Marvel’s Ultimate Universe was filled with alternate versions of their characters but who the heck was their low-rent Batman, Hawk-Owl???
The Ultimate Marvel Universe was the perfect time for experimenting with familiar formulas, and it wasn’t just their own hits that Marvel chose to remix. While familiar Marvel heroes like Iron Man and Captain America saw reinventions and updates, the alternate continuity tried its hands at their own take on some of DC’s characters as well.
In so doing the character of Hawk-Owl was born, and he may just be one of Marvel’s most obscure riffs on the Dark Knight they ever tried, but who was he and what ever happened to him?
Created by Ron Zimmerman and Duncan Fegredo in the pages of Ultimate Adventures, Hawk-Owl assembles many of the familiar pieces of the Batman mythos and gives them a twist or inversion to create a unique character. Jack Danner’s family did die tragically when he was young, but as the result of random accidents rather than a criminal element that would motivate him. He did train around the world to become a master martial artist, but his decision to become the vigilante Hawk-Owl was more a consequence of his leftist politics rather than a personal vendetta against the criminal underworld.
The title ran for six issues, featured an appearance from the Ultimate Marvel’s premiere superhero team the Ultimates, and throughout its short life saw further takes on the Batman mythos as Hawk-Owl recruited an orphan sidekick and competed against his arch-nemesis in the form of a Joker rip-off. The references and parallels are about as on the nose as it gets, and the story caps off with Hawk-Owl and Woody (the boy sidekick) teaming up to stop a violent mugger from slaying a family leaving a theater screening of The Mask of Zorro. Hawk-Owl’s arsenal contained many weapons and gadgets, but subtlety was not one of them. Created as the result of Marvel’s promotional “U-Decide” campaign, the troubled production saw the release Ultimate Adventures’ issues string out over the course of nearly two years. Despite the Ultimates crossing over into the title Hawk-Owl and Woody never appeared in any other Ultimate Marvel titles, and the heroes’ final fate beyond their adventures fighting crime on the streets of Chicago remains unknown. Given that the 1610 continuity of Ultimate Marvel has been largely discontinued for years given the universe’s reset the pair seem to be folded away under layers of obscurity unlikely to return.
Notably, this is far from Marvel’s first time doing their own take on the Caped Crusader. Characters like Moon Knight and Night Thrasher share many of the same parallels, such as exorbitant wealth and extensive training fueling their vigilante activities, but perhaps no character is more directly inspired by Batman than Nighthawk. With several alternate versions of Marvel’s Batman existing, what makes Hawk-Owl truly redundant is that even Ultimate Marvel had their own new version of Nighthawk in the pages of Supreme Power.