Blackhawk: Blood & Iron by Howard Chaykin, Martin Pasko, Rick Burchett, Mike Grell, et al.

Blackhawk: Blood & Iron

Collection published: 2020
Contents originally published: 1987-89
Acquired: April 2025
Read: May 2025

Writers: Howard Chaykin, Martin Pasko, Mike Grell, Mark Verheiden

Pencillers: Howard Chaykin, Rick Burchett, Grant Miehm, Eduardo Barreto, Terry Beatty

Inkers: Howard Chaykin, Rick Burchett, Pablo Marcos, Terry Beatty, John Nyberg

Colorists: Steve Oliff, Tom Ziuko, Helen Vesik

Letterers: Ken Bruzenak, Steve Haynie, Carrie Spiegle, Janice Chiang

In the late 1980s, it came time to reinvent Blackhawk for the post-Crisis DC universe. This didn't just mean rethinking the continuity, but also rethinking the tone and style. Blackhawk had been a bloody and jingoistic war comic, a goofy sci-fi comic, a superhero comic, a nuanced war comic. What would it be in the 1980s?

The vehicle for this reinvention was a format I really enjoy, and have chronicled a lot on this blog: the three-double-length-issue miniseries. Previous examples include Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters (1987), Black Orchid (1989), Hawkworld (1989), Adam Strange: The Man of Two Worlds (1990), and Twilight (1990-91). These comics tend to be creator-driven, giving a somewhat old-fashioned concept over to a high-profile creator (or creative team), who uses it to tell a single story with more mature themes. In many cases, they became springboards for ongoing series (of the above examples, that's true of all of them except Adam Strange and Twilight), but they weren't necessarily designed to be. I tend to really like these, and I wonder if there's any I've failed to track down at this point.

Blackhawk was given over to Howard Chaykin, who wrote and illustrated the story. (Blackhawk vol. 2 #1 was, in fact, Blackhawk's first #1, fact fans, because the original Blackhawk run confusingly began with issue #9; see item #2 below.) Other than the premature existence of an atomic bomb (a common occurrence for the Blackhawks, I guess; see item #9 below), the series is devoid of fantastic elements; it's an espionage thriller set during World War II.

They didn't have scenes like this back when Dick Dillin was drawing Blackhawk!
from Blackhawk vol. 2 #1 (script & art by Howard Chaykin)

The major continuity change is that Chaykin reinvents Blackhawk himself: instead of "Bart Hawk," he's now "Janos Prohaska," thank God. (However, as a Star Trek fan, I find the name kind of jarring.) We just get glimpses of his backstory, but we do learn that he's a former Communist, he flew with some private outfits early in the war, and he established the Blachkawks as an independent but Allies-funded fighting force. (I'll do a post on Blackhawk's post-Crisis continuity once I've read all of the relevant stories, but Chris Miller at The Unauthorized Chronology of the DC Universe suggests that the Mark Evanier–Dan Spiegle run could have largely happened as written prior to this miniseries; that run was set in 1940, compared to this series's 1943.) He's more of a 1980s character in terms of personality, though, sleeping with random women; you can definitely see why Chaykin might have written this series and worked on James Bond.

Seemingly the problem with modern takes on "Chop-Chop" is that every one has to have a moment where they explain that he's not called "Chop-Chop."
from Blackhawk vol. 2 #2 (script & art by Howard Chaykin)

In terms of continuity, there are a couple other significant changes. One is that, for the first time, all the members of the squadron get last names! Olaf becomes Olaf Friedricksen (and he is relocated from Sweden to Denmark), Stanislaus is Stanislaus Drozdowski, Hendricksen is Ritter Hendricksen (he's from Holland here, which was true in some previous stories, I think, but in others, he was from Germany), Chuck is Carlo Sirianni, Andre is Andre Blanc-Dumont, and "Chop-Chop" keeps the name he was given by Evanier (he's Chinese-American here, not Chinese), Weng Chan (though Blackhawk still calls him "Chop-Chop," unlike in Evanier's series). The other members of the squadron aren't really focused on very much, though, and Stanislaus is killed off in issue #2 to prove the situation is serious.*

Beautiful, deadly, and believes in the people owning the means of production. The perfect woman?
from Blackhawk vol. 2 #1 (script & art by Howard Chaykin)

The other big change is the introduction of Natalie Reed nee Gurdin. Natalie is someone that Jan knew early in the war, from his Communist days, but instead of leaving the party like he did, she fully embraced it, moving to Russia in a pretty high-profile "defection" of sorts; she reenters his life here, proving herself a bit of a technical wizard by helping the Blackhawks out with their planes and other technologies. In one sequence, she exclaims, "I didn't build these planes so you could run off and get all the glory--I'm coming with you--I'm Lady Blackhawk--case closed..." So much for Zinda Blake?†

There are an awful lot of scenes of these people.
from Blackhawk vol. 2 #2 (script & art by Howard Chaykin)

Anyway, obviously I could talk about the continuity all day... but how's the actual story? I found it a decent but not outstanding example of the format. Like a lot of 1980s prestige comics, it's hard work. Not in a bad way, I'm just saying that there's a lot of different strands to the story here, and Chaykin moves back and forth between them pretty freely, leaving the reader to do a lot of work to put it all together. There's a big Nazi conspiracy whose members include an old comrade of Jan's, a former English movie actor who now leads a Nazi counterpart to the Blackhawk Squadron, the White Lions, and a U.S. senator who has Jan barred from the country on the basis that he's a Communist and Reba McMahon, a woman who's sexually involved with both Blackhawk and Lord Death. To be honest, it seemed like at times that Chaykin was more interested in all these other characters more than Blackhawk himself, who feels a bit lost in the middle of all of it. I did like Natalie Reed a lot; she seems like a character with a lot of potential that's not totally delivered on here, though I did enjoy her back-and-forth with Jan.

