Lady Blackhawk in Guy Gardner: Warrior

In the 2000s, the original Lady Blackhawk, Zinda Blake, was a recurring character in Birds of Prey,* which I've already read. What I hadn't read, though, was the storyline where she was transported through time from her native era to the present day, and so I wanted to read that as part of my project to read Blackhawk comics. 

Thus, I read every issue of Guy Gardner: Warrior in which she appeared, checking the Grand Comics Database and League of Comic Geeks to determine which issues those were. (You can see the full list of them at the bottom of this post.) During this time, the Green Lantern Corps was all dead or something (I know I read about this when I read Emerald Fallout as part of Darkstars, but I don't remember the details), and Guy had discovered that he was actually half-alien, getting powers from his Vuldarian DNA rather than a power ring. (Did he still have these powers when the GLC reformed during Geoff Johns's run? Were they retconned away? Or just forgotten?)

from Guy Gardner: Warrior #24

I didn't except her to play a big role... but I did expect her to play more of a role than this! Zinda first appears in issue #24, the Zero Hour tie-in; in this one, Guy keeps jumping through time in pursuit of Extant, along with Supergirl, Batgirl, and Steel. In one time period, they encounter Lady Blackhawk; she comes along on their next couple hops through time, and that's it.

She doesn't appear again for five issues, until #29. In this one, Guy is opening Warriors, his superhero-themed bar (or bar for just superheroes? it wasn't very clear to me), and Zinda pops up. She says that after the events of issue #24, she found herself standing outside the bar and just came in. And that's it, that's all the explanation there is! She and Wildcat (who also seems to work at Warriors; in terms of his chronology, this would be after his Showcase '94 story, before Batman/Wildcat) recognize each other, but there was no previous story where the two interacted as far as I know, because during the time Lady Blackhawk was a main character in Blackhawk (c. 1959-68, see items #4-6 in the list below), Wildcat and the rest of the JSA were in comics limbo (or on Earth-Two).

from Guy Gardner: Warrior #43

From then on, Zinda is essentially just in crowd scenes of the employees at Warriors. She doesn't really do anything characterful or interesting; the bolshy, swaggering woman of Gail Simone's Birds of Prey does not yet exist. On two separate occasions, she flies other characters somewhere in a helicopter, and that's it; on the left you can see basically the only significant line of dialogue she gets between issues #36 and 43.

Continuity-wise, her appearance is a bit of a throwback, because there was no Zinda Blake in the post-Crisis Blackhawks... though I guess as the Rick Burchett Blackhawk ongoing only made it up to 1950 (aside from the 1963-68 span briefly covered in Blackhawk Special #1, see item #11), we could imagine that Zinda did participate in the post-Crisis Blackhawks from 1956 to 1968 as what would have been the second Lady Blackhawk, following Natalie Reed. Or maybe Zero Hour changed the history of the Blackhawks back to something more closely resembling its pre-Crisis version. I guess I will see what various Blackhawk stories do going forward. (I do know that Blackhawk's post-Crisis name of "Janos Prohaska" sticks.)

You might wonder if removing Lady Blackhawk from time would have repercussions for those older stories, but I believe Zinda's last appearance was in issue #243, from November 1968 (see item #6), so as long as Zinda was plucked out of time between 1968 and the present day, there wouldn't be any issues.

So, overall, Guy Gardner: Warrior was not worth reading for Lady Blackhawk; I didn't experience anything I hadn't experienced by reading summaries on Cosmic Teams. But sometimes I read tangential comics as part of my reading projects and end up enjoying them on their own merits. Was that the case with Guy Gardner: Warrior?

Lots of things in this comic make no sense, but foremost among them is how many women want to sleep with Guy.
from Guy Gardner: Warrior #38

Not at all. In fact, this is probably one of the worst superhero comics I've ever read. Beau Smith continually introduces new ideas without having followed up on previous ones (there's an issue that ends with Guy's mother moving in as the cliffhanger; she literally never appears in the series again). The villains and the art are the 1990s "extreme" Image aesthetic at its worst, even in the hands of artists that would go good work elsewhere, like Phil Jimenez and Howard Porter. Most issues are boring at best, actively stupid at worst. I'm all for a good gender-swap story, but the one here is awful. Lots of gender violence throughout the series, including the gratuitous fridging of Arisia in the penultimate issue (I guess this must have been undone later, though).

The only benefit to reading this comic is that it gave me an excuse to read a bunch of entries in Guy Gardner Colon Warrior, one of the Internet's greatest blogs, which unfortunately reached its natural end point when they ran out of issues to take the piss out of. Amazing stuff. 

