Showcase Presents Blackhawk, Volume One
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Collection published: 2008 Contents originally published: 1957-58 Acquired: March 2024 Read: May 2024 |
Quality Comics's Blackhawk came to an end with issue #107 in December 1956, but without missing an issue or a month, DC Comics picked the title up right from there, continuing with issue #108 in January 1957. The DC version of the title ran all the way to issue #273, but of these 166 issues, all that have been collected are the first twenty; by this point, each issue consisted of three eight-page stories, so this Showcase Presents volume contains sixty stories, reprinted in black and white (as was usual for the Showcase line).
The early issues collected here are not very good... and somehow the book manages to get worse as it goes. If Blackhawk has a unique selling point, it's that it's about fighter pilots taking down dictators in World War II. But the fact that these characters are fighter pilots is almost entirely incidental; they use their airplanes to get to adventures, but the airplanes are very rarely part of the adventures.
But worse is the fact that these are very generic Silver Age stories about fighting "Crime," in that really boring way I associate with the squarest of Batman stories. In every installment, some boring-ass villain with some stupid gimmick pops up, and the Blackhawks put him away, looking as smug as all get out as they do so. Something that gave the original Blackhawk stories in Military Comics an edge was that the Blackhawks were renegades, they were operating outside the law, without government sanction, to do what they thought were right. These Blackhawks are the kind of obnoxious do-gooders who have chummy lunches with mayors.
As the stories go on, they even managed to get worse, as they become more and more like a generic DC superhero comic, with stories of alien invasions and time travel and people with superpowers. This, surely, is not what anyone wants out of Blackhawk. I accept that World War II was probably old hat in the 1950s, and we weren't far enough away from it for nostalgia to kick in, but surely there must have been a way to maintain a unique identity for this title other than this. Just have them flipping do things in their airplanes if nothing else!
I complained about characterization in my review of the Military Comics Blackhawk stories, but it's usually even worse here. Blackhawk himself might as well be the only character most of the time; Andre, Olaf, and Hendrickson get the occasional bit of dialogue with characteristic French, Norwegian, or German phrases sprinkled in; I'm not sure the writers even remember Chuck and Stanislaus exist, I'm willing to bet that only artist Dick Dillin does and just keeps sticking them into group scenes. The racial caricature has been significantly dialed down for Chop-Chop... but oddly, this ill-serves the character, because now he's just another person to stand there and contribute nothing to group scenes. In the old days, he did stuff!
Dick Dillin is a bit of a square-jawed illustrator; I know him best from his later run on Justice League of America (from 1968 to 1980), where I really enjoyed his stuff. He's fine here. I bet if these were good stories, he would be great, but he's just not being given much to work with.
One thing I am curious about is when the Blackhawks technically become DC universe characters. The only hint of that here is in one where Blackhawk temporarily gains superpowers, and he compares himself to Superman... but of course Superman could be a fictional character that he knows about from reading comic books!
This is the third post in a series about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers issues #151-95 of Blackhawk vol. 1. Previous installments are listed below:
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