being able to separate him from the Worlogog. Following this setback, Extant again attempts to escape. Instead, he is teleported by Hourman and Metron, at Atom Smasher's behest, into the seat of an airplane whose crash Kobra caused earlier in the timestream. Atom Smasher's mother originally died on the plane that, but he replaces her with a weakened Extant, saving her life and murdering the super villain in the process.

Hawk restored

In response to fan-criticism of Armageddon 2001, many of whose readers felt that the character of Hawk had been severely misused in the story's last-minute changes, DC Comics set about restoring the character as he had originally been intended; a hero. DC retconned Extant's portion of Hank Hall's timeline in issue 14 of JSA, dated September 2000, in which Metron announced his intention to erase the villain's "wretched timeline" with his Mobius Chair. This was the second issue of a 3-part story entitled The Hunt for Extant! (the details of which are listed above). After this, DC also retcons Monarch's portion of Hall's timeline with the final issue of the 6-part miniseries The Battle for Blüdhaven, dated September 2006, which now depicts Captain Atom's transformation into Monarch, as had been DC's original intention back in 1991. Hawk is restored, but he is not revived until the final issue of Blackest Night.

Blackest Night

Hank Hall as the resurrected White Lantern Hawk from Birds of Prey #4, art by Ryan Sook.

In the Blackest Night crossover, Hank Hall is reanimated as a member of the undead Black Lantern Corps. The black power rings also try to reanimate his brother Don, but are denied, stating "Don Hall of Earth at Peace".^[6] Hank then tracks down and attacks Dawn and the new Hawk (Holly Granger). After a short battle, Hank rams his hand into Holly's chest, ripping her heart out, and using it to charge his ring.^[7] Holly's body is then revived by a black ring, and the two attack Dawn together. Severely outmatched, Dawn retreats, with Hank and Holly giving chase.^[8] Hank and Holly follow Dawn to Titans Tower, where more Black Lantern Titans are attacking the living heroes. The two eventually overwhelm Dawn, with Holly plunging her hand into Dawn's chest. Dawn suddenly radiates a white energy that completely destroys Holly's body and ring. The other Black Lanterns, seeing Dawn as their greatest threat, attack her. However, she turns the light on them, destroying all but Hank, Tempest and Terra who quickly retreat.^[9] While battling the Black Lanterns at Coast City, Hank is later brought back to life by the power of the white light.^[10] Dawn has a vision of Don who tells Dawn that she can save Hank, and to not give up on him.^[9]

Brightest Day/Birds of Prey

At the beginning of the Brightest Day event, Hank and Dawn begin working together again as a crime-fighting duo. Dawn expresses worries over Hank's increasingly violent demeanor, but he simply brushes off her concerns.^[11] While stopping an army of powerful teenaged super villains in Gotham City, Hank and Dawn are invited by Zinda Blake to join the Birds of Prey.^[12] The two are immediately called by Oracle to help Black Canary and Huntress during their battle with a dangerous villainess known as the White Canary. Dove attempts to defeat her herself, but is surprised when White Canary is somehow able to dodge her attack and then draw blood from her.^[13] Hank and Dawn later encounter Deadman who Hank asks to resurrect Don.^[14] At a crater in Silver City, New Mexico, Deadman attempts to revive Don, only to be prevented from doing so by the Entity.^[15] As a number of onlookers (including Jackson Hyde) watch the Entity speak to the heroes, it instructs Hank to catch the boomerang that Captain Boomerang will throw at Dove.^[16]

After being injured trying to kill himself because of depression, Hank Hall is sent to a hospital while his teammates plan their next move.^[17] During his hospital stay, Hank has a vision of himself, clad in a White Lantern uniform and talking to Don. Just before the dream ends, Don assures his brother that he is at peace.^[18] Later, Dawn is transported to the Star City forest by the Entity, Hawk unintentionally went with her, but when the "dark avatar" made his presence known, the Entity tells them that they must protect the forest and withstand the ultimate savior, which is Alec Holland.^[19]

It was revealed that Captain Boomerang's mission for throwing the boomerang was to free Hawk as an avatar of war from the Lords of Chaos because his act of saving Dove would have broken their hold on him to be his own self. However, he failed to catch the boomerang and instead it was caught by Boston Brand, who ended up dying in the process and used his final act to move his white power ring to Alec Holland and bring back the Swamp Thing to cleanse the Green of Nekron's influence.^[20]

Television

• Hank Hall as Hawk appears in Justice League Unlimited, voiced by Fred Savage. This version is depicted as having a strong bond with his brother Dove (Don Hall). In their self-titled episode, their fighting styles are thoroughly contrasted; Hawk employs brute-force, aggressive tactics, at times resembling a football player while Dove uses a blend of techniques reminiscent of aikido or judo, using his attacker's movements to fling aside. After defeating some thugs in a bar, Hawk and Dove are enlisted by Wonder Woman to help stop Ares from causing war in Kaznia. They are successful due to Dove's peaceful resistance against the rage-powered Annihilator. The brothers are last seen in the series finale "Destroyer" where they fight off Parademons alongside several other Justice League members. They later appear in the final scene running down the steps of the Metro Tower, along with Steve Ditko's fellow creations: the Question, the Creeper and Captain Atom.
• Hank Hall as Hawk appears in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, voiced by Greg Ellis. In the teaser for "When OMAC Attacks!", he and Dove help Batman stop an intergalactic war between the Controllers and the Warlords of Okaara, but both have different approaches to this matter, escalating in their bickering and fight. Regardless, Batman gets the two sides' leaders to sign the peace treaty and end the war. They also briefly appear in the two-part episode "The Siege of Starro!" amongst the heroes under Starro's control.
• Hank Hall as Hawk appears in Titans, portrayed by Alan Ritchson, with Tait Blum as a younger version of the character.^[21][22] This version has no powers, but has high physical prowess gained from his past as a football player. In the series, Hank and his half-brother Don Hall are the original Hawk and Dove team that hunt down sexual predators, motivated by abuse that Hank's football coach inflicted on him as a child. After Don is killed in the same accident that kills Dawn Granger's mother, Hank has a romantic pairing with Dawn while subsequently being Hawk and Dove respectively. Ritchson left the series with the third season, where Jason Todd—under Scarecrow's influence—implants a bomb into Hank and manipulates Dawn into detonating it. Hank helps Donna Troy and Tim Drake escape from the afterlife before reuniting with Don.^[23]
  • Ritchson also appear in the Arrowverse crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths. In the Supergirl episode "Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part One", Hawk appears via archive footage from the episode "Trigon".^[24] In the Legends of Tomorrow episode "Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part Five", Hank and Dawn appear via archive footage from the episode "Titans".^[25]

Web series

• Hank Hall as Hawk appears in DC Super Hero Girls with Dove (Dawn Granger). They appear as background students of Super Hero High.