Henery Hawk

Henery Hawk is a supporting character and minor antagonist on the Foghorn Leghorn shorts from Looney Tunes, originally first appearing as the main villain protagonist on The Squawkin' Hawk in 1942. Originally voiced by Kent Rogers in his debut cartoon, he is later voiced by Mel Blanc beginning with Walky Talky Hawky.

Intentional Despicable Qualities

 * 1) He is usually obnoxious and tries to put up fights with Foghorn Leghorn and Barnyard Dawg, mainly just to eat the former.
 * 2) He also acts very egotistical.
 * 3) In The Squawkin' Hawk and The Foghorn Leghorn, he refuses to listen to his parents/relatives whenever they tell him to not get chicken but does it anyway.
 * 4) *In The Squawkin' Hawk, he refuses to eat worms despite his mother's insistence to do so due to his infant age.
 * 5) *In both The Squawkin' Hawk and You Were Never Duckier, despite being told to go to sleep for the night by his parents, he still proceeds to sneak out to get himself a chicken anyway.
 * 6) *In Walky Talky Hawky (the first pairing with both Barnyard Dog and Foghorn Leghorn), his father tells him the sad fact on how chickenhawks like him and his mother are outcasts who are hated and hunted because they like eating chicken. Henery, still failing to grasp his father's words of discouragement from eating chicken, proceeds to get himself a chicken without realizing the danger of doing it anyway.
 * 7) He is also incredibly stupid and doesn’t know what a chicken is, though to be fair it is due to him living a sheltered life. Some good examples of this include:
 * 8) * In almost every one of his pairings with Foghorn Leghorn, he is basically tricked by Foghorn into believing that Barnyard Dawg or Sylvester are chickens, while Foghorn himself denies the fact that he is a rooster and instead convinces Henery that Foghorn is a completely different animal like a horse, which Henery immediately falls for it hook line and sinker.
 * 9) * In both The Foghorn Leghorn and Henhouse Henery, even without any convincing from Foghorn himself, he mistakes just any random farm animal he sees in front of him as a chicken, whether it is Barnyard Dawg, ducks, and even turtles!
 * 10) **It doesn't even help that in the former he was intentionally mislead by his own grandfather false facts about chickens as "great big monsters with sharp teeth, live in caves and fight like demons" as an excuse on why he shouldn't be allowed to hunt chickens with his grandfather, which Henery immediately falls for it hook line and sinker.
 * 11) * In You Were Never Duckier, he instantly mistakes Daffy, who disguised himself as a chicken to sneak in the National Poultry Show to win the $5,000 cash reward for Best Rooster, as a real chicken, despite that it's blatantly obvious that Daffy's chicken disguise does not conceal his duck identity.
 * 12) *In the 1948 Capitol Record Reader audio storybook Bugs Bunny and the Tortoise, he instantly mistakes Bugs Bunny for a chicken when the rabbit falls into his chicken trap. Even when Bugs convinces Henery that he is a rabbit, not a chicken, with cues such as long ears and fluffy tail, Henery still doesn't believe him and continues claiming that Bugs is a chicken!
 * 13) While Mel Blanc did a decent job voicing him, his voice can get on your nerves at times.
 * 14) *However, the opposite case happens in his debut cartoon The Squawkin' Hawk, where his original voice actor Kent Rogers, who is otherwise a great voice actor, does a rather subpar job voicing him since he sounded almost bored in the role.
 * 15) He usually makes a bad cartoon predator due to his stupidity, hence making him incredibly hard to be taken seriously or seen as a legitimate threat, to the point that his "supposed prey" Foghorn is barely even afraid of him in the slightest and therefore finds him as little more than a nuisance. Even other intentional comedic antagonists from other Golden Age-era cartoons such as Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester, Taz, Claude Cat, Wile E. Coyote, Ralph Wolf, Beaky Buzzard, Tom Cat, Slick McWolf, Butch the Irish Dog, Pete Puma, Peg-Leg Pete, Bluto, Zeke Wolf, Katnip, Mr. Jinks, Louie the Mountain Lion, Wally Walrus, Buzz Buzzard and Kaa (Disney version) have more intelligence than Henery has.
 * 16) Not only does he harm Foghorn Leghorn and Barnyard Dawg, but also Sylvester and Daffy Duck.
 * 17) Like Charlie Dog, he also doesn’t seem to take criticism and can’t take no for an answer.
 * 18) Unlike all the other Looney Tunes antagonist characters, he never gets punished for his actions and usually gets off scot-free, often successfully preying on Foghorn Leghorn in almost every episode he appears in.
 * 19) His design is mediocre, as he looks more like a sparrow or a little owl instead of an actual chickenhawk, which makes him look even less threatening than he should've been.