It looks great, of course; Chaykin is one of the medium's best, and in the 1980s, he was arguably at his height, aided by some excellent colors from Steve Oliff.

Can't believe they got rid of the perfectly good Polish names "Jack" and "Connie" for Blackhawk's siblings!
from Secret Origins vol. 2 #45 (script by Martin Pasko, art by Grant Miehm & Terry Beatty)

I read the miniseries collected in a 2020 hardcover called Blood & Iron after the series's first issue. The hardcover also collects a few other 1980s appearances of the post-Crisis Blackhawks. Chaykin didn't have anything to do with these stories, which are written and illustrated by other creators. The first of them is a Secret Origins issue that gives us the origin Chaykin only hinted at; it's basically the familiar pre-Crisis story but with the new elements of Prohaska's 1980's backstory, given a frame story set shortly after the miniseries. It does establish that the squadron also included character named "Boris" and "Zeg" at one point, but that they were dead by the time of Chaykin's story. (These are character names used as one-offs in early Blackhawk stories from Military Comics. Boris briefly reappeared during Steve Skeates's run; see item #7 below.)

The bulk of the second half of the book comprises Blackhawk's appearances in Action Comics, during that title's brief run as a weekly anthology title. There are two eight-part stories and one six-part story, each part being eight pages longs. All three stories are illustrated by Rick Burchett; the first is written by Mike Grell, and the other two Martin Pasko (who would go on to write the Blackhawk ongoing). I had actually read all of these before, when I collected Action Comics Weekly many years ago, but at the time I lacked the context of any other Blackhawk adventures.

You eventually find out she's a nun!
from Action Comics Weekly #603 (script by Mike Grell, art by Rick Burchett & Pablo Marcos)

These move the new Blackhawks into the postwar era; taking their cues from Chaykin's miniseries, they're all gritty espionage thrillers. Grell's initial story, "Another Fine War," only really features Blackhawk himself, at loose ends after the war, persuaded into helping a woman run down some treasure in the Pacific. I want to note that I've seen people complain Chaykin turned Blackhawk into a lech, but I think that's more Grell than Blackhawk; Chaykin had him sleeping with multiple women, but it's Grell who makes him into a sleeze.

Natalie has a surprising number of color-coordinated eye patches.
from Action Comics Weekly #615 (script by Martin Pasko, art by Rick Burchett)

Pasko's two stories bring back the other members of the squadron, including Natalie Reed, as the Blackhawks reconstitute as a supposed courier service (Blackhawk Express) whose real purpose is doing dirty jobs for the newly formed CIA. They're all fun enough, but also hint at bigger and darker concerns, especially with Natalie, who has a child... but one she can't raise herself, since her Communist affiliations mean she can't get back into the U.S. in the era of the Red Scare. Natalie is also a victim of domestic abuse to the extent that she lost an eye; we don't learn anything about the guy in question, but I did find a bit where Jan briefly thinks Olaf to be responsible fairly contrived. I think Pasko is clearly very interested in Natalie (in a way that I don't think Chaykin or Grell were), and I look forward to seeing what he does with the character in the subsequent Blackhawk ongoing.

I haven't said anything about colorist Tom Ziuko in this review, but actually, he's great. A big reason why Burchett's art works as well as it does.
from Action Comics Weekly #622 (script by Martin Pasko, art by Rick Burchett)

Burchett's style is certainly cartoonier than Chaykin's, but overall I found that it worked for these quick, action-focused stories, and he's got a strong sense of facial expressions. When the situation gets serious, Burchett does a good job shifting the art to match; there are a number of strong action sequences here. I think like a lot of Action Comcis Weekly creators, Pasko and Burchett struggle a bit with their small canvas, but they probably do better than most.

Like, he's CEO and it's been forty years and people still call him that just once in every appearance!
from Action Comics Weekly #635 (script by Mark Verheiden, art by Eduardo Barreto & John Nyberg)

Lastly, the book contains "The Crash of 88," a story that crossed over a number of Action Comics Weekly's ongoing features: Green Lantern, Black Canary, Superman... and Blackhawk!? It's set in the present day; the Blackhawk presence is Weng Chan, who is now running Blackhawk Express. His plane crashes in a South American dictatorship, and the superheroes eventually turn up to rescue him. 

The inclusion of Black Canary in the story is pretty random, to be honest, but I'm never going to say no to a chance to see Dinah Laurel Lance, in either of her guises. (I do kind of miss how she used to have short black hair in her civilian attire.)
from Action Comics Weekly #635 (script by Mark Verheiden, art by Eduardo Barreto & John Nyberg)

I'm glad it's in this book for completion's sake, but it does read very weirdly after all the much less fantastic material that makes up the rest of the volume! In the letter page to Blackhawk vol. 3 #1, editor Mike Gold promises more "Blackhawk Express" stories set in the present as an ongoing feature, but I don't believe this ever eventuated, though Weng Chan did make a number of appearances during John Ostrander's run on Hawkworld (also edited by Gold).