Zinda "Lady Blackhawk" Blake appeared in issues #24, 29, 36, and 38-43 of Guy Gardner: Warrior (Sept. 1994–June 1996) and issue #1 of Guy Gardner: Warrior Annual (1995). The stories were written by Beau Smith (#24, 29, 36, 38-43; Annual #1) with Flint Henry (Annual #1); pencilled by Mitch Byrd (#24), Phil Jimenez (#24, 29), Howard Porter (#24), Mike Parobeck (#24, 41), Flint Henry (Annual #1), Marc Campos (#36, 38-39, 41-42), Tom Grindberg (#38), Aaron Lopresti (#40), and Brad Gorby (#43); laid out by Jackson Guice (#24); inked/finished by John Stokes (#29), Dan Davis (#24, 29, 36, 38-43), Flint Henry (Annual #1), Rod Ramos (Annual #1), Bob Dvorak (Annual #1), Phil Jimenez (Annual #1), and Nick Napolitano (#39); colored by Stuart Chaifetz (#24), Gene D'Angelo (#29), Scott Baumann (Annual #1), and Lee Loughridge (#36, 38-43); lettered by Albert De Guzman; and edited by Eddie Berganza.

This is the twelfth in a series of posts about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers JLA: Year One. 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) 

* She first joined the team in Between Dark & Dawn (2004), and was featured in several subsequent volumes including Blood and Circuits (2006-07), Club Kids (2007-08), Metropolis or Dust (2008), End Run (2010-11), and The Death of Oracle (2011).

Batman/Wildcat by Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, Sergio Cariello, et al.

Batman/Wildcat

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 1970-98
Acquired: March 2023
Read: April 2023

Writers: Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, Bob Haney

Pencillers: Sergio Cariello, Irv Novick, Bob Brown, Jim Aparo
Inkers: Art Thibert, Danny Miki, Jaime Mendoza, Tom Palmer, Mike Esposito, Nick Cardy, Jim Aparo

Colorists: Jason Wright, Pat Garrahy

Letterers: Kevin Cunningham, Clem Robins

As I said when writing up Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper, the discovery of a preexisting Ted Grant–Selina Kyle relationship in JSA Classified had me curious as to its origins; one of the stories that lead me to was a 1998 miniseries called Catwoman/Wildcat by Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, and Sergio Cariello. I discovered it had been collected along with a 1997 mini from the same team, Batman/Wildcat, and five issues of The Brave and the Bold from the 1970s where Batman teams up with Wildcat. So, I picked up the whole collection.

Batman/Wildcat is fine. Like many Wildcat stories, it has to contrive some way to be about boxing. In this case, it's that old standby: the forced fight. Criminals are kidnapping people, mostly supervillains, and forcing them to fight each other on a super-secret pay-per-view channel (hey, it was the '90s). A mentee of Wildcat's get scooped up in it, though, and is forced to duke it out in a Wildcat costume, and so Batman and Wildcat run parallel investigations, then get kidnapped and forced to fight, and of course team up to dismantle the entire operation. I could probably go the rest of my life without reading another story where superheroes are forced to fight so rich people can gamble on it, to be honest; there's nothing about that premise that's ever interesting. What beggars belief is the bad guys don't even take Batman's and Wildcat's masks off to find out who they are; indeed, they put extra masks on them so they can't see who they're fighting! I think the story would have also benefited from making Ted's status quo clearer; at the end, he comes out of retirement to go back to fighting crime as Wildcat, but that was the moment I learned he was in retirement to begin with! (This would be set after the Justice Society falls apart in Zero Hour, before it reunites in Justice Be Done.)

Oracle! Ah, 1990s Birds of Prey nostalgia...
from Batman/Wildcat #2 (script by Chuck Dixon & Beau Smith, art by Sergio Cariello and Art Thibert, Danny Miki, & Jaime Mendoza)

The follow-up, Catwoman/Wildcat, is a bit better. Catwoman travels to Las Vegas to carry out a heist where, coincidentally, Ted Grant is in some kind of exhibition match. The heist, honestly, was very confusing. Selina's competing with like two other groups of criminals and there's a lot of double-crossing, and a lot of characters I didn't care about. What was consistently fun was the flirting between Selina and Ted. Selina knows who she is dealing with right away, but it takes most of the story for Ted to figure out who she is (there's a brief flashback to Her Sister's Keeper, despite Catwoman: Year 2's implication it didn't count), and so he doesn't get why this attractive younger woman is coming on to him. Whenever the story focuses on the antics of the two of them it is fun; whenever it focuses on the other characters, I hoped it would get back to Ted and Selina. Thankfully boxing has little to do with it.

It's a very different Selina to the one who seemed shocked at what Ted Grant might ask of her for defense training!
from Catwoman/Wildcat #3 (script by Chuck Dixon & Beau Smith, art by Sergio Cariello & Tom Palmer)

Both stories are pencilled by Sergio Cariello who has a... I guess I would say perfectly adequate 1990s style. It's not my jam, and I think he draws Selina/Catwoman a bit weird, but it's a good artistic fit for Chuck Dixon's over-the-top action-focused style of writing.

