"Over land, over sea, / We fight to make men free! / Of danger, we don't care, / We're Blackhawks!" (Military Comics #18–43 / Modern Comics #44–46 / Blackhawk #9 & 50)

The Blackhawk feature debuted (as covered in my previous post in this series, see below) in Quality's Military Comics in 1941, and continued through every issue of that title. Military Comics changed its name to Modern Comics with issue #44 in November 1945 (the war was, after all, over) and persisted up until issue #102 in October 1950, the Blackhawks continuing as a feature all the way to the end, even as the rest of the magazine's contents shifted away from warfare.

Meanwhile, Blackhawk also got its own self-titled magazine; this confusingly debuted with issue #9 in Winter 1944, with issue #10 not following until Spring 1946. The series was published quarterly from #10 to 18, then bimonthly from #18 to 33, and then finally monthly from #33 to 107, the series finally coming to an end (sort of) in December 1956.

I had previously planned to jump straight from March 1943's Military Comics #17 to January 1957's Blackhawk #108, but after finishing The Blackhawk Archives, I was curious about the rest of the Blackhawks' wartime adventures. While all of the Blachawk content published by DC is still under copyright, the Blackhawk material published by Quality is not, and thus you can get legal scans of all of it for free from the Digital Comic Museum. But did I really want to read eighty-five issues of Military/Modern Comics and ninety-nine issues of Blackhawk before finally making it to the material collected in Showcase Presents Blackhawk? That's a lot of presumably repetitive and not always high quality material!

from Military Comics #20 (script by Bill Woolfolk, art by Reed Crandall)

I ended up deciding to see out World War II. This meant going all the way to Military Comics #43, of course. I originally intended to stop with the first issue branded Modern Comics, but upon reading it, I realized that though the book's title had changed, the actual comic story in #44 was clearly written during the war, so I kept going until I came to the first postwar story. This would turn out to be Modern Comics #46, where the Japanese that the Blackhawks battle are referred to as "renegades" who refuse to accept that the war is over. #9 was the only issue of Blackhawk published during the war, so I did read that; I also jumped ahead to read one other postwar issue, Blackhawk #50 (March 1952), as that included both a text feature giving the origin of the Blackhawks and the debut of recurring Blackhawk villain Killer Shark.

from Military Comics #25
(script by Bill Woolfolk, art by John Cassone & Alex Kotzky)

(Note that I did read the text features if they were stories about the Blackhawks, but I did not read any of the myriad other features contained in Military Comics. No time for Cherry and Choo-Choo, alas!)

So how were the actual stories? I have to say, and maybe this is just familiarity breeding contempt, that the earlier stories collected in Blackhawk Archives have a vibrancy and power largely missing from these. As the series goes on, it feels like it gets more formulaic, the aeronautic nature of the Blackhawks feels less relevant, and the energy diffuses from both writing and art. 

Part of the problem is definitely the changing theater of war. In the first seventeen issues, the Blackhawks were mostly battling the Nazis in occupied Europe, with occasional forays into the Pacific, but by about Military #25 or so, the action has entirely shifted to the Pacific, and is all about battling the Japanese. This means, you might imagine, a lot more racism; whereas the Nazis were obviously depicted as nasty and often caricatured, they were also shown as dominating a people who would rather not have them. There were no good Nazis, of course, but there were good Germans! The Japanese, on the other hand, are villainous to a man, racial caricatures all the way down. A Nazi is allowed to be clever, but it seemed to me that Japanese was only allowed to be conniving, if you register the distinction.

from Military Comics #32 (scripter unknown, art by Mort Leav)

This all grew quite wearying. 

To me, the weird thing about Blackhawk is that though it has a clear lead character, it still seems like it ought to be an ensemble cast. But the Blackhawks who aren't Blackhawk, Chop-Chop, (and to a lesser extent) Olaf and Andre might as well not be there. Who the hell is Chuck? Or Hendrickson? (In one issue, Blackhawk calls him "gentle" and I was like, "He is?") Or the other one? I couldn't tell you; the writers certainly don't seem to know. I'm not asking for three-dimensional characters in my 1940s war comic, but even just two dimensions could be nice at times.

There were a couple parts I enjoyed. Military Comics #20 features a woman pilot joining the Blackhawks temporarily and totally running rings around their sexist expectations. She will only tell them her name is "Sugar" because she's "hard to get." This one was good fun. My understanding is that the "Lady Blackhawk" character doesn't join until the 1950s, but a lot of later references have retconned her to being active during the war; could we thus make this the story where Zinda Blake joins the team?

from Military Comics #35 (scripter unknown, art by Al Bryant)

Similarly, Military #34-36 has a multi-issue plotline (one of only two during this whole era) where a female photographer named Eve Rice ends up staying with the team for a bit. Once again, she's a fun character, who flummoxes the men with her competence, though she's also a bit of a manipulator and she endangers the team a lot by needing to be rescued. Also there's some spanking! After her third appearance, she disappears, but I think a modern writer could do some good stuff with her.