Overall, I'm very glad this collected edition exists, and impressed at how comprehensive it is. It would have been easy for DC to have collected just the Chaykin material and called it a day! The rest of the volume isn't as distinctive, to be honest, but it is competent, and it's nice to have it more readily available than back issues of Action Comics Weekly. A similarly sized second volume would fit the entire Blackhawk volume 3 ongoing, I think, and would make a great companion to this one... but without a high-profile creator like Howard Chaykin, it probably is unlikely to ever appear. Maybe it can get a DC Finest edition sometime? But more on that next time...

from Who's Who Update '87 #3
(art by Brian Bolland)

This is the tenth in a series of posts about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers volume 3 of Blackhawk. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1 (1941-42)
2. Military Comics #18-43 / Modern Comics #44-46 / Blackhawk #9 & 50 (1943-52)
3. Showcase Presents Blackhawk, Volume One (1957-58) 
4. Blackhawk vol. 1 #151-95 (1960-64) 
5. Blackhawk vol. 1 #196-227 (1964-66)
6. Blackhawk vol. 1 #228-43 (1967-68)
7. Blackhawk vol. 1 #244-50 / The Brave and the Bold #167 (1976-80)
8. Blackhawk (1982) 
9. Blackhawk vol. 1 #251-73 / DC Comics Presents #69 (1982-84) 
• Pre-Crisis Continuity 

* The DC wiki notes that Stanislaus does go on to appear in some later postwar Blackhawk stories, very much alive, and ascribes the change to the Crisis in Time.

† Except that, as a reader of Birds of Prey, I know she also continues to appear post-Crisis. I guess I shall see what explanation, if any, is offered for this. Blood & Iron does include all of the Blackhawk Who's Who pages, which include both one about the Blackhawk Squadron with Natalie on it and another about Zinda (complete with a beautiful Brian Bolland illustration), with no noting of the apparent contradiction.

Back to World War II (Blackhawk #251–73)

I've chronicled here DC's various attempt to keep the Blackhawks a going concern after World War II. They had them battle aliens (see #3 below), then supercriminals (#4); later they the made them into counterinsurgents (#5), superheroes (#6), and mercenaries (#7). Each attempt ended in failure, the Blackhawks being cancelled or reinvented yet again.

In 1982, though, the same new approach was taken twice over, which was to go back to an old approach. I've already written up the 1982 Blackhawk novel (#8 below), but at the same time that novel came out, the comics themselves were taking the same approach: going back to World War II.

But of course. What other approach was there? Some concepts are endlessly adaptable; Superman might have been devised during the Great Depression as an expression of populist sentiment, but he has worked and continues to work in different contexts. But other concepts are not. The Blackhawks are an expression of a particular time and place. They are about banding together to fight the Nazis... and though I can see some ways in which they might be made to work otherwise (I did like the brief run of the Blackhawks as counterinsurgents), by and large they become pointless if you have them do anything else.

So, even though the 1982-84 run picks up the numbering from where we left off in 1977, with issue #251, the story does not. Instead, we essentially have a total reboot.* Artist Dan Spiegle and writer Mark Evanier take us back to 1940, before the U.S. even entered the war, and the Blackhawks were an indenpendent organization of pilots battling the Nazis. The series's twenty-three issues cover June through September, predating even the timeframe of the original run from Quality Comics—but in a contemporary, 1980s style.

from Blackhawk vol. 1 #256 (script by Mark Evanier, art by Dan Spiegle)

To me, this is clearly the best that Blackhawk has been so far. And (even though I am hopeful I will enjoy future permutations of the concept) if you told me this was going to be the best it ever was, I would neither be surprised nor disappointed. This is surely the plantoic ideal of a Blackhawk comic, back in its original time and place but with modern stylings of character and plot. (Well, I guess the 1980s aren't modern anymore... in fact they're as old now as the original Quality comics were when this run came out! But to me, anyway, the 1980s and '90s are when superhero comics largely peaked in any case.) Evanier and Spiegle, in both writing and art, treat the Blackhawks as distinct personalities with real characters, and weave them into ongoing plotlines.

Missteps here are rare, but there are two particularly praiseworthy stories, in my opinion. The first is #253, "The Private War of Hendrickson." In this issue the Blackhawks learn that even though Hendrickson is always writing letters to his wife... she has in fact been dead for a year! And the letters bear little resemblance to reality, because in the letters he portrays himself as a respected elder of the squadron due to his experience in the First World War, but in reality while the other Blackhawks respect his sharpshooting, they have a tendency to treat him as an elderly fussbudget when he gives advice. Has Hendrickson lost his connection to reality? It's a great character-focused story with a solid twist at the end.

The other really good story is #265, "What's the Matter with Chop-Chop?" Evanier treats what you might call "the problem of Chop-Chop" (here named "Wu Cheng") head on. From the beginning, Evanier and Spiegle treat him as a real person; there's no queue or other visual stereotypes, and when he speaks with an accent, it's to deliberately fool racist Nazis into underestimating him. In the lettercol, Evanier opines he's not totally sure what to do with the character—but after he prints some letters praising him for moving away from the stereotype, a newspaper in Virginia actually ran an op-ed claiming that by attempting to not be racist, Evanier was being historically inaccurate! This very obviously gets Evanier's dander up, and in #265, Wu Cheng gets fed up with the way everyone else on the squadron treats him. Eventually his anger boils over and he demands to know why he doesn't wear a uniform... and no one is able to answer him! It's a good depiction how racism doesn't have to be sticking people into concentration camps, it can also be unquestioned assumptions driving your behaviors. He gets a real uniform and to use his real name.

(If the story has a downside, other than the ease by which the other Blackhawks recognize their own fault, it's that Wu Cheng then takes a leave of absence from issues #266 to 272, so we get to see very little of the new incarnation of "Chop-Chop" in the series.)

from Blackhawk vol. 1 #263
(script by Mark Evanier, art by Dan Spiegle)

Dan Spiegle is an artist previously unknown to me, but he's great. Good faces, good storytelling, good action. In fact, one of my few complaints about this series is that it clearly deserved better printing! This was the era of DC's beautiful Baxter series, like The Omega Men, Infinity, Inc., or Sun Devils, and I think Spiegle's work would have looked so good on that crisp white paper instead of with the blurry printing it sometimes gets here.

Other standouts include #258, "The Death of Blackhawk Island!", where a prototype Nazi atomic bomb destroys Blackhawk Island, complete with a Cold War–era frame decrying nuclear weaponry, and #271, "The Silent Treatment," where Gaynor, the Blackhawk substituting for Wu Cheng, reveals his true colors. There are lots of ongoing subplots; perhaps most prominent is the beautiful Nazi superspy Domino, who ends up having a thing for Blackhawk and vice versa... but is too far gone for any kind of love to every be realized. It's the kind of ongoing melodrama that I dig.

I do have a couple complaints. The first is that while we have those two issues focused on Hendrickson and Wu Cheng, the other characters rarely get that kind of focus. Evanier always gives them stuff to do, but most issues focus on Blackhawk himself, not any of the others. And I must admit that I do kind of miss the vibe of those early Quality issues, where the rogue status of the Blackhawks meant that even Allied command was rarely happy to see them; here, they're taking orders from Allied and palling around with Winston Churchill, and I miss that harder edge. The other thing is... not enough dogfights! C'mon, give me just one tense plane-on-plane battle!

The last highlight of the series is the "Blackhawk Detached Service Diary" entries. Many issues have a sixteen-page main story about the whole team followed by an eight-page back-up focusing on just one character; what makes these particularly enjoyable is that they are drawn by many great comic artists: Dave Cockrum, Alex Toth & Frank Giacoia, Joe Staton, past Blackhawk artist Pat Boyette, and even future Blackhawk writer/artist Howard Chaykin. Two issues (#260 and 268) are even entirely made up of "Detached Service Diary" entries with a slight frame story. Lots of solid stories here, but my favorites were probably "The Funny Man!" (#260, art by Dick Rockwell), where Hendrickson meets a stand-up comic who dares to criticize his superiors; "The Big Dealer!" (#265, art by Pat Boyette), where André's plane is stolen by a black market racketeer who sells it for parts; and "The Aritst!" (#272, art by Ken Steacy), where Hendrickson is taken hostage by a Nazi assassin and only a painter of "good girl" nosecone art can save him.

(Oh, and as I've tried to highlight in my post here, some truly excellent covers. Striking stuff.)

I also read an issue of DC Comics Presents, DC's Bronze Age Superman team-up title. In #69 (script by Mark Evanier, art by Irv Novick & Dennis Jensen), Superman travels back in time to World War II to find out why Perry White received a medal for war reporting when he doesn't remember being a war correspondent! The answer involves a Nazi plot to replace Olympic athletes and use Albert Einstein to create supersoliders. It's a bit silly, to be honest; Superman doesn't really get to team up with the Blackhawks. (Note that DCCP #69 came out the same day as Blackhawk #270, but in the lettercol, Evanier indicates it occurs between issues #259 and 261.)

Like I said, I overall very much enjoyed this. In some ways, the 1980s are my favorite era for superhero(-adjacent) comics, applying more sophisticated storytelling techniques and characterization than in the Silver Age, but not yet lost to decompression, gratuitous darkness/violence, and the eternal chasing of "events." Going back to World War II in the 1980s gives us the best Blackhawk of both worlds.

This is the ninth post in a series about the Blackhawks. The next installment is a supplement covering their pre-Crisis continuity. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1 (1941-42)
2. Military Comics #18-43 / Modern Comics #44-46 / Blackhawk #9 & 50 (1943-52)
3. Showcase Presents Blackhawk, Volume One (1957-58) 
4. Blackhawk vol. 1 #151-95 (1960-64) 
5. Blackhawk vol. 1 #196-227 (1964-66)
6. Blackhawk vol. 1 #228-43 (1967-68)
7. Blackhawk vol. 1 #244-50 / The Brave and the Bold #167 (1976-80)
8. Blackhawk (1982)

* It boggles my mind that in 1982, if you were reviving a title that was five years dead and starting a totally new continuity in the process, it was still considered better to number it #251 than #1!

The James Bond Film Comic Adaptations

As I read the James Bond novels and watch the James Bond films, I've also been reading the James Bond comics. I've previously discussed the Daily Express strips, but there are also the comic book adaptations of the films, of which there have been four (and a third).

The very first James Bond film comic was of the very first James Bond film. An adaptation of Dr. No was intended to be a Dell Movie Classic according to the Grand Comics Database, but I don't know why it wasn't. It was published in 1962 as part of the Classics Illustrated series in the UK. Though the UK series mostly reprinted the American one, they published (Wikipedia tells me) thirteen original stories, including this one. It seems a bit of an odd fit between Goethe's Faust and Tolstoy's Master and Man! Perhaps for this reason, it wasn't picked up by the American Classics Illustrated, and eventually found print in Showcase, DC's anthology series, in 1963. Again, it's an odd fit between stories about the Metal Men, Tommy Tomorrow, and Sergeant Rock.

I actually haven't read this comic: it goes for hundreds of dollars usually in any version. It has never been reprinted or officially digitized, though you can find scans if you poke around a bit.

In the 1980s, Marvel adapted two James Bond films into comic books. An adaptation of For Your Eyes Only was published as a 1981 issue of Marvel Super Special, a series that mostly consisted of adaptations of films. (For example, the previous issue adapted Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the following one, Dragonslayer.) It was then later reprinted as a two-issue miniseries of its own, which is the version I read. This one has an impressive creative team: Larry Hama scripts, Howard Chaykin pencils, and Vince Colletta inks. Surely if any comics illustrator was made to draw Bond, it's Chaykin, and surely if any illustrator was made to draw Bond girls, it's Colletta. But it's a pretty typical film-to-comic adaptation, in that it doesn't really breathe like it ought.

In 1983, another issue of Marvel Super Special contained an adaptation of Octopussy. This one is interesting to me as it was clearly the work of Marvel UK going by the creative team: Steve Moore, Paul Neary, and Annie Halfacree are all names I know from Doctor Who Magazine, Transformers UK, and Death's Head. I haven't ever found anything on the Internet to indicate why this arrangement might have come about. Again, it's a strong creative team, but again it's a pretty perfunctory adaptation.

The last complete James Bond film comic was an adaptation of Licence to Kill from Eclipse Comics. This was published as a standalone graphic novel, apparently in both trade paperback and hardcover (I have the former). It's oversized, as I think a lot of early graphic novels were. The cover trumpets it as being by Mike Grell, but it actually has a large number of contributors. Grell just did the breakdowns, while the script was by Robert Ashford, the pencils by three different artists, and the inks two.

Despite that, it's definitely the best of the three Bond film comics I've read. Grell, like Hama/Chaykin, seems like a creator born to do Bond, and this one does breathe as a comic book even if it has a lot of compression to fit the page length. (This is most notable in the very brief climax.) The art is strong and atmospheric, even if it seems to me that sometimes Bond looks like Timothy Dalton, sometimes he looks like Roger Moore, and sometimes he looks like the sort of generic, idealized Bond from the Daily Express strips. I assume the use of three different pencillers is responsible for this. Interestingly, he's often drawn with the facial scar he had in the books, but which was never used on screen! The painted style is a good fit for the atmosphere of Bond.

from James Bond 007: Licence To Kill:
The Official Comic Book Adaptation

The last Bond film comic was a three-issue adaptation of GoldenEye from Topps... the first issue of which was the only one to appear. I don't really feel motivated to track this down, to be honest.

I don't know what the rights issues are with any of these; it seems to me you could get a nice trade paperback out of bunging them all together. It's certainly the kind of omnibus I could imagine, say, Dark Horse or IDW doing. Boom has the Bond comics rights these days, and I don't know if they are interested in that sort of thing even if it is feasible. But if it meant I got to read "Doctor No," I would get it!

"James Bond: For Your Eyes Only" was originally published in issue #19 of Marvel Super Special (1981). It was republished as James Bond: For Your Eyes Only #1-2 (Oct.-Nov. 1981) The story was written by Larry Hama, pencilled by Howard Chaykin, inked by Vince Colletta, colored by Christie Scheele, lettered by Jean Simek, and edited by Dennis O'Neil.

"James Bond 007: Octopussy" was originally published in issue #26 of Marvel Super Special (1983). The story was written by Steve Moore, illustrated by Paul Neary, lettered by Annie Halfacree, and edited by John Barraclough. 

James Bond 007: Licence To Kill: The Official Comic Book Adaptation was originally published in 1989. The story had breakdowns by Mike Grell; a script by Richard Ashford; pencils by Chuck Austen, Tom Yeates, and Stan Woch; inks by Tom Yeates and Stan Woch; colors by Sam Parsons, Sally Parsons, Mel Jöhnson, and Reuben Rude; lettering by Wayne Truman; and editing by Dick Hansom and Cat Yronwode.

Review: Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution by Howard Chaykin, John Francis Moore, Michael Mignola, and P. Craig Russell

Side note: my review of the 2015 audiobook of the 1995 novel that inspired the 2007 episode, Doctor Who: Human Nature by Paul Cornell, is up at Unreality SF! Read by Lisa Bowerman, as it deserved to be.

Comic trade paperback, 96 pages
Published 1993 (originally 1992)
Acquired and read August 2017

Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution

Writers: Howard Chaykin and John Francis Moore

Penciller: Michael Mignola
Inker: P. Craig Russell
Colorist: Richmond Lewis
Letterer: Bob Lappan

Before reading it, I had thought Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution would be a retelling of the events of Howard Chaykin's original IronWolf* story in the new context of his Twilight story. It turns out that Fires of the Revolution is largely a sequel to the 1973-74 IronWolf, albeit one that retcons it a little bit to fit it into the future history established by Twilight. The original IronWolf concerned struggles over the "Empire Galaktika"; Fires of the Revolution quickly establishes that this is a high-faluting name for a group of three planets. The capital of the Empire Galaktika was Earth; Fires of the Revolution clarifies that early human colonists named a ton of planets "Earth." This does require us to ignore that in the original series, IronWolf visited the Grand Canyon, but it mostly all fits together (except for the Tales of the House of IronWolf back-ups, but they weren't such a big deal anyway).

Well, I say it all fits together, but Fires of the Revolution actually opens with a retelling of an event from the first issue of IronWolf, Weird Worlds #8: Lord Ironwolf's burning down of his family's ancestral forests of anti-gravity wood, to keep them out of the hands of his brother, who's working with the Empress Erika. I complained that in the original, this moment seemed underplayed; here the writers and artists turn it into the big dramatic moment it deserved to be. From there, though, Fires of the Revolution shifts into following up rather than retelling: Ironwolf and Shebaba's fledgling revolution is cut short when one of their own betrays them. The empress is willing to cut a deal with the rebels and form a parliamentary government, but only on the condition of Ironwolf's death, so one of Ironwolf's allies betrays him.

It's a slightly different world than the original IronWolf stories of two decades prior: less sword-and-planet warlord, and more courtly intrigue. Penciller Mike Mignola follows this new approach with visuals that come right out of the French Revolution: his Empress Erika is a highly refined aristocrat, not the sultry seductress of Chaykin's originals. (Though, of course, she is no less venomous underneath.) In the highly repressed world of this Empire Galakitka, Lord Ironwolf is different from the other aristocrats: something primal and barbaric, full of energy, willing to burn the world down if it means progress might result. This resonates with the larger story of Twilight, too (to which this is a sidequel; Homer Glint puts in an appearance, and everyone in this story can live forever because of what happened over there), in that Ironwolf claims that if the Empire Galakitka is integrated into humanity's galactic civilization, it can reverse some of the stagnation that has set in.

On the whole, Fires of the Revolution is kind of pulpy just like the original IronWolf, but in a different way. Lots of fights and betrayals and fires and shadow and plotting, but the universe feels darker and less swashbuckling. But I would partially attribute that to putting the fabulously gloomy Mignola on art. I enjoyed reading it on the whole, and looking at it even more. I still do have one complaint: I get what motivates Ironwolf's personal goals. He is a simple man at heart, and he wants revenge for the various ways he's been wronged. (There's a lot of them by this point-- basically everyone who ever threw in with him was killed.) But what motivates him politically? As an "aristo" what makes him want to rid the Empire Galaktika of aristocratic control and put a democracy in place? This was a weakness in the original IronWolf and continues to be one here.

(This book was originally published as a graphic novel in hardcover in 1992, and released in paperback in 1993. DC finally collected Chaykin's Twilight in 2015; it would be cool if they also released a collection of both Fires of the Revolution and the original IronWolf stories from Weird Worlds. It would make a nice little 150ish-page space epic.)

* As always, it's hard to tell how comic book character names ought to be capitalized. While the text pieces in the 1986 reprint special used "IronWolf," Walt Simonson's introduction to this volume goes with "Ironwolf," so I am capitalizing that way in the context of this volume.

Review: Twilight by Howard Chaykin and José Luis García-López

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2014 (contents: 1990-91)
Acquired and read August 2017

Twilight

Writer: Howard Chaykin

Artist: José Luis García-López
Color Artist: Steve Oliff
Letterer: Ken Bruzenak

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the done thing was to take moribund DC properties and release a miniseries of three double-length issues featuring a darker take on them. Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, Adam Strange: The Man of Two Worlds, Hawkworld, and Twilight were all instances of this move. But while my first three examples all feel like set-ups for ongoings (even if, such as in the case of Adam Strange, those ongoings didn't always actually happen), Twilight was different: this isn't an engine for an ongoing series, but a complete epic in itself, charting the rise and fall of a number of different DC space characters across a vast temporal and spatial canvas. All those guys who haven't amounted to much since the 1960s (but Keith Giffen also revived for Threshold twenty years later), they're all here: Tommy Tomorrow, the Star Rovers, Manhunter 2070, Star Hawkins and Ilda, even Space Cabbie.

Of course, I don't remember Space Cabbie being quite like this.
from Twilight #3

Howard Chaykin's story, though, is a dark one of manifest destiny in outer space. When Twilight opens, humanity is wrapping up a genocide of sapient animals that it itself is responsible for creating, at the same time it chases down the remnants of an alien race who it also wiped out-- but may hold the secret to eternal life. These characters' heroic personas are all the creation of PR by Homer Glint, one of the Star Rovers, covering up their worst aspects. Soon the last of the Methuseloids are dead, gifting humanity immortality, but of course it's a curse, as humankind is split between warring factions of fascists and religious fanatics. It's a dark story, brutal and full of depravity, but not without humor, mostly in the form of the narration by Glint, and his interactions with his seeing-eye cat. (Raised to sapience, the cat is named F'Tatateeta, in what I assume is a tribute to Cordwainer Smith's naming system for elevated animals, like C'Mell. The "C" in "C'Mell" stands for "cat"; presumably Chaykin's "F" stands for "feline.")

Truth in comics.
from Twilight #2

It's a difficult story to read and to love. José Luis García-López's art is technically accomplished as always. It's interesting to see him draw something like this; I associate him with more straightforward superheroics, I guess because of how good he was at drawing Superman. The beginning, though, is tough going, as Chaykin and García-López dump a huge cast of characters on you without much scaffolding, and it took me most of the first issue to figure out who all the players were and how they related (and, to be honest, there are a couple bits I'm still uncertain about). The story covers a vast canvas, which is a strength and a weakness. We see so many centuries where humanity screws up, clearly playing into a theme for Chaykin, but because of the time skips needed, it seems like these big social movements that dominate the story appear and disappear arbitrarily, sort of undermining that theme. How does Tommy Tomorrow become a worshipped space fascist god? Who knows exactly.

I think the aesthetic of Twilight is a good example of what Darren Franich calls "all-encompassing techno-fascism."
from Twilight #1

The key to the book is to be found in Homer's statement that when he thought it was the end of the story (the collapse of civilization), it was actually the middle. According to Twilight, human history has been and will be a history of atrocity and violence, and not even transcendence will change that.

Too good for her own good.
from Twilight #2

Brenda Tomorrow is pretty great, though. Everything you could want out of a badass space woman. Well, except that her actions doomed the human race, but I guess you can't have everything.

Review: IronWolf by Howard Chaykin, Denny O'Neil, et al.

When I read Tom King and Barnaby Bagenda's The Omega Men (2015-16, review forthcoming), you might have thought that I had reached the present of the DC Comics space heroes, and thus the end of my quest to read them all. But, this is not to be: I've circled back around to pick up some of the Bronze Age pre-Crisis space comics I hadn't already read, as my journey originally began with the original Omega Men in 1983. There's always stuff it turns out that you've missed! So now I'm filling in the blanks, beginning with IronWolf (1973-74), which appeared in three issues of Weird Worlds.

IronWolf is different than many of the DC space stories I've read so far: it takes place in the far future (the sixty-first century, I think), and it might not even fit into the "main" DC timeline (The Multiversity Guidebook, for example, places it on Earth-37). It's kind of a proto-Star Wars, about a band of space rebels fighting to take down a tyrannical galactic empire, though it lacks Star Wars's clear-cut wish-fulfillment adventuring spirit. Our hero is Lord IronWolf,* an officer and a nobleman in the military of the Empire Galaktika. IronWolf's planet of Ilium supplies the "anti-gravity wood" from which Earth's spaceships are made-- and indeed, IronWolf's spaceship the Limerick Rake is made of wood with brass detailing. The empress, Erika Klein-Hernandez, orders IronWolf to share the anti-gravity wood with "barbarian" aliens, so that they might be the empire's allies in a coming war, but IronWolf believes that this will just make the empire helpless in the face of a potential barbarian attack.

That's about all the astropolitical background we get. Who the Empire Galaktika might be facing in the coming war is unsaid, and in fact, the coming war is never mentioned again after the first issue. The "barbarians" are never named, either, and they disappear after the first issue.

The first issue gave me the impression of having been written to run in installments of seven pages or so, as it positively rockets through events. By page 2, IronWolf has slapped the empress for flirting with him to induce him to give up the anti-gravity wood; by page 4, a female performer in a visiting mime troupe (!) has saved IronWolf's life and gone on the run with him; by page 7, IronWolf's crew has joined him in rebellion, shooting down imperial fighters; by page 8, the Limerick Rake is playing pirate, systematically undermining the imperial war fleet and its supply ships; by page 13, IronWolf's brother has turned traitor and handed the anti-gravity wood trees over to the vampires (they're on the empress's side, another indication of her degeneracy); by page 14, IronWolf has burned down the forests; by page 19, IronWolf has saved the life of a female democratic revolutionary (the improbably named Shebaba O'Neal) in the Sargasso Sea of Space; by page 20, he's decided he'd rather be a revolutionary than an outlaw and thrown in with her. Phew. In another writer's hands, that could have been three different issues at least. (The later issues of IronWolf don't move that fast, either.)

It kind of works, it kind of doesn't. Howard Chaykin would later come into fame, and his early work is still quality stuff. He both plots and draws, with Denny O'Neil writing the actual script. The men are manly, the women are leggy, and the story pulses with energy, with great dynamic action-- which, I guess, is really what one wants from this sort of thing. Chaykin and O'Neil hint at a big, lived-in, somewhat grotty future without actually giving a lot of exposition or backstory, the kind of thing Star Wars would do better just three years after this came out. Sometimes O'Neil's narration is a bit pompous: "Yes, they [IronWolf's men] are everywhere-- and always they are led by a man with stern visage, limitless courage, and incredible strength- the Lord IronWolf!"

Sometimes the speed is fun, but often you wish you knew just a tad more: what kind of man decides to betray his noble oath in a page? And the female performer who aids IronWolf's escape from the empress's palace doesn't even get a name until the second issue! Sometimes the cramming in of story comes at the expense of clarity of action and/or setting. (When IronWolf is attacked by an assassin in an inn on a frontier planet, you'd only know where he is because of O'Neil's caption: in a five-panel sequence, only one even has a background.) But when Chaykin has the space to give something, it's gorgeous, like the Limerick Rake hovering over the Grand Canyon, and he knows how to guide your eye over a crowded comics page.

The second and third chapters decompress, each with a fourteen-page story where less happens than in seven pages of the first issue. In the case of the second, this works: IronWolf and Missy (the no longer anonymous performer) return to Earth to infiltrate the empress's court as players putting on a performance of Hamlet. Of course, the plan can't work or else the series would be over, and Missy dies while Lord IronWolf barely escapes with his life. Thankfully, Shebaba O'Neal is a badass and brings the Limerick Rake to the rescue. It's a fun story, a sort of Star Wars-y subterfuge caper that I always enjoy, though Missy's death feels needlessly cruel, and I kind of wish anyone on the Limerick Rake had a name or personality other than Shebaba.

The third issue, though, goes off-premise, with the Limerick Rake putting in at Shebaba's uncle's planet for repair and resupply, only to discover that the uncle sells drugs, and one of his sons had become a hulked-out monster because of the drugs he sells. Meh. It feels like Chaykin and O'Neil are already floundering for ideas, and the series isn't living up to the potential of the first issue's energy and thrills-- perhaps because Chaykin and O'Neil already burned through so much of the story at record speed. I don't know what they had planned next for the series, but IronWolf tells Shebaba that he's learned "both sides are corrupt! The empire and the outworlds! ... They're two sides of the same filthy coin!" Shebaba tells him that he has himself and his dream: "call it a dream of peace...of decency! You won't admit that you're a dreamer... you are, though! And I won't fault you! A dreamer who can fight-- not a bad kind of person to be!"

I don't know where this idea that IronWolf is a man of peace and decency came from; he comes across much more as a savage playing at nobleman; let us not forget he slapped the empress when she flirted with him, and had nothing better to do than turn pirate. It was Shebaba who gave him a dream, which he seemed to adopt mostly for the lack of anything better to do. And what happened to her ambitions beyond being his second-in-command? She was a feisty revolutionary in her own right two issues ago. The narration of the last panel describes him as "A man caught in the middle," so it seems like Chaykin and O'Neil would have pursued some kind of outsider path for him if the feature had continued. But, thanks to the cancellation of Weird Worlds, it came to an end.

I read IronWolf in a one-shot collecting all three parts of the story, published in 1986 with (I think) new coloring and improved printing, but I still picked up the original Weird Worlds #9 and 10 because they contained Tales of the House of IronWolf, a back-up strip plotted by Chaykin that hasn't been collected elsewhere. Set two millennia before the main series, during an era where technology and civilization have regressed so that interplanetary travel is forgotten, John Warner and Vicente Alcazar's story concerns two brothers, Patrick Obrian Keats and Burton Scott Keats (yes, really!), both British forest lords competing for the affections of Lady Vanessa Dubiel Shelly. The narration in issue #9 says that from them, "2000 years later, would descend two sworn enemies... IronWolf and the Empress Erika!"

One brother saves the the other and Lady Vanessa from a wolf attack, but loses his hand in the process; Lady Vanessa goes with the uninjured one, inspiring the injured one to replaced his lost hand with an iron hook, kill the wolf, wear it as a headdress, and live in the forest harassing his brother's supply shipments. (Apparently harassing supply shipments is how the family deals with rejection.) There's also a French fencing-master everyone makes fun of. That's basically it; how we get from this to an IronWolf dynasty on an alien planet with anti-gravity trees two thousand years later is left to the imagination of the reader. These are okay stories, focused more on atmosphere and creepiness than the action-driven main IronWolf feature. I mean, they're only six pages a pop, so not a lot can happen.

IronWolf has two codas of sort. One is that in the 1990s, Chaykin revisited the character in Fires of the Revolution, a graphic novel I will shortly read. I'm curious to see how the story can be polished with a known endpoint and a quarter-century of creative development on Chaykin's part. But the other is much more significant: when I said IronWolf was a pre-Star Wars, I wasn't the only one who thought so. Because he read IronWolf, George Lucas specifically requested that Chaykin illustrate the Marvel Comics adaptation of Star Wars in 1977. Chaykin drew not only that (issues #1-6 of Marvel's original Star Wars series) but he also illustrated issues #7-10 (and co-wrote #7, 8, and 10). These were the first non-adaptation Star Wars comics, and some of the first "Expanded Universe" stories full stop. Without IronWolf, the voluminous numbers of Star Wars comics that both Marvel and Dark Horse have produced could have been very different!

IronWolf originally appeared in issues #8-10 of Weird Worlds vol. 1 (Nov./Dec. 1973–Oct./Nov. 1974). The story was created, plotted, and drawn by Howard Chaykin; scripted and edited by Denny O'Neil; and lettered by Walt Simonson (#8). It was reprinted in IronWolf #1 (1986), which was colored by Liz Berube and edited by Mike Gold.

Tales of the House of IronWolf originally appeared in issues #9-10 of Weird Worlds vol. 1 (Jan./Feb.-Oct./Nov. 1974). The story was plotted by Howard Chaykin and John Warner, scripted by John Warner, illustrated by Vicente Alcazar, and edited by Denny O'Neil.

* The cover to issue #8 of Weird Worlds actually says "Iron-Wolf" and in the lettercol in issue #9, editor Denny O'Neil uses "Ironwolf." But in the text pieces from the 1986 reprint special, both Howard Chaykin and Mike Gold use "IronWolf," and I'm going with that as their latest word on the subject. The all-caps lettering of comic book of course makes it impossible to tell from the stories themselves, as it's always just "IRONWOLF."