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 But as the 1960s continued, the Silver Age of comics was in full swing, and a group of war characters was out-of-date.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)
   

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part VII: Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 5

Comic trade paperback, 173 pages
Published 2010 (contents: 1978-80)
Borrowed from the library
Read July 2013

Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 5

Writer: Gerry Conway
Pencillers: Dick Dillin, George Pérez
Inker: Frank McLaughlin
Letterers: Ben Oda, Todd Klein

I had been burning out on these collections, but volume 5 turned out to be the most successful one in a while. The first story here ("Crisis from Yesterday!"/"Crisis from Tomorrow!") is maybe not great-- more heroes fighting each other under mind control (seriously this is the dullest thing ever, stop writing it), but any story that gives a principal role to the Elongated Man is a story that gains my appreciation to some extent. The Huntress, too, which makes this some of my first real experience of the Earth-2 Huntress.

I did quite like "The Murderer Among Us: Crisis above Earth-One!"/"I Accuse...", which forgoes the usual throwdowns for a murder mystery aboard the JLA satellite during the joint JLA/JSA meeting. It's a fun idea, and it lets the personalities of the characters come to the fore more than they're usually able to in these stories.

The best story here, though, is "Crisis on New Genesis, or Where Have All the New Gods Gone?"/"Crisis between Two Earths, or Apokolips Now!"/"Crisis on Apokolips, or Darkseid Rising!" (yeah, really). It maybe is your standard throwdown, but with three issues, the story actually breathes a bit, and the characters' personalities actually do come through. Of course, it involves Darkseid and the New Gods, who are awesome, and I enjoy almost anything that plays with those concepts by default. It's perhaps a standard superhero story, but it's one well told; there's some great stuff in particular with the children in the underground resistance on Apokolips.

Conway gets Darkseid, too.  He's resurrected in this story, having apparently been dead, and he observes: "My brief 'death' has given me a new perspective on life, gentlemen. As I floated in the spiritual limbo where Desaad's uni-cannon blast propelled me, I came to treasure the memory of living things... the soft glow of the sun at dawn, the gentle waft of a breeze across one's brow, even the scent of a flower in bloom. Yes, even a god may be affected by his own 'death.'" Darkseid then pauses for a moment, and smells a flower in his hand. "I shall never forgive myself for such weakness! Never!" he shouts, crushing the flower. Perfect.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part VI: Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 4

Comic trade paperback, 165 pages
Published 2005 (contents: 1975-77)
Borrowed from the library
Read June 2013

Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 4

Writers: Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin, E. Nelson Bridwell, Martin Pasko, Paul Levitz
Artists: Dick Dillin, Frank McLaughlin

The first story in here is one of the weirdest crossovers yet: "Where on Earth am I?" starts on Earth-Prime, which is our Earth, where DC Comics is based. Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin, at a loss for a Justice League plot, are sucked into Earth-Two, where Cary Bates promptly (for some reason) becomes a supervillain. Whoops. It's a bit by-the-numbers, despite the premise, but fun enough. The best part is probably the way they write their cranky old editor, Julius Schwartz.

The last two tales are co-written by Martin Pasko (the first with E. Nelson Bridwell, the second with Paul Levitz), and boy are they dull. Lots of fighting to no clear purpose, lots of mind-control so that heroes fight other heroes. Who knew that Superman finally meeting Captain Marvel could be so uninteresting? Worse, who knew that the freakin' Legion of Super-Heroes turning up could be very uninteresting!? And overcomplicated. I don't know if I'm running out of interest in these kind of stories, or if the writers are. Well, just two more volumes of this series to go.

It's worth noting that the last story shows Power Girl flirting with the Earth-One Superman. I guess that if you're gonna try to make out with your cousin, restricting it to his parallel self is a sensible option...

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part V: Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 3

Comic trade paperback, 191 pages
Published 2004 (contents: 1971-74)
Borrowed from the library
Read June 2013

Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 3

Writers: Mike Friedrich, Len Wein
Penciller: Dick Dillin
Inkers: Joe Giella, Dick Giordano
Letterers: John Costanza, Ben Oda

Dennis O'Neil's run on Justice League is sadly brief, as Volume 3 of Crisis on Multiple Earths sees him replaced by Mike Friedrich for one story and Len Wein for three. Friedrich's "Earth-- The Monster Maker!" / "Solomon Grundy-- The One and Only" tries to use the parallel Earths to advantage by telling the story of an alien and his symbiotic pet stranded between the two Earths, but it turns out to be boring fight scene after boring fight scene until the heroes figure out the kid is lost, not evil. Of vague interest is some interaction between the Robins of both Earths, but vague is as far as the characterization goes. The Robin of Earth-One borrows a costume unused by the Earth-Two Robin-- I can see why, because it's godawful, even if Neal Adams (acknowledged in dialogue!) did design it.