The other multi-issue story is Captain Hitsu and His Suicide Squadron in #31-32; it's nice to see an enemy that Blackhawk can't defeat in one fifteen-page story, and this one features some fun flying, which became a rarity in the later Military Comics issues.

Like I said above, I also read Blackhawk #50. The much belated origins for the Blackhawks are nice; back in Military Comics #1, we learned a bit about Blackhawk himself, but not much about the other members of the team, and here we finally get a lot spelled out that was only implied. The text feature also gives a rationale for the Blackhawks' post-WWII activities, something we didn't see in the actual comics!

from Blackhawk #50 (scripter unknown, art by Bill Ward)

The issue also gave me a taste of what the Blackhawks' postwar remit was; having helped take down a couple dictator nations, here they go around defeating dictatorial thugs. There's Killer Shark, who uses airplanes that turn into submarines to terrorize vaguely eastern European countries. The Blackhawks fight off a dictator of a small country forcing his nation into an unwanted war long enough to let his people negotiate a peace treaty. And then there's a goofy one about a would-be dictator building a flying octopus. Nothing here with the power of the early issues, but at least the writers had gotten far enough on characterizing Hendrickson to render his dialogue in a German accent.

There's little greatness to be found in these issues, to be honest, but there is a bit of the day-in day-out appeal of formula. Every month (well, every day, since that's how I read them), open up a new issue and find out what the Blackhawks have done to make the world safe for democracy this time. Hard to not find something appealing in that.

This is the second post in a series about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers Showcase Presents Blackhawk, Volume One. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1 (1941-42)
   

The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1 by Chuck Cuidera, Dick French, et al.

Longtime readers will know that one of the things that fascinates me most about superhero comics is how a concept can develop and change over a long span of time; it's what caused me to read the Justice Society from 1976 to 2013, for example, or the Black Panther from 1966 to the present.

There are a lot of fake-out deaths in this series.
from Military Comics #16 (script by Bill Woolfolk, art by Reed Crandall)

So, even though it's not a superhero comic per se, I've long been fascinated by Blackhawk. About a squadron of unaffiliated pro-Allies fighter pilots, Blackhawk began as a feature in Quality's Military Comics in Aug. 1941. This very World War II–focused comic lasted through all of that title's run, surviving a name change and the end of the war, until what was now Modern Comics came to an end with issue #102 in Oct. 1950. In the meantime, though, it had picked up its own self-titled book, which ran for ninety-nine issues until Dec. 1956. At that point, DC acquired the title from Quality without skipping a beat, and under DC, it ran another 166 issues until Nov. 1984 (albeit with a couple hiatuses). It then got a few post-Crisis revivals (including a three-issue 1988 miniseries and a sixteen-issue 1989-90 ongoing), and even an eight-issue "New 52" run (2012-13). Plus some of the characters have made appearances elsewhere; Blackhawk himself appeared in a 1996-97 arc of Sandman Mystery Theatre, Lady Blackhawk in Guy Gardner and Birds of Prey, and both together in Batman Confidential. And on top of all that, there was a Blackhawk novel!

That's quite a history for a comic which, to be honest, doesn't strike me as having a very adaptable premise, and over the years the premise has had to be reinvented repeatedly. If your comic is all about stopping the Nazis from overunning Europe, what can its point be in 1950, or 1960, or 1970, or 1980, or 1990? How have our conceptions of the Second World War changed over time? That's what I want to find out, starting from its 1941 debut and going all the way through its last pre-Flashpoint incarnation in 1990. (Based on previous experience with writer Mike Costa, I have no desire to subject myself to the New 52 run.) That's fifty years of comics history!

The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1

Collection published: 2001
Contents originally published: 1941-42
Acquired and read: March 2024

Writers: Will Eisner with Bob Powell, Dick French, Bill Woolfolk

Artists: Chuck Cuidera, Reed Crandall

It all begins here, with the seventeen stories collected in this DC Archive Edition. The archive editions feature high-quality hardcover reprints of Golden Age material, but there must not have been much of a demand for Blackhawk, because twenty-three years on, a second volume has yet to appear. Like many Golden Age comics, Military Comics was an anthology title, with a variety of features, in this case half were about the Army and half about the Navy. Blackhawk is the only one to have had any lasting permanence, and only the Blackhawk stories are represented here.

