Nighthawks
Encyclopedia
Nighthawks is a 1942 painting by Edward Hopper
that portrays people sitting in a downtown diner
late at night. It is considered Hopper's most famous painting, as well as one of the most recognizable in American art
. Within months of its completion, it was sold to the Art Institute of Chicago
for $3,000, and has remained there ever since.
s, although as Jo Hopper's journal entry indicates, the title might have been inspired by the beaklike nose of one of the men at the counter.
The scene was supposedly inspired by a diner
(since demolished) in Greenwich Village
, Hopper's home neighborhood in Manhattan
. Hopper himself said the painting "was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet." Additionally, he noted that "I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger."
This reference has led Hopper aficionados to engage in a search for the location of the original diner. The spot most usually associated with the former location is a now-vacant lot known as Mulry Square
, at the intersection of Seventh Avenue South, Greenwich Avenue, and West 11th Street, about seven blocks west of Hopper's studio on Washington Square. However, according to The New York Times
, this cannot be the location of the diner that inspired the painting, as a gas station occupied that lot from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Many artists have produced works that allude or respond to Nighthawks. An early example is George Segal
's sculpture The Diner (1964–1966), made from parts of a real diner with Segal's white plaster figures added, which resembles Nighthawks in its sense of loneliness and alienation, as well as in its subject matter. Roger Brown
, one of the Chicago Imagists
, included a view into a corner cafe in his painting Puerto Rican Wedding (1969), a stylized nighttime street scene.
Hopper influenced the Photorealists
of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Ralph Goings
, who evoked Nighthawks in several paintings of diners. Richard Estes
painted a corner store in People's Flowers (1971), but in daylight, with the shop's large window reflecting the street and sky.
More direct visual quotations began to appear in the 1970s. Gottfried Helnwein
's painting Boulevard of Broken Dreams (1984) replaces the three patrons with American pop culture icons Humphrey Bogart
, Marilyn Monroe
, and James Dean
, and the attendant with Elvis Presley
. According to Hopper scholar Gail Levin, Helnwein connected the bleak mood of Nighthawks with 1950s American cinema and with "the tragic fate of the decade's best-loved celebrities." Greenwich Avenue (1986), one of several parodies painted by Mark Kostabi
, increases the painting's scale and uses a palette of garish electric colors; the human figures are red and faceless. Nighthawks Revisited, a 1980 parody by Red Grooms
, clutters the street scene with pedestrians, cats, and trash. A 2005 Banksy
parody shows a fat, shirtless soccer hooligan in Union Flag
boxers standing inebriated outside the diner, apparently having just smashed the diner window with a nearby chair.
's poem "Nighthawks: After Edward Hopper's Painting" imagines the man and woman sitting together in the diner as an estranged couple: "I bet she wrote him a letter/ Whatever it said, he's no longer the man / Who'd read her letters twice." Joyce Carol Oates
wrote interior monologues for the figures in the painting in her poem "Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, 1942". A special issue of Der Spiegel
included five brief dramatizations that build five different plots around the painting; one, by screenwriter Christof Schlingensief, turned the scene into a chainsaw massacre. Erik Jendresen also wrote a short story inspired by this painting.
films of the early 1930s such as Scarface
and Little Caesar
, a connection that can be seen in the clothes of the customers in the diner. Nighthawks and works such as Night Shadows (1921) anticipate the look of film noir
, whose development Hopper may have influenced.
Hopper was an acknowledged influence on the film musical Pennies from Heaven
(1981), in which director Ken Adams recreated Nighthawks as a set. Director Wim Wenders
recreated Nighthawks as the set for a film-within-a-film in The End of Violence
(1997). Wenders suggested that Hopper's paintings appeal to filmmakers because "You can always tell where the camera is." In Glengarry Glen Ross
(1992), two characters visit a café resembling the diner in a scene that illustrates their solitude and despair. Hard Candy
(2005) acknowledged the debt by setting one scene at a "Nighthawks Diner", where a character purchases a T-shirt with Nighthawks printed on it. The painting was also briefly used as a background for a scene in the animated film Heavy Traffic
(1973) by director Ralph Bakshi
.
Nighthawks also influenced the "future noir" look of Blade Runner
; director Ridley Scott
said "I was constantly waving a reproduction of this painting under the noses of the production team to illustrate the look and mood I was after". In his review of Alex Proyas' Dark City
, Roger Ebert noted that the film had "store windows that owe something to Edward Hopper's Nighthawks."
's album Nighthawks at the Diner
(1975) features Nighthawks-inspired lyrics.
