The NEW Blackhawk Era!: From Junk-Heap Heroes to the Return of the Black Knights (#228–43)

To a certain type of comics fan, the story of "The New Blackhawk Era" is a familiar one. The Blackhawks were in continual publication from 1941 to 1967; despite having been designed as World War II heroes, they had survived the end of the war and even a change of publishers, going from Quality Comics to DC, and moving on from battling dictators, to battling criminals, and later aliens, and later nascent supervillains. But as the 1960s continued, the Silver Age of comics was in full swing, and a group of war characters was out-of-date. There was one attempt to rejig the Blackhawk concept with 1964's issue #196 (see item #5 in the list below), but it didn't last.

Still, clearly something needed to be done. I don't actually have any behind-the-scenes insight here, but a comic doesn't undergo a creative change like this one if everything is working fine. In the three-part The Junk-Heap Heroes! storyline (issues #228-30, written by Bob Haney, art by Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera), the Blackhawks go an a mission where things go horribly wrong—and suddenly the President of the United States has called in the Justice League to evaluate the Blackhawks.* Their assessment?

In the words of Batman, "They just don't swing!" (It was the 1960s. Try to imagine Kevin Conroy saying that.)

from Blackhawk vol. 1 #238
(script by Bob Haney,
art by Dick Dillin & Chuck Cuidera)

Over the course of the story, the Blackhawks are disbanded, they split up, they each come up with new "superhero" identities, and then they reform. The identities include such winners as Olaf getting a mechanical costume that lets him jump really far as "the Leaper," Andre displaying a previously unmentioned penchant for building machines and becoming "M'sieu Machine," Chop-Chop getting his hands encased in metal so he can be "Dr. Hands," and Chuck wearing pyjamas covered in ears because he is now "the Listener."

Okay, say that you buy the Blackhawks needed a makeover... but did they need this makeover? Surely not! Look at Hendrickson as "the Weapons Master"... is this guy supposed to look more cool? He looks dumb, surely they even thought so in the 1960s!

(That said, I did kind of like how Chop-Chop mixes "ancient Chinese wisdom" with "happening 1960s slang" in this iteration.)

One of the things that fascinates me about superhero comics, especially minor ones, the whole reason I undertake projects like my Justice Society one, like my Green Arrow one, is how they get reinvented over time, how the premise warps and mutates to accommodate what is popular. Superman and Batman can set the trend, but Green Arrow responds to it. The Blackhawks, it seems to me, are a particularly vulnerable case of this, as their original premise is so closely rooted to the context of World War II. Can you update the Blackhawks to be relevant to the 1960s without also losing what made them the Blackhawks to begin with?

Not if you do it this way, at least. Nothing of what made Blackhawk enjoyable in his original incarnation is to be found in the adventures of "Big Eye."

So far, so familiar; I'm not saying anything lots of comics critics haven't said before. Lots of comics fans know the story of "The New Blackhawk Era" and have judged it as a colossal mistake. And surely it was.

(There's a bit in issue #232 where Blackhawk asks, "Is this the New Blackhawk Era or a clown convention?" You're just tempting fate with a question like that!)

But... what about the stories?

I don't think I've ever read a review of this era that actually discusses the actual stories told about this version of the Blackhawks. Like, I've heard about the premise a million times, but that's just the first three issues. What about all the other ones?

The new Blackhawks work for G.E.O.R.G.E., the "Group for Extermination of Organizations of Revenge, Greed, and Evil"; they have a boss with a blank face (much like Mr. Cypher from the previous era) named Delta; they go on James Bond–style missions against S.P.E.C.T.R.E.-style global criminal organizations. For all the fact that they've been reinvented as superheroes visually, the actual stories owe a lot more to Cold War spy-fi. Gone are the airplanes, but now they are leaping into action in strange locales across the globe.

