As covered in several posts I've already made, the Blackhawks were originally published by Quality Comics from 1941 to 1956, taking their adventures from World War II and beyond. Then, they were published (not quite continuously) by DC from 1957 to 1984. As you might imagine, this causes continuity problems—did it really make sense that the 1976 incarnation of the Blackhawks had somehow been active since World War II? From 1957 to 1966 there's no sign of superheroes in the Blackhawk milieu, but then come 1967 they're hanging out with the Justice League.
In DC's pre-Crisis continuity, they dealt with continuity issues by relegating character to different Earths. But which Earth do different versions of the Blackhawks belong to? Here's what I can figure out; I'll start from most obvious to least obvious.
Earth-One: The Mark Evanier & Dan Spiegle Run (1982–84)
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| from Blackhawk vol. 1 #256 (script by Mark Evanier, art by Dan Spiegle) |
Earth-One was the original Earth of DC's Silver Age, the one the Justice League came from and the various superheroes associated with it: the Hal Jordan Green Lantern, the Barry Allen Flash, and the contemporary versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. In this timeline, superheroes emerged in the late 1950s.
That the 1980s Blackhawk revival is from Earth-One is very obvious, because the lettercol to issue #256 just tells you! Writer Mark Evanier claims that this is the never-before-seen Earth-One version of the Blackhawks, which means that there's no known endpoint for these characters. Evanier could kill off, say, Hendrickson and it wouldn't impact any stories written earlier but set later! I thought this was an interesting move, not the least because, as far as I know, there were no superheroes on Earth-One during World War II. For all intents and purposes, the Earth-One of WWII is our Earth.
That these comics were set on Earth-One is confirmed by DC Comics Presents #69, where the Earth-One Superman travels back in time and meets the Evanier Blackhawks during the war.
Earth-Two: The Original Quality Comics Run (1941–56?)
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| from Military Comics #16 (script by Bill Woolfolk, art by Reed Crandall) |
Earth-Two was DC's home for its Golden Age heroes, the one the Justice Society came from and the various superheroes associated with it: the Alan Scott Green Lantern, the Jay Garrick Flash, and the contemporary versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. In this timeline, superheroes emerged in the late 1930s.
In that lettercol to Blackhawk #256, Mark Evanier suggests that all previous adventures of the Blackhawks were set on Earth-Two or Earth-X. (The lettercol also says the forthcoming twelve-part maxiseries The History of the DC Universe will answer this more definitively, but when this eventually saw print as Crisis on Infinite Earths, that was not the case.) There is one Blackhawk story we can definitively place on Earth-Two: The Brave and the Bold #167, where they team up with the Golden Age Batman, must be set there.
But if that Blackhawk story is set on Earth-Two, it means other ones certainly could be, and the original World War II run of the Blackhawks from Quality seems like the obvious candidate. I don't see any obvious reason to speculate that these stories are set on any other Earth; we also received confirmation that there were Blackhawks operating on Earth-Two from their guest appearance in All-Star Squadron #48-49. If there are Earth-Two Blackhawks, who could they be other than the Quality Comics ones? And if you include all the World War II stories, I don't see any reason to doubt that the postwar Blackhawk stories from Quality also take place on Earth-Two.
There is a bit of a wrinkle in this theory, though; see below.
Earth-X: ???
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| from Justice League of America vol. 1 #107 (script by Len Wein, art by Dick Dillin & Dick Giordano, scan courtesy The Unofficial Blackhawk Comics Website) |
I don't think there are any published Blackhawk stories we can definitively place on this Earth, however. JLA #107 has a one-panel flashback depicting the Blackhawks, which strongly implies they died during the extended version of WWII. All Quality Blackhawk stories published during World War II could be set on this world, but certainly none of the postwar ones (1946-56) could be, because on Earth-X, there was no postwar!
An extra wrinkle comes from All-Star Squadron #50. In A-SS, the Quality Comics characters had been depicted as existing on Earth-Two. I think until that point you could have simply assumed they existed on both Earth-Two and Earth-X, but A-SS #50 has the Quality Comics characters travelling from Earth-Two to Earth-X to help Uncle Sam battle the Nazis in that timeline. These characters include the Blackhawks! If we take this at face value, this means that there can't be any Blackhawk stories set on Earth-Two after April 1942, when issue #50 is set...
...but this would invalidate Brave and the Bold #167, which we know is set on Earth-Two in 1944! Oh, Roy Thomas, what was up with this needlessly complicated retcon? (Oh wait, you're Roy Thomas.)
My suggestion: A-SS #50 is set during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Thus, it is neither pre-Crisis nor post-Crisis. The multiversal whatsit that allows for the crossover in #50 is because of the Crisis, so it couldn't have happened in the pre-Crisis multiverse! We can suggest that in the pre-Crisis timeline, the Earth-Two Blackhawks stayed on Earth-Two, and thus the Earth-X Blackhawks were separate characters.
This does mean that the only known Blackhawk appearance on Earth-X is that single panel in JLA #107... but pre–A-SS #50, at least, all the 1941-45 Quality Comics Blackhawk stories could have happened on Earth-X as well as Earth-Two.
Earth-B: The Original DC Comics Run (1957?–66)
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| from Blackhawk vol. 1 #232 (script by Bob Haney, art by Dick Dillin & Chuck Cuidera) |
The obvious continuity error of "The New Blackhawk Era" (#228-41) is that they hang out with the Justice League in the opening story arc... but the Justice League is from Earth-One, and Evanier indicates only the 1982-84 Blackhawks come from Earth-One. But they can't come from Earths-Two or -X like he suggests other Blackhawk stories do, because there's no JLA on Earths-Two or -X.