The video for Voice of the Beehive
's song "Monsters and Angels", from Honey Lingers
, is set in a diner reminiscent of the one in Nighthawks, with the band-members portraying waitstaff and patrons. The band's web site said they "went with Edward Hopper's classic painting, Nighthawks, as a visual guide. The end result was an artful, sleek video, which made Tracey especially happy because she got to wear her beloved babydoll dress in it."
The television series The Tick, Dead Like Me
, The Simpsons
, Rocko's Modern Life
, The Fairly OddParents
, Mad Men
, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
have all placed their own characters in versions of Nighthawks.
In the That '70s Show
episode "Drive In," a scene ends with Red and Kitty Foreman sitting in a diner named "Phillies" when Kitty states that the moment seems familiar. The camera zooms out showing Nighthawks with Red and Kitty wearing the suit and red dress, respectively, of the man and woman sitting together.
and his reindeer, or the cast of The Adventures of Tintin
or Peanuts
.
One parody of Nighthawks even inspired a parody of its own. Michael Bedard's painting Window Shopping (1989), part of his Sitting Ducks
series of posters, replaces the figures in the diner with ducks and shows a crocodile outside eying the ducks in anticipation. Poverino Peppino parodied this image in Boulevard of Broken Ducks (1993), in which a contented crocodile lies on the counter while four ducks stand outside in the rain.
The ice cream parlor in the Veggie Tales video The End of Silliness?
is modeled after Nighthawks.
characters who have appeared in Nighthawks-inspired diners include the Human Torch in an Alex Ross
panel in the graphic novel Marvels
, Batman
's Commissioner Gordon
(in Batman: Year One
, Gordon appears in a diner, the name of which is HOPPER), Spider Jerusalem
, X-Factor
and The Tick
.
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
that portrays people sitting in a downtown diner
Diner
A diner, also spelled dinor in western Pennsylvania is a prefabricated restaurant building characteristic of North America, especially in the Midwest, in New York City, in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey, and in other areas of the Northeastern United States, although examples can be found throughout...
late at night. It is considered Hopper's most famous painting, as well as one of the most recognizable in American art
American Art
American Art is the debut album of the band Weatherbox. It was released on May 8, 2007 on Doghouse Records. The album received critical acclaim from several sources including underground music distribution company Smartpunk, who lauded the band's style:...
. Within months of its completion, it was sold to the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
for $3,000, and has remained there ever since.
Description and possible themes
The term "night-hawk", like "night owl," is used figuratively to describe someone who stays up late, and is a name shared with a real family of birds called (naturally) nighthawkNighthawk
A nighthawk is a nocturnal bird of the subfamily Chordeilinae, within the nightjar family, Caprimulgidae. Nighthawks are medium-sized New World birds, with long wings, short legs, and very short bills. They usually nest on the ground. They feed on flying insects. The Least Nighthawk, at and ,...
s, although as Jo Hopper's journal entry indicates, the title might have been inspired by the beaklike nose of one of the men at the counter.
The scene was supposedly inspired by a diner
Diner
A diner, also spelled dinor in western Pennsylvania is a prefabricated restaurant building characteristic of North America, especially in the Midwest, in New York City, in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey, and in other areas of the Northeastern United States, although examples can be found throughout...
(since demolished) in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
, Hopper's home neighborhood in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. Hopper himself said the painting "was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet." Additionally, he noted that "I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger."
This reference has led Hopper aficionados to engage in a search for the location of the original diner. The spot most usually associated with the former location is a now-vacant lot known as Mulry Square
Mulry Square
Currently owned by the NYC Metropolitan Transit Authority, Mulry Square is a triangular parking lot at the southwest corner of Greenwich Avenue and Seventh Avenue South which was once thought to be the site of a wedge-shaped diner that was the inspiration for Edward Hopper's famous painting...
, at the intersection of Seventh Avenue South, Greenwich Avenue, and West 11th Street, about seven blocks west of Hopper's studio on Washington Square. However, according to The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, this cannot be the location of the diner that inspired the painting, as a gas station occupied that lot from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Influence on popular culture
Because it is so widely recognized, the diner scene in Nighthawks has served as the model for countless homages and parodies.Painting and sculpture
George Segal (artist)
George Segal was an American painter and sculptor associated with the Pop Art movement. He was presented with a National Medal of Arts in 1999.-Works:...
's sculpture The Diner (1964–1966), made from parts of a real diner with Segal's white plaster figures added, which resembles Nighthawks in its sense of loneliness and alienation, as well as in its subject matter. Roger Brown
Roger Brown (artist)
Roger Brown was an American artist who was a member of the Chicago Imagists, a group in the 1960s and 1970s who turned to representational art. His paintings are owned by many of the most important art museums in the US.He was born in Hamilton, Alabama and raised in Opelika...