And do you know what else? They are actually kind of fun. Because, you know, they are written by Bob Haney, and Bob Haney is the kind of comics writer who lives the insanity. You say, "Bob Haney, the characters you have been treating as serious crimefighters are now goofy superheroes," and Bob Haney says, "Bring it." The stories crackle with energy and invention. Put aside how dumb the premise is—and I've never seen a commentary on this run do that—and they are actually kind of enoyable. The Junk-Heap Heroes! is full of energy, but I enjoyed even more the first full adventure of the new era, a three-part story running across issues #231-33 ("Target: Big-Eye"/"With These Rings I Thee Kill!"/"Too Late, the Leaper!"). I couldn't begin to explain to you why the Blackhawks are in space, but I loved the experience of reading it. On art, Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera prove they can pretty much do anything, responding well to the vim and vigor of Haney's scripts.

Well, anything except make the new costumes look good. Most comics creators struggle to come up with one good superhero design, and unfortunately, they had to think up seven.

from Blackhawk vol. 1 #232
(script by Bob Haney, art by Dick Dillin & Chuck Cuidera)

That said, you can tell Haney was making his stories up as he went along, and he doesn't always get away with it. In "The Terrible Twins"/"A Coffin for Blackhawk" (#234-35), we lurch from complication to complication, and what began as a Cold War thriller ends with the Blackhawks learning that the circus owner was a G.E.O.R.G.E. agent all along, who can just solve all their problems for them... presumably because Bob was out of pages. "Melt, Mutant, Melt!" (#236) is similarly rushed, but I did really enjoy "The Magnificent 7 Assassins"/"The Walking Booby-Traps!" (#237-38), where the Blackhawks discover they may have caused the death of a fellow G.E.O.R.G.E. agent... only he's still alive? And... evil!? And... an android?!? Go for it, Bob Haney, why not. Again, it kind of fumbles the ending, but when the journey is such a pleasure, I don't really care.

(Also, Lady Blackhawk is accidentally restored from her Queen Killer Shark identity in #228... and the proceeds to stand around making tea for the remaining issues. Is this really my Zinda Blake? I'm not sure why they bothered.)

Alas, this is clearly the point where DC realizes the series can't be saved. With issue #237, it goes bi-monthly; with issue #240, the main stories drop from twenty-four pages to sixteen, with an eight-page reprint to pad it out. (#240 reprints 1957's "The Perils of Blackie, the Wonder Bird" from #111; #241 reprints 1961's "The Phantom Spy" from #160.) Issue #241 marks another important change; the editor begins apologizing. (GCD says Dick Giordano took over from George Kashdan with #242, but Giordano clearly did at least the lettercol for #241.) Sorry, they say, the new Blackhawks are stupid.

And then in #242 ("My Brother–My Enemy!"), the New Blackhawk Era is quite definitely ended. While the Blackhawks are on vacation, literally everyone in G.E.O.R.G.E. is killed. Since they left their new costumes at the G.E.O.R.G.E. base, the Blackhawks must readopt their OG WWII-era uniforms to fight the villain, who turns out to be Blackhawk's Nazi-brainwashed brother. The story is plotted by Marv Wolfman, but still scripted by Bob Haney! I tell you, the man can do anything, even completely reinvent the characters he just completely reinvented eighteen months prior, and casually dismiss the entire premise he'd spent fourteen previous issues building up.

This is the first story to tell us Blackhawk's real name, and unfortunately, it's "Bart Hawk," but other than that, I found it pretty solid, especially thanks to the stylish, dark artwork of Pat Boyette. Good use of the series's WWII roots, though I think the origin for Blackhawk doesn't fit what we learned in Military Comics #1 or Blackhawk #198.

from Blackhawk vol. 1 #243
(script by Bob Haney, art by Pat Boyette)

I also enjoyed #243 ("Mission Incredible"), again by Haney and Boyette, a largely grounded spy thriller about the Blackhawks having to evacuate a little girl from the other side of the Iron Curtain. It seemed to me that the creative team was working out a space for Blackhawk in the spy-fi era... but even though the lettercol in issue #243 promises more would come, it never did. Blackhawk was finally cancelled after a run of eleven years and 136 issues at DC, not to mention its previous sixteen years at Quality.

