Polite Dissent

The Doom Patrol and Suicide Squad Special, published in 1988, is the final solo Hawk story. It’s been four years since Dove was killed and Hawk has bounced from title to title, each appearance more embarrassing than the last. This story is his final ignominy (well, at least until Armageddon 2001 #2).

Written back in the glory days of Reaganomics, Hawk travels to Nicaragua to “fight commies.” Unfortunately, his plane is shot down and he is quickly captured by the Sandinistas and held as a political prisoner.

Amanda Waller is ordered by the President to send Task Force X (i.e. Suicide Squad) down to Nicaragua to rescue Hawk, or if that can’t be accomplished, to kill him. Waller places Colonel Flag in charge of a team composed of such second-string (at best) characters as Thinker, Psi, Weasel and Mr. 104.

Certain members of government aren’t happy about the power Waller wields and decide to trick the Doom Patrol into rescuing Hawk and making the Suicide Squad look bad. This isn’t the Grant Morrison Doom Patrol (or even the John Byrne one); it’s the eminently forgettable early ‘80s revival consisting of Celsius, Tempest, Negative Woman and Cliff “Don’t Call Me Robotman” Steele.

Meanwhile, the Soviets would also like to get their hands on Hawk for propaganda purposes, so they send a squad of their Rocket Reds to Nicaragua.

The Doom Patrol and Suicide Squad run into each other almost immediately after arriving in Nicaragua and start fighting. Before either team can gain an advantage, they are surrounded by the Rocket Reds and the real fight begins. The Suicide Squad proves quite inept and within a few minutes they’ve all been killed except for Colonel Flag.

What about Hawk? A mysterious dark-haired stranger breaks into his cell, smashes a hole in the outside wall, throws Hawk through, and then disappears into the jungle. The Doom Patrol, Colonel Flag and Hawk meet up, climb aboard the waiting U.S. military helicopter and fly out of Nicaragua.

The end of the story? Not quite. It turns out that the stranger who rescued Hawk was actually a Soviet agent whose mission was to discredit the Rocket Reds, much like the Doom Patrol were in Nicaragua to discredit Suicide Squad. What’s left after 45 pages of scheming and fighting? Two disgraced (and mostly slaughtered) teams, one rescued Hawk and the Doom Patrol that Time Forgot.

The art, to put it bluntly, is amateurish. I’ve never cared for Erik Larsen’s penciling, and this issue showcases everything I don’t like: angular faces, with a particular love of jutting jaws and masculine-looking women; bizarre giant female lips (all his women look like they’re wearing those Halloween wax lips); the worst hair every drawn in comic books; an inability to master perspective; incomplete backgrounds (if there are any backgrounds at all); inconstant character art from panel to panel; and too many momentum-breaking character close ups The sketchy inking by Bob Lewis only adds to the problem. I’m sure there’s a good story under all the bad art, but I haven’t found it yet.