, one of the Chicago Imagists
Chicago Imagists
The Chicago Imagists is the name of a group of representational artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in the late 1960s. Their work was known for grotesquerie, surrealism and complete uninvolvement with New York art world trends...
, included a view into a corner cafe in his painting Puerto Rican Wedding (1969), a stylized nighttime street scene.
Hopper influenced the Photorealists
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...
of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Ralph Goings
Ralph Goings
Ralph Goings is an American painter closely associated with the Photorealism movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s...
, who evoked Nighthawks in several paintings of diners. Richard Estes
Richard Estes
Richard Estes is an American artist, best known for his photorealist paintings. The paintings generally consist of reflective, clean, and inanimate city and geometric landscapes. He is regarded as one of the founders of the international photo-realist movement of the late 1960s, with such painters...
painted a corner store in People's Flowers (1971), but in daylight, with the shop's large window reflecting the street and sky.
More direct visual quotations began to appear in the 1970s. Gottfried Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein is an Austrian-Irish fine artist, painter, photographer, installation and performance artist.-Work:Helnwein studied at the University of Visual Art in Vienna...
's painting Boulevard of Broken Dreams (1984) replaces the three patrons with American pop culture icons Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
, Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
, and James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
, and the attendant with Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
. According to Hopper scholar Gail Levin, Helnwein connected the bleak mood of Nighthawks with 1950s American cinema and with "the tragic fate of the decade's best-loved celebrities." Greenwich Avenue (1986), one of several parodies painted by Mark Kostabi
Mark Kostabi
Kalev Mark Kostabi is an American artist and composer.-Early life:Mark Kostabi was born in Los Angeles on November 27, 1960 to Estonian immigrants Kaljo and Rita Kostabi. He was raised in Whittier, California and studied drawing and painting at California State University, Fullerton...
, increases the painting's scale and uses a palette of garish electric colors; the human figures are red and faceless. Nighthawks Revisited, a 1980 parody by Red Grooms
Red Grooms
Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...
, clutters the street scene with pedestrians, cats, and trash. A 2005 Banksy
Banksy
Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, film director, and painter.His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine irreverent dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique...
parody shows a fat, shirtless soccer hooligan in Union Flag
Union Flag
The Union Flag, also known as the Union Jack, is the flag of the United Kingdom. It retains an official or semi-official status in some Commonwealth Realms; for example, it is known as the Royal Union Flag in Canada. It is also used as an official flag in some of the smaller British overseas...
boxers standing inebriated outside the diner, apparently having just smashed the diner window with a nearby chair.
Literature
Several writers have explored how the customers in Nighthawks came to be in a diner at night, or what will happen next. Wolf WondratschekWolf Wondratschek
Wolf Wondratschek is a German author. He was born in Rudolstadt in Thuringia.-Life:Wondratschek grew up in Karlsruhe. From 1962 through 1967, he studied literature, philosophy and sociology at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, Georg-August University of Göttingen, and the Johann Wolfgang...
's poem "Nighthawks: After Edward Hopper's Painting" imagines the man and woman sitting together in the diner as an estranged couple: "I bet she wrote him a letter/ Whatever it said, he's no longer the man / Who'd read her letters twice." Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
wrote interior monologues for the figures in the painting in her poem "Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, 1942". A special issue of Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
included five brief dramatizations that build five different plots around the painting; one, by screenwriter Christof Schlingensief, turned the scene into a chainsaw massacre. Erik Jendresen also wrote a short story inspired by this painting.
Film
Hopper was an avid moviegoer, and critics have noted the resemblance of his paintings to film stills. Several of his paintings suggest gangsterGangster
A gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Some gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from mob and the suffix -ster....
films of the early 1930s such as Scarface
Scarface (1932 film)
Scarface is a 1932 American gangster film starring Paul Muni and George Raft, produced by Howard Hughes, directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson, and written by Ben Hecht based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Armitage Trail...
and Little Caesar
Little Caesar (film)
Little Caesar is a 1931 Warner Bros. Pre-Code crime film. It tells the story of a hoodlum who ascends the ranks of organized crime until he reaches its upper echelons. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, the film stars Edward G. Robinson and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.. The story was adapted by Francis Edward...
, a connection that can be seen in the clothes of the customers in the diner. Nighthawks and works such as Night Shadows (1921) anticipate the look of film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
, whose development Hopper may have influenced.