But cancellation at issue #243 doesn't mean there's no issue #244. Stay tuned for next time!

This is the sixth post in a series about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers Blackhawk vol. 1 #244-50 and The Brave and the Bold #167. 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)

* This is the first explicit indication that the Blackhawk stories take place in the DC universe. In the pre-Crisis cosmology, this surely must be Earth-B.

New! Blackhawk (#196–227)

In my previous post in this series (see item #4 in the list below), I had originally planned to cover up through issue #200, since I had bought issues #151 through 200 in one batch. But when I read issue #196 (May 1964), it was obvious that something had changed in the world of Blackhawk, and that issues #196 through 200 belonged with the run that followed, which would go up through issue #227 (Dec. 1966). (Issue #228, as I'll cover in the next post in this series, is the infamous Junk-Heap Heroes story that saw the Blackhawks reformatted as superheroes.)

In its early DC years, in my opinion, Blackhawk had settled into a rut. Really generic, really tedious stories of the Blackhawks fighting criminals or aliens or alien criminals, stories that drew in absolutely no way on the unique attributes of the Blackhawks of the things that actually made them appealing to begin with. But to a degree, isn't this inevitable? That's the question I'm exploring in this series. Unlike, say, Superman, I don't think the premise of Blackhawk is terribly adaptable outside of its original setting. Moving the characters outside of World War II is perhaps innately doomed to failure. DC's attempts to tell Blackhawk stories from 1957 to 1964 didn't take advantage of the unique attributes of the premise, and the kinds of stories they were telling would almost certainly have been done better with a different group of characters.

Back into action like in the old days!
from Blackhawk vol. 1 #196
(script by Arnold Drake, art by Dick Dillin & Chuck Cuidera)

As soon as you read issue #196 ("A Firing Squad for Blackhawk!"), it's clear something has changed. The story has the Blackhawks recruited by the mysterious "Mr. Cipher" (his face is a blank) from the United Nations, who sends them on a mission to do the kind of things they actually are good at—the taking down of dictators! To me, this does a good job of threading the needle of what makes the Blackhawks fun and interesting while still keeping them in the present day. It's essentially the kind of thing they used to do before America joined in on the Second World War, go places where there was tyranny but there couldn't be official intervention. I really enjoyed the issue; though like all previous DC issues it's illustrated by Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera, even the artwork feels fresh, probably because the script gives them something dynamic and exciting to draw for once.

Issue #197 isn't quite as good ("The War Between the Blackhawks"), but continues in the same line. Again, Mr. Cipher sends them on a mission, this time to stop a war between two neighboring countries in Southeast Asia; the Blackhawks split into two groups, each of which advises each side. There's some silly sci-fi stuff here (monsters or robots or robot monsters or monster robots), but it's used in the kind of plot that, once again, plays to Blackhawk's strengths as a premise. To go undercover on their mission, the Blackhawks need to don new uniforms, which at the story's end they decide to keep, red shirts with green pants. I wasn't very into them at first, but as I kept reading the run, I did come around on them, and I grew to like the fact that there were different uniforms for their wartime and postwar adventures. (More on that in a bit.)

Issue #198 does something new and different; it jumps back to the war. Obviously we got a Blackhawk origin of sorts in Military Comics #1 (see item #1 in the list below), and the text story in Blackhawk #50 gave us some more details (item #2), but "D-Day for the Blackhawks" is an issue-length story about how the Blackhawks were founded. It does not accord with the Military Comics run, though, depicting the Blackhawks as an official unit of the military, and not having them go into action until D-Day.*

All three issues are credited to writer Arnold Drake, but knowing what I do of the era, my guess is the changes are mostly down to editor Murray Boltinoff, who took over with issue #196 according to the Grand Comics Database... and unfortunately, #198 is his last issue. With #199 ("The Attack of the Mummy Insects," writer unknown), we're back to the same old crap as George Kashdan takes over as editor—though my guess is it might be an inventory story from the previous era.

The same is probably true of #200, though it's a landmark issue in some ways. "Queen Killer Shark" reads like a totally generic Blackhawk issue of the previous era, and I suspect it probably was, as it's written by Dave Wood, who was a prolific contributor in the previous era, but never penned another Blackhawk story again. Recurring Blackhawk nemesis Killer Shark uses poison or some shit to turn Lady Blackhawk into the evil Queen Killer Shark. To me, it reads like a totally normal one-off, except that at the end, she doesn't get turned back, and I wonder if the editor made a change to an existing script. By now, it's 1964, and the Silver Age of superheroes is underway at DC, with all kinds of recurring subplots—not the kind of things the Blackhawks usually went in for. So I think the editor (be it the outgoing Boltinoff or the incoming Kashdan) had the end of the story tweaked to bring it more in line with the kind of stuff contemporary superhero comics were doing.

There's one other format-busting issue here, "Operation White Dragon" in #203 (script by Bob Haney). Just as "D-Day for the Blackhawks" retold the origin of the Blackhawk team, this retells the origin of Chop-Chop. In the original Military Comics run, Chop-Chop is for some reason helping a nurse the Blackhawks meet in Nazi-occupied Europe and ends up following the team home; here, the Blackhawks meet Chop-Chop when they go to China to help liberate a town from the Japanese. Chop-Chop (real name: Liu Hang) is the nephew of a local lord that the Blackhawks are trying to convince to come over to the Allies. He turns out to be a secret badass working to undermine the occupying Japanese forces. It's a fun story, and a much better origin for Chop-Chop than what we originally got, though as far as I know it never really gets picked up on again. In general, Chop-Chop does much better in this run than in the previous, as he's more treated like a regular member of the team (he gets a uniform when everyone else switches) and not just an adjunct to Blackhawk.

Other than that, issues #201 through 227 settle into a pretty predictable pattern. There's always a main story of around sixteen pages. Though they go back to the goofiness and sci-fi trappings of the pre-Boltinoff Blackhawk, I enjoyed these more. There's fewer stupid stories about aliens, or about generic criminals, more about supervillains. They're more stylishly told, too. Sure, they're silly, but there's a good sense of fun, a feeling that the writers (still usually uncredited) are having a good time, as opposed to knocking out something before lunch. I particularly enjoyed "Five Fears for the Blackhawks" from #215 (writer unknown), which doesn't really make any sense, to be honest, but really leans into the 1960s happening vibe in a way I found totally delightful. Many of the stories of this era are by Bob Haney, and I suspect it was his work I enjoyed the most; I was less into Ed Herron, who unfortunately takes over as regular writer with #223. (This is when the series starts a short-lived habit of crediting writers and artists, so we actually know this for a fact.)

Chop-Chop... ace pilot!
from Blackhawk vol. 1 #212
(art by Dick Dillin & Chuck Cuidera)

It's unfortunate that Boltinoff and Drake left, because I liked their approach a lot more, and also they were clearly setting up some kind of ongoing plot about Mr. Cipher, who (to me, anyway) seemed fairly suspicious as bosses went. But he never appeared again after #197, nor was the fact that the Blackhawks worked for the UN ever relevant again. (In the forthcoming "New Blackhawk Era" they work for the U.S. government.) The stuff about Queen Killer Shark is an intermittent recurrent thing; they sometimes temporarily cure her but she always ends her issues evil again. At the end of her last appearance, "The Revenge of Queen Killer Shark" in #225 (script by Ed Herron), both her and Killer Shark are taken into custody. It's also worth pointing out a lot of stories end with the narrator wondering if a particular villain will come back... but they never do.

The other part of each issue is an eight-page backup. These backups usually alternate between two features. One is the "Blackhawk World War II Combat Diary," which will tell a quick lost story of what the Blackhawks got up to during World War II. These I enjoyed a lot. They're not all great (one involves aliens for some reason), but most are solid, quick stories of Nazi-fighting shenanigans. I particularly enjoyed "Chained Enemies!" (#200), where Blackhawk and a Nazi get tied up together but have to survive; "Chop-Chop's Suicide Mission" (#212), where Chop-Chop goes undercover with Japanese kamikaze pilots but ends up having to kamikaze himself against his own squadron; "Rescue Riley's Rangers!" (#218), where how people write the number 7 turns out to be vital to the war effort; and "The Mystery Prisoner of Stalag 13!" (#226), where the Blackhawks try to infiltrate a Nazi prison only to find out they've been anticipated. There are no collections of Blackhawk vol. 1 aside from the one Showcase Presents Blackhawk volume, and to be honest, I can't blame DC for that, but I think a good collection of this era's WWII adventures wouldn't go amiss.

Always love a prison infiltration story.
from Blackhawk vol. 1 #226
(art by Dick Dillin & Chuck Cuidera)

The other regular feature is the "Blackhawk Detatched Service Diary," which are short stories focusing on single members of the team. This is the usual stupid stuff for Blackhawks of the era with aliens and dimensions and whatnot, just focusing on one member at a time. There's no sense of real personality here, they're just silly stories that make you roll your eyes.

(The GCD attributes all of these back-ups from #200 to 227 to George Kashdan, on the basis of a comment he apparently made in a fanzine: "In The Comic Reader #27 (July 1964), George Kashdan is credited with writing the Blackhawk fillers. Info per Nick Caputo." It seems a bit weird to me to use a bit of data from July 1964 to attribute stories all the way up to December 1966! The writing is variable enough, in terms of quality and style, that it's hard for me to believe it's all one person's work.)

For those of us who track these things, there's still no real hint if these stories take place in the DC universe, except that when a bad guy in #227 dons a supervillain outfit, he comments that people are doing this more and more these days. There's no indication, however, of the full-on integration into the DC universe that's about to come. More on that in the next installment of this series...

I was excited when this era introduced a letter column, but in most issues, it's just taken up by fans writing in to buy/sell issues of Blackhawk with other fans. I did skim to see if I recognized any names, and indeed I did, in #227 there's a letter from Craig Russell of Wellsville, Ohio; this is the comics artist we now know as P. Craig Russell. He would have been fourteen.

from Blackhawk vol. 1 #227

The same issue has a hilarious public service advertisement I've included on the right. What do you like less, alligators or Catholics?

("New! Blackhawk" is the branding used on issues #197 and 200-01; #198-99 have the slight variation "New Blackhawk." Of course, don't confuse this with subsequent branding iterations "The New Blackhawk Era" [#228-35] or "The New Blackhawk" [#244-45]! How many times can you be new?)

This is the fifth post in a series about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers issues #228-43 of Blackhawk vol. 1. 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)
   

* This is of course the era of DC's multiple Earths. I'm sure lots of people have their own ideas, but mine is that the Military Comics stories are probably set on Earth-X (where DC put all the Quality characters) and the postwar stories up through the "Junkheap Heroes" era are Earth-B (where DC put all the goofy-ass shit that Bob Haney and Murray Boltinoff came up with). We'll see about later runs.

HAWK-AAA! (Blackhawk #151–95)

My reading of DC Comics's Blackhawk left off with August 1958's issue #127, the last issue collected in the black-and-white Showcase Presents Blackhawk collection (see item #3 below). I thought about collecting the uncollected single issues picking up right from there, but I couldn't find them for what I considered to be reasonable prices on the secondary market. I ended up starting with #151 (Aug. 1960), leaving a two-year gap. For this post, I'll cover the span up to issue #195 (May 1964), because #196 saw the first of a number of periodic relaunches of the team. 

