Guns of the Dragon by Timothy Truman

Guns of the Dragon is a four-issue DC miniseries from the late 1990s, entirely written and illustrated by Timothy Truman, as was Hawkworld. Its relevance to my Blackhawk project is perhaps slim, but it sounded fun enough to be worth reading.

I would posit that Guns of the Dragon is an undertaking that pretty much could have only happened in the DC Comics environment of 1985–2011, when DC's take was that basically everything they had ever published had somehow happened within a single timeline. It unites a bunch of different characters from different genres that take place in different eras, all converging in 1927 in the Pacific. Here we have:

• Enemy Ace, an honorable German fighter pilot who flew in World War I, originally published in war comics 1965-73.
• Bat Lash, a Western hero originally published 1968-81, now an older man tending a bar in Shanghai.
• Biff Bradley, a private eye: a new character for this story, but the brother of the preexisting Slam Bradley, originally published 1937-49 (I think Slam Bradley was in some other project at the time and thus unavailable to Truman).
• Miss Fear, a recurring nemesis of the Blackhawks originally published 1946-48, here made into a half-white Chinese communist spy. (Despite reading so many Blackhawk comics for this project, I actually had not encountered her before because I largely skipped the 1946-57 post-WWII Quality issues.)
• Major Kung, a Japanese warrior who could transform into animals, originally from Gerry Conway's 1977-78 Earth-Two WWII-set Wonder Woman stories, later a recurring villain in Roy Thomas's All-Star Squadron (1981-87), also set during World War II.
• Chop-Chop, the Chinese member of the Blackhawk Squadron, and thus my reason for reading this series at all... though this can't be same Chop-Chop from the Blackhawk stories, since he was a young man in the 1940s, and this takes place over a decade earlier!

Plus one of the principal antagonists is recurring Justice Society villain Vandal Savage, and much of the story takes place on "Dinosaur Island," which is from a 1960-68 feature in Star-Spangled War Stories.

from Guns of the Dragon #1

I think the story thus revels in the joy of a franchise comics universe, where you can have characters from all these different genres overlapping: war stories, detective fiction, superhero comics, spy stories, and "lost world" adventures. You couldn't have made this comic before the Crisis collapsed all DC history into one things, and you couldn't have made it after Flashpoint ripped up DC's rich, interesting history in favor of... I dunno, because I largely gave up on DC then.

It's nothing deep, it's sheer pulp adventure, with lots of double-crossing and changing alliances, with WWI biplanes being used to fight pterodactyls, and tons of fights, and people punching out communists. Tim Truman is great at this kind of thing. To be honest, I don't have a lot to say about it, but I enjoyed it throughout. I don't think it really fits with the history of the Blackhawks at all (and Chop-Chop ultimately does very little), but I'm glad I read it.

Guns of the Dragon originally appeared in four issues (Oct. 1998–Jan. 1999). The story was written and illustrated by Timothy Truman, lettered by Ken Lopez, colored by John Kalisz, with separations by Jamison, and edited by Peter Tomasi.

This is the antepenultimate in a series of posts about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers Batman Confidential: Blackhawk Down. 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)
8. Blackhawk (1982) 
9. Blackhawk vol. 1 #251-73 / DC Comics Presents #69 (1982-84) 
• Pre-Crisis Continuity 
10. Blackhawk: Blood & Iron (1987-89)
11. Blackhawk vol. 3 (1989-92) 
12. Guy Gardner: Warrior #24, 29, 36, 38-43 / Annual #1 (1994-96)
13. JLA: Year One (1998-99)