These seventeen issues give little characterization but lots of Blackhawks-on-Nazi and Blackhawks-on-Japanese action. The earliest issues take place in the European theatre, but as the series goes on, we get more stories that focus on Japan. Ususually the Blackhawks fly somewhere, get involved in some kind of Nazi plot, foil it, and move on. To be honest, I don't think dogfighting plays to the strengths of the comics medium; it comes across as a series of still images of airplanes. So, the plots often revolve around the Blackhawks infiltrating or extricating or committing acts of sabotage.

In the early stages, the make-up of the group is pretty vague, but soon it settles down into a set of regulars, each from a different European country: Blackhawk, Hendrikson, André, Stanislaus, Olaf, and Chuck. (Plus Chop-Chop, but more on him later.) I know Blackhawk himself is eventually named Janos Prohaska, but that's not in this book. Most of these characters get little in the way of distinctive dialogue; André is the vaguely smooth French one, Olaf is an oaf, and that's about it. I couldn't pick the other three out of a line-up.

Is this really a viable repeat dogfight strategy?
from Military Comics #1 (script by Will Eisner & Bob Powell, art by Chuck Cuidera)

The earliest issues, written by Will Eisner and illustrated by Chuck Cuidera, have them getting involved in different Nazi plots: Blackhawk hunts down the German baron who killed his family and spars with a nurse, they steal radium from Paris before the Nazis can use it to build a bomb, the meet up with the nurse again to help her defend a refugee column, they try to stop the Nazis from capturing a munitions ship in the Suez Canal, and so on. None of it's high art, with crude but powerful writing and art, but it's fun if often ridiculous. There's a bit where André realizes that they need an avalanche to stop some Nazis... and so he flings himself down a mountainside, killing himself in order to be the incitement of an avalanche!

This return of the nurse would probably be more effective if they'd thought to give her a name on her first appearance... or if we ever saw her again!
from Military Comics #3 (script by Will Eisner, art by Chuck Cuidera)

Even without the credits, you can tell a new writer takes over with #5, because suddenly things get less war-focused and more fantastic. Weird-looking people called the Scavengers, killer germs, an island that suddenly appears in the middle of the Atlantic, a haunted castle, and so on... These stories are written by Dick French, and left me wondering how the title had run out of ideas so quickly! The haunted castle one is pretty stupid—the ghost turns out to be André wearing a suit of armor because he's embarrassed by his disfigurement—but at least it has strong art by Chuck Cuidera, with lots of cool layouts that really capture the vibe of the castle. The next story is even stupider, though, as the Blackhawks kidnap a Jewish plastic surgeon from a concentration camp to repair André's face but because he's mad with grief he makes a mistake, but this turns out to be that he looks exactly like the Nazi general who kidnapped the surgeon's daughter, so André replaces him! Like, lol, wut?

In this issue the art is so clearly in the lead that I believe Chuck Cuidera's claims that he did the writing himself on all his Quality Comics Blackhawk stories.
from Military Comics #9 (script by Dick French, art by Chuck Cuidera)

Thankfully Bill Woolfolk soon takes over as writer and Reed Crandall on art, and I found their vibe much closer to the first four issues', and more consistently enjoyable. Woolfolk also gives the other team members more to do, especially Olaf... though he also has more of a thing for phonetic accents. Blackhawk gets to face down Von Tepp's brother "the Butcher," though he also keeps meeting Asian women who have fallen in love with him and switch allegiance. Crandall is a good artist, but I do kind of miss how Cuidera drew Blackhawk's face!

All the ladies love Blackhawk. Personally, I think I'd go for Henrickson.
from Military Comics #17 (script by Bill Woolfolk, art by Reed Crandall)

Chop-Chop is a Chinese man who is sent by Blackhawk's Red Cross nurse flame in Military Comics #3 to ask for the Blackhawks' help; he fixes up a busted Nazi plane and manages to to fly it to Blackhawk Island all by himself. He's a weird character, in that visually, he's an offensive racist caricature, and also the white characters mostly don't respect him... but he's sometimes a buffoon and sometimes surprisingly competent, perpetually underestimated even by his own teammates. Also he can curse up a storm! I am not totally sure what the writers are going for with him other than "Chinese people are victims of imperial aggression yet also hilarious," but I guess I'll see what future creators make of him as I go on.

Is Chop-Chop the father of the cousin from American-Born Chinese?
from Military Comics #16 (script by Bill Woolfolk, art by Reed Crandall)

Overall, these were fairly fun, and though I originally intended to jump from this volume to when DC took over in 1957, I ended up deciding I'd like to see out the war before moving ahead.

This is the first post in a series about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers Military Comics #18-43, Modern Comics #44-46, and Blackhawk #9 & 50.