As far as I can tell, the only development of significance in the issues I missed was the introduction of Zinda Blake, "Lady Blackhawk," in #133 (Feb. 1959). She is a part-time female member of the team, who doesn't live on Blackhawk Island with the others, but periodically drops in and goes on adventures with them.

Most issues feature three eight-page stories, but in some there's a two-part story; occasionally you get two twelve-page stories. There's one story that spans two issues. If the adventures collected in Showcase Presents Blackhawk were bad, these are worse. The stories continue to drift further and further away from the core appeal of the Blackhawks as a concept; there was a lot of generic crime-fighting in those early DC issues, but by this point, it's all low-grade sci-fi crap: space aliens, time travel, hopping dimensions, all the kind of things you'd see in any mediocre superhero comic of the period. There's very little aviation or anything else that plays to the strengths of the characters or the concept.

This was a slog. Every now and again there'd be something interesting. "Blackhawk's Secret Furlough" (writer unknown, art by Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera) in #184 was a fun story, where Blackhawk tries to take some time off but keeps bumping into trouble anyway. I also enjoyed "The Tales of the Blackhawk Emblem" (writer unknown, art by Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera) in #191, where the whole team except Lady Blackhawk vanishes. She goes to Blackhawk Island and picks up a book they were reading when they vanished, The Tales of the Blackhawk Emblem, and we get some neat flashbacks to the Blackhawks being inspirational that end up feeding into a present-day mystery.

Occasionally there'd be one so goofy it was enjoyable, such as "The Jailer's Revenge" (script by Dave Wood, art by Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera) in #193. In this one, a previously unmentioned enemy of the Blackhawks called the Jailer returns for revenge; he locks up all them except Chop-Chop, who had stayed at base with a cold. What does he do to save them? Travel into another dimension where the Blackhawks to borrow some super-technology from friends they made on a previous adventure, of course! In that dimension, people from ours have superpowers, so first he uses his powers to help them out, and then they loan him a time-travel device he uses to save his comrades. As you do! (I am pretty sure this dimension actually appeared in a previous issue I read, but was too lazy to check.)

Things of note from this period:

• There is still no hint that the Blackhawks' adventures take place in what we would now call the "DC universe."
• At some point, they acquire a "mainland barracks" in an unnamed city.
• The only recurring nemesis is Killer Shark, though even he doesn't appear very much. Most notably in a story in issue #170, "Lady Blackhawk vs. Killer Shark" / "The Mermaid Lady Blackhawk" (script by Jack Miller, art by Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera), where Lady Blackhawk defeats him thanks to a fortuitous transformation into a mermaid. 
• There are occasionally other recurring characters, like a circus midget who is made into the honorary "Tom Thumb Blackhawk"! They also get a second mascot, a monkey.
• Whenever an alien turns up, the story is careful to note that they speak English because of a "translator disc" or somesuch. Sure, because that's the one implausible thing that needs a clear scientific explanation in these stories.
  
• Near the end of this run, the upgrade their planes to ones with helicopter rotors in the wings, allowing for vertical takeoff and landing.
• All of the issues in this one feature at least one one-page humor comic from Henry Boltinoff. They are occasionally funny.
• There are one-page text stories in every issue. Early in the run, these are fiction; later, they become fact-based (supposedly, anyway), usually with some vague tie into aviation.

Of course, these comics weren't designed for a thirty-nine-year-old adult reader. My five-year-old will often join me while I read them over breakfast, asking me "what's the issue?" (i.e., confusing the idea of the comic issue with the idea of a problem). I'll then summarize the stories as I go. And to them, the Blackhawks fighting a miner transformed into a radioactive monster out for revenge is quite exciting! Alas, these copies are too fragile to ever loan them, but maybe someday they can read my Showcase volume.