I found both of Len Wein's big event stories ("The Unknown Soldier of Victory!"/"The Hand That Shook the World"/"And One of Us Must Die!" and "Crisis on Earth-X!"/"Thirteen against the Earth!") very uninspired. They're old-school team-ups, where the Justice League/Justice Society/whatever team split up into groups and each fight mini-battle before uniting for the finale. Depressingly formulaic. Wein pulls in more and more obscure heroes, but does nothing to make you care about them. "The Creature in the Velvet Cage" is decent, but it explains something that didn't really need an explanation: why did the Sandman change his costume back to his gas mask one (um, because it's awesome and the purple one sucked?) and what happened to Sandy Hawkins?

Dick Dillin is still pretty awesome, though. Keep rocking it out on art, man.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part IV: Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 2

Comic trade paperback, 200 pages
Published 2003 (contents: 1967-70)
Borrowed from the library
Read June 2013

Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 2

Writers: Gardner Fox, Dennis O'Neil
Pencillers: Mike Sekowsky, Dick Dillin
Inkers: Sid Greene, Joe Giella
Letterers: Gaspar Saladino, Joe Letterese, Milton Snapinn, Ira Schnapp

This volume of Crisis on Multiple Earths features four more transdimensional team-ups between the Justice League and the Justice Society, the first two by old hand Gardner Fox, the last two by new hand Dennis O'Neil-- the first time someone other than Fox has written a JLA/JSA team-up.

Fox's first story is "The Super-Crisis That Struck Earth-Two!" / "The Negative Crisis on Earths One-Two!" It is a pretty generic Justice League story: there are some alien infestations, some bad guys, some fighting, and some really contrived villain weaknesses. Fox has done better and more interesting work, and one wonders if he is running out of steam, both on the Justice League in general and the crossovers in particular. The one potentially interesting thing here is the inclusion of Earth-Two's Robin, who is "no longer the 'Boy Wonder'"-- one would hope so, given that I think he must be about forty years old at this point! But he's just a cypher in this punchout-fest; Fox squanders all the potential of seeing what a grownup Robin would be like.

His last effort is "The Stormy Return of the Red Tornado" / "T. O. Morrow Kills the Justice League -- Today!" which is... I dunno... I guess it's there. I do like the new Red Tornado-- a robot without a soul!-- but other than the introduction of Dick Dillin on pencils (and what an introduction it is, the guy is great!) there's not a whole lot going on here. Still, it's fun-- Gardner Fox never puts one weird concept into a story when he can come up with fifteen.

Awesomely, Denny O'Neil then takes over, with some awesomely titled epics: "Star Light, Star Bright-- Death Star I See Tonight!" / "Where Death Fears to Tread!" being the first of them. A living star attacks Earth-Two. I wonder if this is where Neil Gaiman got the concept for "The Heart of a Star" from? Oddly this is one of the first JLA/JSA crossovers (if not the first) where two versions of the same person meet: the Clark Kents of both Earths are in this tale. But it doesn't really matter, as usual, because who would be interested in meeting their parallel self who is twenty years older? Evidently not these guys. Notably, though, this is the story where Larry Lance, the husband of the Black Canary dies, and so she crosses over from Earth-Two to Earth-One.

This is followed up on in the last story, "Peril of the Paired Planets" / "Where Valor Fails... Will Magic Triumph?" Something I've been doing as I read these is imagine how they would play out in the new universe formed after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, where there is no multiverse. Some of these stories wouldn't work at all, of course, but others would. One of the most notable changes is that the Black Canary becomes two characters: mother Dinah Drake Lance and daughter Dinah Laurel Lance. It's relatively easy to imagine the elder Dinah being the character in all the crossovers up to this point (serving with the JSA), and the younger in the ones after this (serving in the JLA). But this story gives us a Dinah who was both married to Larry Lance and is now dating Green Arrow, which never happened in the new timeline of course. It gives one some cognitive dissonance if one attempts to imagine these events in the lives of the post-Crisis characters. I was interested, though, that this story takes place during the infamous "Hard-Traveling Heroes" era: Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Black Canary have to be recalled to assist with the current crisis. There's an increased focus on their characterization, as Black Canary frets that her crossing between universes may be what destabilized the realities, and thus she will have to die to fix it.

This story establishes, "Every twelve months, the temporal matrices of the Earths come together briefly! For 21 days, super-powered men and women can cross to the other existence... can and have!" It's a valiant attempt to explain why the JLA/JSA team-ups happen on a yearly basis, but it doesn't really make much sense. In the previous stories, it seemed as though people (heroes or villains) crossed at will, and the idea is never alluded to again, either. And in between the JLA/JSA team-ups, individual heroes (especially the Flash) seem to cross over all the time.

Also this story in some ways reads as a rewrite of "Crisis between Earth-One and Earth-Two!", with the Spectre trying to stop the two Earths from colliding with one another. Only this time he gives his life in the effort!  Kinda-- it's weird. In the first chapter, he's chairing the Justice Society meeting and helping deal with the crisis like a normal superhero; in the second, he lives in a crypt and has to be summoned to help by Doctor Fate. So who knows what's going on. I did like both of O'Neil's stories: Gardner Fox madness mixed with a bit of O'Neil's overblow style: fun stuff, too.