(In the lettercol to issue #257, Evanier adds that he could write a story explaining how the JLA could guest star in a Blackhawk story even though he'd claimed there were no previous Earth-One Blackhawks... but he won't do it because that would be boring. This is an attitude toward retconning I totally approve of.)
Earth-B is a world that I don't think is ever actually referred to in a DC Comics story. It's only used in behind-the-scenes material to justify continuity errors. Basically, many Silver Age stories played it fast and loose with continuity in such a way that that couldn't "actually" take place on Earth-One. This article on Batman Universe lays it out pretty nicely:
By the late 1970s there were a handful of Silver Age DC stories that just seemed out-of-continuity no matter what. They just didn’t fit into Batman’s primary Earth (i.e. the DCU’s pre-Crisis Earth-1), violated characterization, had obvious continuity errors, or were just plain strange (even for Silver Age comics). Many of these stories in question were written by Bob Haney and E Nelson Bridwell and edited by Murray Boltinoff and Bob Rozakis. Thus, these out-of-synch tales retroactively became assigned to Earth-B. The assignment of the letter B came from the fact there were so many B names creatively-involved in the non-synchronous tales—Bridwell, Boltinoff, and two Bobs (three if you count Bob Hope)! Further reasoning for assigning the letter B was that many of these tales also took place in The Brave & The Bold. While it is rumored that Myron Gruenwald and Mark Gruenwald originally came up with the idea for Earth-B, the concept was first mentioned in a letters column by Rozakis in the 1970s.
Thus, Earth-B is a lot like Earth-One, but not Earth-One. It would indeed have a Justice League of America and all the other characters necessary to make the Junk-Heap Heroes! storyline work. And of course, the whole G.E.O.R.G.E. run is written by Bob Haney.
If issues #228-41 took place on Earth-B, then issues #242-43 did so as well, because they directly followed on from those stories. And probably so did many, if not most or all, of the pre-#228 Blackhawk stories published by DC, which got increasingly goofy as they went on even before the Blackhawks all became superheroes (and some of which were edited by Murray Boltinoff).
The origins of the Blackhawks in general and Chop-Chop in specific given in #198 and 203 aren't consistent with their original appearances in Military Comics, giving us further evidence that those stories take place on a different Earth than those stories, even if we do know (from various flashbacks) that the Earth-B Blackhawks did begin during World War II.
I haven't read it, but it would seem that JLA #144, which includes a cameo from the Blackhawks, also occurs on Earth-B, not Earth-One. Same for DC Challenge, which is another story including both the JLA and the Blackhawks. (Apparently, DC Challenge being set on Earth-B was confirmed by Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Compendium.)
Earth-Thirty-Two?: The George Evans & Steve Skeates Run (1976–77)
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| from Blackhawk vol. 1 #250 (script by Steve Skeates, art by Ric Estrada and George Evans & Frank Springer) |
The one unaccounted-for run at this point is the brief revival of Blackhawk during the 1970s. The actual stories don't mention any wider continuity, but the text page in issue indicates the Blackhawks disappeared in the 1960s, they were rumored to have been superheroes, and that the Justice League exists.
Things we know:
- It's not Earth-One, according to Evanier's comments in Blackhawk #256.
- It's not any timeline where the Blackhawks were active during World War II, because the text page in #244 says they emerged in the 1950s: this thus disqualifies Earths-Two, -X, and -B.
- There is a Justice League, and possibly the Blackhawks were briefly superheroes.
I don't know what Earth that leaves us with: it needs to be one with the JLA (if we believe in the text page from #244, as they're not mentioned in the actual stories) but where the Blackhawks emerged later. Apparently, in the Crisis on Infinite Earths deluxe edition, John Wells split Earth-B into Earth-Twelve and Earth-Thirty-Two. So perhaps this run occurs on Earth-Thirty-Two to the previous run's Earth-Twelve?
(The other way to take this is that these stories could take place on the same Earth as the earlier DC stories, and any inconsistencies are just down to the usual "sliding timescale" approach to superhero comic books. We happily put, say, all pre-Crisis Legion of Super-Hero comics on the same Earth, even though twenty years of story time clearly do not elapse over twenty years of publication time. In which case, no need to come up with some "Earth-Thirty-Two" retcon.)
Closing Thoughts
I'm sure I've missed something here; in particular, I'm working from my memory of the All-Star Squadron issues because my copies aren't currently easily accessed. I hope I have at least a somewhat tenable set of theories here, and you can look forward to my even more complicated follow-up post, when I attempt to rectify everything we know about the post-Crisis Blackhawks!
What else this post makes me want to do is write a Crisis on Infinite Blackhawks story: what happens when the Earth-One Blackhawks meet the Earth-Two ones? That's probably not so dramatically different (except for Chop-Chop), but then chuck in the superhero Blackhawks of Earth-B and the mercenary Blackhawks of Earth-Thirty-Two and the beleaguered Blackhawks of Earth-X... and eventually, the cynical post-Crisis Blackhawks of the Howard Chaykin version. Forget Legion of 3 Worlds, why not Blackhawk of 6 Worlds!?
This is a supplement to a series of posts about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers Blackhawk: Blood & Iron. Previous installments are listed below:
- The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1 (1941-42)
- Military Comics #18-43 / Modern Comics #44-46 / Blackhawk #9 & 50 (1943-52)
- Showcase Presents Blackhawk, Volume One (1957-58)
- Blackhawk vol. 1 #151-95 (1960-64)
- Blackhawk vol. 1 #196-227 (1964-66)
- Blackhawk vol. 1 #228-43 (1967-68)
- Blackhawk vol. 1 #244-50 / The Brave and the Bold #167 (1976-80)
- Blackhawk (1982)
- Blackhawk vol. 1 #251-73 / DC Comics Presents #69 (1982-84)
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