Cats in heat.
from Catwoman/Wildcat #1 (script by Chuck Dixon & Beau Smith, art by Sergio Cariello & Tom Palmer)

The five stories from The Brave and the Bold run the gamut. Each has to have some weird reason for Batman to pull Wildcat into the case; some are more compelling than others. The first, "Count Ten... and Die!" is probably the best. Bruce Wayne is coaching the American team in the World Youth Games in fencing, while Ted Grant is coaching the boxing team. Ted is heckled by the coach of the Russian team, but then also there's a lot of stuff about a spy and needing to transfer a secret tape. Boxing is worked in pretty organically here, and it has its moments, even if it can get a bit contrived. (At one point, Ted Grant sneaks out of a boxing match he is participating in to track Batman to a river in the countryside, rescues Batman from kidnappers after a pitched battle, and returns, all while forcibly dragging his opponent with him... and no one notices this because the lights are out!) I thought the culmination of Ted being goaded was going to be him rising above it, but Batman points out that if Ted Grant doesn't wallop this Russian guy, America may as well give up the Cold War, so Ted punches his lights out for patriotism.

If your story is set in Cold War Vienna, it is mandatory to have a key scene set on the Wiener Riesenrad.
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #88 (script by Bob Haney, art by Irv Novick & Mike Esposito)

A couple feel like they could have been about any character, and Ted is barely even in them: in "The Smile of Choclotan!" he's mostly in a trance, in "A Very Special Spy!" Ted is for some reason an exec at an energy firm, and in "Dead Man's Quadrangle" he's running a health spa in the Caribbean. I guess post-JSA he made a run a lot of different businesses?

For some reason, everyone in Mexico calls him "Bat-Hombre." Not, say, "Murciélago Hombre"... or just, you know "Batman"!
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #97 (script by Bob Haney, art by Bob Brown & Nick Cardy)

I was able to embrace the goofiness in "May the Best Man Win Die!" In this, Wildcat does an exhibition boxing match at a Gotham prison... only the guy he fights is a potential witness against the Joker, and the Joker uses the opportunity to infect Wildcat's opponent with a rare tropical illness, and soon the whole prison is in danger. A biologist brings a dog in whose blood he's incubated antibodies to Gotham, but the dog is stolen by the Joker, then it escapes from the Joker, and so Batman, Wildcat, and the Joker are all searching Gotham for a dog who has the key to hundreds of lives. So wacky you've got to love it! I even didn't mind the obligatory Batman/Wildcat slugfest, because it's really just an opportunity for the Joker to infect them with the disease too.

Like, a page later, Batman admits that he has no idea if this is true or not.
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #118 (script by Bob Haney, art by Jim Aparo)

Bob Haney is certainly a wacky writer. In "May the Best Man Die!", Batman goes to the Gotham pound to pick up the dog, but is told someone claiming to be the dog's owner already picked it up... a weird guy with green hair! Like, how could you live in Gotham and see a guy with green hair and not think, "Hmmm... is that the Joker!?" In "Dead Man's Quadrangle," Batman travels to the Caribbean via a commercial flight... in costume! There he is just chilling in first class; the guy seated next to him just casually chatting him up. In the 1970s was airport security so lax? Or does Batman get an exemption? And is a Batsuit really comfortable clothing for a long flight?

Batman has the same annoyances on a flight as us regular folks.
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #127 (script by Bob Haney, art by Jim Aparo)

Some continuity notes: When these stories came out they were evidently controversial, because they feature the "regular" Batman of DC, i.e., the Earth-One Batman, but Wildcat is from Earth-Two! The explanation (given in letter columns, I guess, because it never appears in the stories themselves) was that this was the Wildcat of Earth-One, a character who only appeared in these five issues of The Brave and the Bold and one issue of Super-Team Family. Thus, we are left to infer most of his history: an older superhero, seemingly not active anymore... but in this world there was no JSA. Post-Crisis, I think we can just imagine that these events did happen (approximately) as depicted here, with the new post-Crisis Batman and the new post-Crisis Wildcat. By publication sequence these would go in the period after the JSA kind of came out of retirement for its JLA team-ups, before the JSA was revived full-time in the 1970s issues of All Star Comics, and I think this depiction of Wildcat fits well with that.

Lastly, there's a weird bit in "Dead Man's Quadrangle," where Ted thinks that on his second comeback tour he accidentally killed a man ("Kid O'Hare") in the ring, and thus gave up throwing punches ever again. He gets over it, of course, but this was never mentioned before and thus must have happened in the year since his previous Brave and the Bold appearance yet is just kind of tossed in as if we already know about it! As far as I know, it never comes up again either.

This post is forty-third in an ever-expanding series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers volume 3 of Justice Society of America. Previous installments are listed below: