{"id":9978,"date":"2024-06-02T15:14:59","date_gmt":"2024-06-02T14:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9978"},"modified":"2024-06-02T15:14:59","modified_gmt":"2024-06-02T14:14:59","slug":"daredevil-villains-25-nighthawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9978","title":{"rendered":"Daredevil Villains #25: Nighthawk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>DAREDEVIL #62 (March 1970)<\/strong>
\n“Quoth the Nighthawk, ‘Nevermore!'”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Roy Thomas<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Gene Colan<\/strong>
\nInker: Syd Shores<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Artie Simek<\/strong>
\nColourist: not credited<\/strong>
\nEditor: Stan Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n

We’ve skipped issue #61, which is a rematch with Cobra, Mr Hyde and Jester. And that brings us to a guy who just marginally qualifies for this feature.<\/p>\n

This is where I normally say: No, not that one. This is a long-forgotten one who appeared in one issue of Daredevil <\/em>at the tail end of the Silver Age. But… yes, that Nighthawk. Kyle Richmond. The one who goes on to join the Defenders.<\/p>\n

What’s he doing here? Well, at this point, Nighthawk’s only previous appearances were in 1969’s Avengers<\/em> #69-70, as part of the Squadron Sinister. In that story, the Grandmaster alters history to create four supervillains that he can pit against the Avengers – Hyperion, Nighthawk, Dr Spectrum and the Whizzer. The Squadron are blatantly a knock-off Justice League of America, and the whole thing is just a thinly veiled excuse to have the Avengers fight the JLA.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Nighthawk is Batman with the serial numbers filed off, and a costume which evokes Batman while being legally distinct. Avengers<\/em> #70 had simply mentioned that he used to be “Kyle Richmond, a bored and boring tycoon” – the implication being that until the Grandmaster came along, he had been Bruce Wayne without the inciting event. He had also mentioned “night-born powers”, without making clear what they were. Technically, he’s Batman-inspired rather than an outright Batman copy. But for the purposes of Avengers<\/em> #69-70, he’s Batman. That’s the whole point.<\/p>\n

Nighthawk’s next appearance will be in Defenders<\/em> in 1973, where he immediately turns on his team, joins the Defenders and debuts a new costume that isn’t quite so Batman-adjacent.<\/p>\n

But in between, there’s this politely forgotten issue, where Roy Thomas tries to retool him as a Daredevil villain. There are worse ideas. On a basic “who’d win” level, Daredevil and Batman are reasonable matches. Of course, the Daredevil of 1970 is a million miles down the pecking order from Batman. But this is his book. And Nighthawk does seem to lend himself to being a free-standing villain more naturally than other Squadron members.<\/p>\n

This time, Nighthawk has an actual origin flashback. He was a playboy tycoon and amateur scientist; the Grandmaster placed an alchemy book in his collection, and he felt compelled to follow one of its recipes. By doing that, he produced a potion that doubled his physical prowess in moonlight. And after a few months of training with his new abilities, the Grandmaster showed up to get him. It’s all a bit token, but hey, it helps to shore up the idea that he’s legally distinct from Batman.<\/p>\n

That said, there’s no point using Nighthawk – at least without radical retooling – unless you’re going to lean into the fact that he’s basically Batman. So Nighthawk is a rival superhero who wants to steal Daredevil’s fame. He has a device to make Daredevil dizzy, and uses it to swoop in when our hero is on the verge of catching criminals, before publicly defeating them himself. The plan is to make himself look more impressive than Daredevil. But because he’s not a real superhero, Nighthawk doesn’t actually hand the criminals he defeats over to the authorities. He just lets them go.<\/p>\n

This is clearly meant to fit with the idea that he’s a fake superhero, but it makes no sense in terms of the story. The guys Nighthawk catches aren’t stooges – they’re real criminals. There’s some suggestion that Nighthawk is being overly aggressive in beating them up because he knows that’s what the public will like – he’s the edgy new superhero of the 1970s! But… if they’re not paid stooges, and you’ve gone to the trouble of catching them, why not turn them in? Wouldn’t the public like that too? Won’t people figure out at some point if none of Nighthawk’s targets ever get arrested or prosecuted? What’s the upside in letting them go? But… there wouldn’t be a plot if he didn’t.<\/p>\n

Nighthawk’s wider plan is, let’s say, nebulous. He’s going to replace Daredevil in New York’s affections and then “make my bid for real power – political power”. Quite how those two ideas connect is left as an exercise for the reader’s imagination. Is he planning to run for President under a mask or something? There’s also a suggestion that he’s mainly by a desire for adulation, which is perhaps a stronger angle – if you were feeling generous, you could argue that that’s his real concern, and that everything else is just him trying to convince himself that there’s more to it.<\/p>\n

On that reading, Nighthawk could have had all the public acclaim he wanted, if only he’d just fought crime for real. That might have been the thinking behind redeeming Nighthawk in Defenders<\/em>, but it doesn’t seem to be the idea here. After Daredevil exposes his dastardly plan, Nighthawk makes a break for it, swearing revenge. The story seems to be setting up Nighthawk as a returning villain, which doesn’t happen at all. Instead, he vanishes for over three years.<\/p>\n

But there’s a clear disconnect between art and dialogue. This is yet another issue that spends an absurd amount of time on the opening scene and has to rush the ending, so that could be part of it. Still, the final three panels show Nighthawk falling in front of an oncoming subway train, the train speeding by, and Daredevil looking dramatically down at the tracks. The captions, in contrast, assure us that there is no body, and that the echoing voice of Nighthawk is swearing revenge.<\/p>\n

It certainly looks like Nighthawk was meant to die at the end in a way that was rather too gruesome even to imply in a Code book in 1970. Or maybe Colan just got carried away and went beyond what Thomas originally intended. Or maybe somebody thought that throwing Batman under a train might annoy DC a little too much.<\/p>\n

The idea of Nighthawk as a narcissistic villain who poses as a hero isn’t such a bad one. Nighthawk as a bombastic but aggressively serious “hero”, in contrast to Daredevil’s more swashbuckling persona – a sort of prototype post-Silver Age hero – might have worked. Still, in the long run, he was better off in Defenders<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAREDEVIL #62 (March 1970) “Quoth the Nighthawk, ‘Nevermore!’” Writer: Roy Thomas Penciller: Gene Colan Inker: Syd Shores Letterer: Artie Simek Colourist: not credited Editor: Stan Lee We’ve skipped issue #61, which is a rematch with Cobra, Mr Hyde and Jester. And that brings us to a guy who just marginally qualifies for this feature. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daredevil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9978"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10136,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9978\/revisions\/10136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}