The Blackhawk Novel by William Rotsler

In 1982, Blackhawk returned to comics after a six-year hiatus—but more on that in the next post in this series. Around the same time, though, Warner published the first-ever (and, of course, only) Blackhawk prose novel, which was written by William Rotsler. Rotsler had an extensive career as a pornographer, both behind and in front of the camera, and also was a Hugo-winning fan artist, but is best known to me as the author of a number of Star Trek tie-ins around the same time this book came out (most notably two short story collections tying into Star Trek II and III).

What kind of book this is is signaled by the paratext: the book has one page of ads for Superman products (including the two Elliot Maggin novels), but two pages of ads for men's adventure fiction, books with titles like S-COM: Stars and Swastikas and Ninja Master: Borderland of Hell and Boxer Unit—OSS: Operation Counter-Scorch. (My favorite is the blurb for The Hook, which tells you that he "crosses 1930's America and Europe in pursuit of perpetrators of insurance fraud"—nothing quite so exciting as insurance fraud!)

Blackhawk by William Rotsler

Published: 1982
Acquired: March 2024
Read: January 2025

Consequently, there's nothing deep here... but I guess you wouldn't be reading a Blackhawk novel if you wanted something deep! The first third of the novel is an expansion of the original appearance of Blackhawk in Military Comics #1 (see item #1 in the list below). The story, in the tradition of Golden Age comics, positively rocketed through its events, going from Blackhawk's family dying to the Blackhawks being an established fighting force is eleven pages. This story goes through some pains to expand all that out. We learn more about Blackhawk's family. We're told that though he's Polish, he spent some time living in America, explaining why in the comics his siblings live on a Polish farm but he's usually called an American. Rotsler side-steps the issue of Blackhawk's name; the narrator just calls him "the pilot" up until the point he adopts the identity of "Blackhawk" and thenceforth he's Blackhawk. No "Bart Hawk" here! 

Though we don't see Blackhawk recruit the other members of the squadron, we do get a detailed explanation of where the squadron's funding and equipment comes from; Blackhawk talks to a friend of the family who's an American banker who agrees to bankroll the Blackhawks and gives them access to a fog-shrouded island off the coast of Scotland. While in the comics, it usually seems like the Blackhawks do all their own maintenance somehow, Rotsler gives the island a live-in maintenance crew. We see how the Blackhawks hunt down Baron von Tepp, the man who killed Blackhawk's family. The nurse in Military Comics #1, who has no name and is fairly antagonistic to Blackhawk in the original comic (clearly going for a love-hate vibe), is here named Edwina Edwards and made into more of an actual love interest. (When the nurse returned in Military Comics #3, she was named "Ann," but there's no evidence in this book that Rotsler read any issue of Military Comics other than the first.) 

One big change (diverging both from the Military Comics run and later versions of the origin such as the one from issues #198 and 203 [see item #5 below]) is that Chop-Chop is a member of the Blackhawks from the beginning; Rotsler gives him a phonetic Chinese accent sometimes but otherwise he is treated as a serious member of the team.

I enjoyed all of this; it's pleasing the see the deeper realistic logic of prose fiction applied to comic books. It makes it all feel more real without losing the passion and energy that made the original comic work so effectively. To me, it seems like exactly the kind of thing you'd want a prose tie-in to a comic book do. Rotsler obviously knows his stuff when it comes to World War II; there are lots of references to specific equipment and specific battles and specific dates, the kinds of stuff the original comics left pretty vague.

The last two-thirds of the book give a series of standalone adventures for the Blackhawks, various escapades. This all culminates in one where the Blackhawks have to take down a giant bomber than can resupply in mid-air and is thus threatening to destroy London itself. It's all pretty fun stuff, though the female Nazi who gets sexually aroused by massive destruction is probably a bit too much even if it probably totally fits into the men's adventure vibe this book was clearly going for. (I guess this is where Rotsler's pornography background comes into it.)

The book chronicles September 1939 to June 1940, so there was a lot more of the war to cover, and Rotsler's afterword calls it "the first novel of the Blackhawk saga" but there never was a second. I think this is the time that it was first floated that Steven Spielberg was going to make a Blackhawk film, and I wonder if the novel was intended to cash in on the attention the film was bringing to the property, much as Warner did the two Maggin Superman novels when the first two films came out even though they weren't actually adaptations of the films. In any case, there never was a Spielberg film (even though the idea was floated again in the 2010s!) and nor was there a second novel, but I would gladly have read one.

One last thing: Rotsler names various Allied minor characters after creatives who were either directly involved with the Blackhawk comics or at least just worked at DC, such as Levitz and Cuidera and Crandall and so on. But what stuck out to me most was a German villain named Sternbach, surely a reference to Star Trek illustrator Rick Sternbach. Hopefully he appreciated the nod! (Given both Rotsler and Sternbach were Hugo-winning illustrators, it seems likely they moved in the same circles.)

This is the eighth post in a series about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers Blackhawk vol. 1 #251-73 and DC Comics Presents #69. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1 (1941-42)
2. Military Comics #18-43 / Modern Comics #44-46 / Blackhawk #9 & 50 (1943-52)
3. Showcase Presents Blackhawk, Volume One (1957-58) 
4. Blackhawk vol. 1 #151-95 (1960-64) 
5. Blackhawk vol. 1 #196-227 (1964-66)
6. Blackhawk vol. 1 #228-43 (1967-68)
7. Blackhawk vol. 1 #244-50 / The Brave and the Bold #167 (1976-80)