Hopper was an acknowledged influence on the film musical Pennies from Heaven
Pennies from Heaven (1981 film)
Pennies from Heaven is a 1981 musical film. The film was based on a 1978 BBC television drama. In 1981, Dennis Potter adapted his own screenplay for a film of the same name for American audiences, with its setting changed to Depression era Chicago. Potter was nominated for the 1981 Academy Award...
(1981), in which director Ken Adams recreated Nighthawks as a set. Director Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...
recreated Nighthawks as the set for a film-within-a-film in The End of Violence
The End of Violence
The End of Violence is a 1997 film by the German director Wim Wenders. The film's cast includes Bill Pullman, Gabriel Byrne, Traci Lind, Rosalind Chao, Andie MacDowell, and Loren Dean, among others. It also features a soundtrack marked with the signature sounds of Wenders regulars Jon Hassell, Ry...
(1997). Wenders suggested that Hopper's paintings appeal to filmmakers because "You can always tell where the camera is." In Glengarry Glen Ross
Glengarry Glen Ross (film)
Glengarry Glen Ross is a 1992 American drama film, adapted by David Mamet from his acclaimed 1984 Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-winning play of the same name...
(1992), two characters visit a café resembling the diner in a scene that illustrates their solitude and despair. Hard Candy
Hard Candy (film)
Hard Candy is a 2005 psychological thriller film focusing on the confrontation between an assumed sexual predator and a not-so-innocent 14-year-old girl....
(2005) acknowledged the debt by setting one scene at a "Nighthawks Diner", where a character purchases a T-shirt with Nighthawks printed on it. The painting was also briefly used as a background for a scene in the animated film Heavy Traffic
Heavy Traffic
Heavy Traffic is a 1973 American animated film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi. The film, which begins, ends, and occasionally combines with live-action, explores the often surreal fantasies of a young New York cartoonist named Michael Corleone, using pinball imagery as a metaphor for...
(1973) by director Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
.
Nighthawks also influenced the "future noir" look of Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
; director Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
said "I was constantly waving a reproduction of this painting under the noses of the production team to illustrate the look and mood I was after". In his review of Alex Proyas' Dark City
Dark City
Dark City is a 1998 neo-noir science fiction film directed by Alex Proyas. It was adapted from a screenplay written by Proyas, David S. Goyer and Lem Dobbs. The film stars Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, and William Hurt. Sewell plays John Murdoch, a man suffering from amnesia...
, Roger Ebert noted that the film had "store windows that owe something to Edward Hopper's Nighthawks."
Music
Tom WaitsTom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
's album Nighthawks at the Diner
Nighthawks at the Diner
Nighthawks at the Diner is a 1975 album by Tom Waits, released on Asylum Records. The title was inspired by Edward Hopper's 1942 painting Nighthawks....
(1975) features Nighthawks-inspired lyrics.
The video for Voice of the Beehive
Voice of the Beehive
Voice of the Beehive is an Anglo-American alternative pop rock band formed in London in 1986 by Californian sisters Tracey Bryn and Melissa Brooke Belland, daughters of The Four Preps singer, Bruce Belland.- Career :...
's song "Monsters and Angels", from Honey Lingers
Honey Lingers
Honey Lingers is the second album from alternative rock band Voice of the Beehive. Released in 1991 on London Records, the album earned positive reviews from music critics and was a success on U.S. college radio stations....
, is set in a diner reminiscent of the one in Nighthawks, with the band-members portraying waitstaff and patrons. The band's web site said they "went with Edward Hopper's classic painting, Nighthawks, as a visual guide. The end result was an artful, sleek video, which made Tracey especially happy because she got to wear her beloved babydoll dress in it."
Television
Dead Like Me
Dead Like Me was an American-Canadian comedy-drama television series starring Ellen Muth and Mandy Patinkin as grim reapers who reside and work in Seattle, Washington. Filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, the show was created by Bryan Fuller for the Showtime network, where it ran for two seasons...
, The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
, Rocko's Modern Life
Rocko's Modern Life
Rocko's Modern Life is an animated series created by Joe Murray. The show aired for four seasons between 1993 and 1996 on Nickelodeon. Rocko's Modern Life is based around the surreal, parodic adventures of an anthropomorphic wallaby named Rocko, and his life in the city of O-Town...
, The Fairly OddParents
The Fairly OddParents
The Fairly OddParents is an American-Canadian animated television series created by Butch Hartman about the adventures of Timmy Turner, who is granted fairy godparents named Cosmo and Wanda. The series started out as cartoon segments that ran from September 4, 1998 to March 23, 2001 on Oh Yeah!...
, Mad Men
Mad Men
Mad Men is an American dramatic television series created and produced by Matthew Weiner. The series premiered on Sunday evenings on the American cable network AMC and are produced by Lionsgate Television. It premiered on July 19, 2007, and completed its fourth season on October 17, 2010. Each...
, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is an American crime drama television series, which premiered on CBS on October 6, 2000. The show was created by Anthony E. Zuiker and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer...
have all placed their own characters in versions of Nighthawks.
In the That '70s Show
That '70s Show
That '70s Show is an American television period sitcom that centers on the lives of a group of teenage friends living in the fictional suburban town of Point Place, Wisconsin, from May 17, 1976, to December 31, 1979...
episode "Drive In," a scene ends with Red and Kitty Foreman sitting in a diner named "Phillies" when Kitty states that the moment seems familiar. The camera zooms out showing Nighthawks with Red and Kitty wearing the suit and red dress, respectively, of the man and woman sitting together.
Parodies
Nighthawks has been widely referenced and parodied in popular culture. Versions of it have appeared on posters, T-shirts, and greeting cards, as well as in comic books and advertisements. Typically, these parodies—like Helnwein's Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which became a popular poster—retain the diner and the highly recognizable diagonal composition, but replace the patrons and attendant with other characters: animals, Santa ClausSanta Claus
Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...
and his reindeer, or the cast of The Adventures of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...
or Peanuts
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward...
.
One parody of Nighthawks even inspired a parody of its own. Michael Bedard's painting Window Shopping (1989), part of his Sitting Ducks
Sitting Ducks
Sitting Ducks is a lithograph created by Michael Bedard in the late 1970s. It depicts a literal interpretation of the idiom "sitting duck". Three ducks are relaxing in the sun on white chairs by the poolside, one looks up and notices two bullet holes in the wall.Bedard then went on to create an...
series of posters, replaces the figures in the diner with ducks and shows a crocodile outside eying the ducks in anticipation. Poverino Peppino parodied this image in Boulevard of Broken Ducks (1993), in which a contented crocodile lies on the counter while four ducks stand outside in the rain.
The ice cream parlor in the Veggie Tales video The End of Silliness?
The End of Silliness?
The End of Silliness? also known as Silly Sing Along 2 is the eleventh episode in the VeggieTales animated series. Released on November 24, 1998, it is the second of several sing-along videos. In this episode, Archibald Asparagus has canceled Silly Songs with Larry, and replaced it with "Love Songs...
is modeled after Nighthawks.
Print media, other
Comic bookComic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
characters who have appeared in Nighthawks-inspired diners include the Human Torch in an Alex Ross
Alex Ross
Nelson Alexander "Alex" Ross is an American comic book painter, illustrator, and plotter. He is praised for his realistic, human depictions of classic comic book characters. Since the 1990s he has done work for Marvel Comics and DC Comics Nelson Alexander "Alex" Ross (born January 22, 1970) is an...
panel in the graphic novel Marvels
Marvels
Marvels is a four-issue comic book limited series written by Kurt Busiek, painted by Alex Ross and edited by Marcus McLaurin, and published by Marvel Comics in 1994....
, Batman
Batman
Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...
's Commissioner Gordon
James Gordon (comics)
James Worthington Gordon, Sr. is a fictional character, an ally of Batman that appears in comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and was created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane...
(in Batman: Year One
Batman: Year One
"Year One", later referred to as "Batman: Year One", is an American comic book story arc written by Frank Miller, illustrated by David Mazzucchelli, colored by Richmond Lewis, and lettered by Todd Klein...
, Gordon appears in a diner, the name of which is HOPPER), Spider Jerusalem
Spider Jerusalem
Spider Jerusalem is a fictional character and the protagonist of the comic book Transmetropolitan, created by writer Warren Ellis and artist Darick Robertson, introduced under the now-defunct Helix imprint of DC Comics before being moved to the Vertigo imprint.-Background:Spider is a renegade gonzo...
, X-Factor
X-Factor (comics)
X-Factor is an American comic book series published by Marvel Comics. It is a spin-off of the popular X-Men franchise, featuring characters from X-Men stories. The series has been relaunched several times with different team rosters, most recently as X-Factor Investigations.X-Factor launched in...
and The Tick
The Tick
The Tick is a fictional character created by cartoonist Ben Edlund in 1986 as a newsletter mascot for the New England Comics chain of Boston area comic stores. He is an absurdist spoof of comic book superheroes. After its creation, the character spun off into an independent comic book series in...
.
