The Hawk and the Dove Hank Hall is originally the
superhero Hawk of the superhero duo
the Hawk and the Dove. The Hawk represents "chaos", while the Dove represents "order". His brother Don Hall dies during
Crisis on Infinite Earths and is replaced with Dawn Granger. Extant removes Waverider's time travel device and joins forces with renegade
Green Lantern Hal Jordan, now known as
Parallax, to alter time as they see fit. 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.
Impulse stops Extant and prevents 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 the Hourman dismantled the Worlogog, he retained a small fragment of it, thus creating an infinitesimal flaw that the JSA can exploit. After the resurrected Dove sacrifices herself to distract Extant, the Hourman divides his powers amongst his teammates, granting them all immunity to Extant's reality-warping powers for four minutes and enabling them to separate him from the Worlogog. Following this setback, Extant again attempts to escape. Instead, he is teleported by Hourman and Metron, at the
Atom Smasher's behest, into the seat of an airplane whose crash
Kobra caused earlier in the timestream. The Atom Smasher's mother originally died on the plane that day, but he replaces her with a weakened Extant, saving her life and killing Extant.
The Hawk restored In response to fan-criticism of
Armageddon 2001, many of whose readers felt that the character of the 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 timeline. This was the second issue of a three-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 six-issue 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. The Hawk is restored, but he is not revived until the last issue of
Blackest Night.
Blackest Night version of the Hawk from
Birds of Prey #4, art by
Ryan Sook In
Blackest Night, Hank Hall returns as a member of the
Black Lantern Corps. The
black power rings also try to reanimate his brother Don, but are denied as he is at peace in death and unable to be resurrected. Hank then tracks down and attacks Dawn and the new Hawk (Holly Granger). After a short battle, Hank kills Holly by ripping her heart out. Holly's body is then revived by a Black Lantern and attacks Dawn. Severely outmatched, Dawn retreats, with Hank and Holly giving chase. Hank and Holly follow Dawn to Titans Tower, where the Black Lanterns are attacking the living heroes. Dawn suddenly radiates a white energy that destroys Holly and several other Black Lanterns. While battling the Black Lanterns at
Coast City, Hank is fully resurrected by the white light. Dawn has a vision of Don who tells Dawn that she can save Hank, and to not give up on him.
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. While stopping an army of powerful teenaged supervillains in
Gotham City, Hank and Dawn are invited by
Zinda Blake to join the
Birds of Prey. The two are immediately called by the
Oracle to help the
Black Canary and the
Huntress during their battle with a dangerous villainess known as the White Canary. The Dove attempts to defeat her herself, but is surprised when the White Canary is somehow able to dodge her attack and then draw blood from her. Hank and Dawn later encounter
Deadman, who Hank asks to resurrect Don. In
Silver City, New Mexico, Deadman attempts to revive Don, only to be prevented from doing so by the
Life Entity. 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 the Dove. After being injured by the
Penguin, Hank is sent to a hospital while his teammates plan their next move. 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. Later, Dawn is transported to the
Star City forest by the Entity. The 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. It was revealed that Captain Boomerang's mission for throwing the boomerang was to free the Hawk as an avatar of war from the Lords of Chaos because his act of saving the 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 Deadman, who ended up dying in the process and used his final act to move his white power ring to Holland and bring back the
Swamp Thing to cleanse the Green of
Nekron's influence. ==Powers and abilities==