Good Qualities

 * 1) His creation in 1942 marked director Chuck Jones' first ever attempt at breaking away from creating boring, weak, slow-witted, and cutesy Disney-inspired knock-off characters like Sniffles, Inki, The Two Curious Puppies and Conrad Cat back in 1939-1941, even though Jones would have much better luck at doing so when creating Hubie and Bertie and Claude Cat the following year in The Aristo-Cat.
 * 2) He can be funny at times and has memorable quotes such as: "I'm a Chicken Hawk, and I'm after my first chicken!" and "One of these things, and I say one of these things, has got to be a chicken!".
 * 3) His design is cute, despite looking mediocre.
 * 4) Mel Blanc does a decent job voicing him.
 * 5) He did get his comeuppance only in Strangled Eggs (his final pairing with Foghorn Leghorn in the Golden Age of American Animation) where he gets scared away by Foghorn who pretends to be a chickenhawk chasing after him (despite Foghorn still losing in the end thanks to his adoptive guardian Miss Prissy shutting the door out on Foghorn).
 * 6) He was a bit smarter in his debut cartoon The Squawkin' Hawk compared to his later appearances since he at least does know what what a chicken is unlike his later outings with Foghorn Leghorn, though that isn't saying much.
 * 7) He did improve a bit after the classic era, such as in Tweety's High Flying Adventure and The Looney Tunes Show.
 * 8) The Foghorn Leghorn cartoons would likely not be as great as it is without him, since he and Foghorn Leghorn share good chemistry.
 * 9) *As a recurring antagonist in the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons, he is very likely supposed to be disliked for his obnoxious and bratty behavior, his bad habit of picking fights with Foghorn Leghorn and the other characters he comes across with, and how needlessly dumb he is.

Trivia

 * Henery Hawk's voice is very similar to that of Tweety Bird, but minus the speech impediment.
 * Despite being used frequently by Robert McKimson, Chuck Jones actually created Henery Hawk.
 * Henery Hawk inspired Mark Evanier to create Scrappy-Doo for Scooby-Doo.
 * Though Henery Hawk does not appear in the Daffy Duck cartoon "The Up-Standing Sitter" (1948) by Robert McKimson, the unnamed baby chicken from that cartoon bears a striking physical resemblance (as well as a fair amount of attitude) to that of Henery, except that unlike the more antagonistic Henery, this unnamed baby chicken is practically innocent and avoids Daffy who is tasked to babysit him throughout the entire cartoon upon realizing that Daffy is not blood-related to him.
 * Similarly, the black baby chicken in the one-off Looney Tunes cartoon "Flop Goes the Weasel" (1943) by Chuck Jones released five years prior also bears a striking physical resemblance (as well as a fair amount of attitude) to that of Henery Hawk who debuted the previous year in "The Squawkin' Hawk" (1942), though much like the unnamed baby chicken from Robert McKimson's "The Up-Standing Sitter" (1948) he is an innocent character who attempts to escape from a dopey weasel who attempts to eat him, unlike the more antagonistic Henery.