Approved Comics #1 (St. John, March 1954) is a Golden Age Western comic starring The Hawk — the alter ego of Bob Hardie, a tough frontier marshal billed as the "Fighting Marshal of the American West." The book bundles Hawk's gunslinging adventures with Old-West feature pages such as Cowboy Songs of the Old West, A Fair Exchange, and Ghost Towns of the Old West. Its pencil art is credited to John Buscema in an early professional appearance, years before he became one of Marvel Comics' defining artists.

Approved Comics was a St. John Publishing showcase title that typically ran a single issue of various series under one umbrella banner — and this issue is a notable curiosity because it is dual-numbered: the very same book appeared, on both cover and indicia, as The Hawk #5. The Hawk character had debuted at Ziff-Davis in the winter of 1951 and continued under St. John, which took over many Ziff-Davis titles. Released in March 1954, the issue landed at the height of the 1950s Western-comics boom, fueled by the era's popular film and television Westerns, and just before the industry's self-censoring Comics Code reshaped the medium later that year.

For collectors and historians today, the issue is of interest chiefly for its early John Buscema artwork and for the broader Hawk run, which drew contributions from a remarkable roster of talents including Matt Baker, Joe Kubert, Gil Kane, and Murphy Anderson. Its odd dual numbering also makes it a favorite footnote for indexers of St. John's tangled early-1950s output. Now widely regarded as public domain and available through digital archives and modern reprint lines, it remains an accessible slice of pre-Code Western comics history.

Approved Comics - The Hawk