Probably the most interesting thing to happen in the whole run was when my kid asked me why, if Chop-Chop was a Blackhawk, he didn't wear a uniform like the others. "Well, that's down to racism," I explained, pointing out that even good people such as the Blackhawks can exhibit racist behaviors that they don't realize are bad, such as valuing a team member less because he is Asian. A nice little teaching moment.

This is the fourth post in a series about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers issues #196-227 of Blackhawk vol. 1. 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) 

Usually I do my own cover scans for these posts, but most of these issues were too fragile for me to want to go digging around in them again for scanning purposes, so thanks to the Grand Comics Database for the images.

Showcase Presents Blackhawk by Dick Dillin, Charles Cuidera, et al.

Showcase Presents Blackhawk, Volume One

Collection published: 2008
Contents originally published: 1957-58
Acquired: March 2024
Read: May 2024

Pencilled by Dick Dillin

Inked by Charles Cuidera, Sheldon Moldoff

Writer: Dave Wood

Quality Comics's Blackhawk came to an end with issue #107 in December 1956, but without missing an issue or a month, DC Comics picked the title up right from there, continuing with issue #108 in January 1957. The DC version of the title ran all the way to issue #273, but of these 166 issues, all that have been collected are the first twenty; by this point, each issue consisted of three eight-page stories, so this Showcase Presents volume contains sixty stories, reprinted in black and white (as was usual for the Showcase line).

The early issues collected here are not very good... and somehow the book manages to get worse as it goes. If Blackhawk has a unique selling point, it's that it's about fighter pilots taking down dictators in World War II. But the fact that these characters are fighter pilots is almost entirely incidental; they use their airplanes to get to adventures, but the airplanes are very rarely part of the adventures.

But worse is the fact that these are very generic Silver Age stories about fighting "Crime," in that really boring way I associate with the squarest of Batman stories. In every installment, some boring-ass villain with some stupid gimmick pops up, and the Blackhawks put him away, looking as smug as all get out as they do so. Something that gave the original Blackhawk stories in Military Comics an edge was that the Blackhawks were renegades, they were operating outside the law, without government sanction, to do what they thought were right. These Blackhawks are the kind of obnoxious do-gooders who have chummy lunches with mayors.

As the stories go on, they even managed to get worse, as they become more and more like a generic DC superhero comic, with stories of alien invasions and time travel and people with superpowers. This, surely, is not what anyone wants out of Blackhawk. I accept that World War II was probably old hat in the 1950s, and we weren't far enough away from it for nostalgia to kick in, but surely there must have been a way to maintain a unique identity for this title other than this. Just have them flipping do things in their airplanes if nothing else!

I complained about characterization in my review of the Military Comics Blackhawk stories, but it's usually even worse here. Blackhawk himself might as well be the only character most of the time; Andre, Olaf, and Hendrickson get the occasional bit of dialogue with characteristic French, Norwegian, or German phrases sprinkled in; I'm not sure the writers even remember Chuck and Stanislaus exist, I'm willing to bet that only artist Dick Dillin does and just keeps sticking them into group scenes. The racial caricature has been significantly dialed down for Chop-Chop... but oddly, this ill-serves the character, because now he's just another person to stand there and contribute nothing to group scenes. In the old days, he did stuff!

Dick Dillin is a bit of a square-jawed illustrator; I know him best from his later run on Justice League of America (from 1968 to 1980), where I really enjoyed his stuff. He's fine here. I bet if these were good stories, he would be great, but he's just not being given much to work with.

One thing I am curious about is when the Blackhawks technically become DC universe characters. The only hint of that here is in one where Blackhawk temporarily gains superpowers, and he compares himself to Superman... but of course Superman could be a fictional character that he knows about from reading comic books!

This is the third post in a series about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers issues #151-95 of Blackhawk vol. 1. 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)
   

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.