Is There a Coherent Post-Crisis Blackhawk Continuity?

One of the striking things reading the post-Crisis Blackhawk comics has been that, to be honest... I don't think they all hang together.

from Blackhawk vol. 2 #1 (script & art by Howard Chaykin)

At first they do. Howard Chaykin's 1987 miniseries (see #10 in the list below) didn't give a new origin story for the Blackhawks, but it did create a new history for them. Blackhawk himself was now Janos Prohaska; most of the Blackhawk line-up we knew from the pre-Crisis comics was largely maintained, but Stanislaus died during the course of the miniseries, and Natalie Reed claimed the identity of "Lady Blackhawk" for herself, so no Zinda Blake (though Zinda didn't join the squadron until after the war in any case). The character formerly known as "Chop-Chop" was now Weng Chan.

Eventually, the continuing exploits of this version of the team would be chronicled in Action Comics Weekly (see #10 again) and then in a 1989-90 ongoing (see #11). All of these stories were period stories, set during or shortly after World War II. Pre-Crisis, after WWII the Blackhawks had fought dictators all over the world (see #2), then supercriminals and such (see #3-4), then aliens (see #5), until finally becoming superheroes themselves once the Justice League of America arrived on the scene (see #6). But post-Crisis, the Blackhawks rebranded themselves as mercenaries and a shipping concern after the war, secretly funded by (and, later, manipulated by) the CIA. The stories were kept more grounded, so (largely) no supercriminals or aliens, more complex thriller plots instead.

from Action Comics Weekly #635
(script by Mark Verheiden, art by Eduardo Barreto & John Nyberg)

So what was going on with the Blackhawks in the then-present day of the DC universe? We just got glimpses of this: a Blackhawk story in Action Comics Weekly established that by 1988, Weng Chan was in charge of Blackhawk Industries, and a couple other flash-forward stories in the Blackhawk ongoing followed up on this; there were no appearances by any of the other Blackhawks in these stories, presumably to keep things open for the ongoing. In other stories around this same time, this was maintained; Weng Chan was a recurring character in the 1990-93 Hawkworld ongoing, for example.

The pre-Crisis history of the Blackhawks seemed to be entirely eradicated. This was not an unusual move at the time; in 1989, the original Hawkworld erased the pre-Crisis Hawkman, for example, or there was  the notorious post-Crisis reboot of Wonder Woman. The history seemed pretty stable, and to be honest, removing the Blackhawks from continuity causes a lot less headaches than removing Wonder Woman or even Hawkman, since their adventures were largely self-contained. (The 1989 Blackhawk ongoing even established that the Quality Comics adventures from Military Comics were in-universe comic books, fictionalized and sanitized versions of real adventures, albeit published postwar.)

from Guy Gardner: Warrior #24 (script by Beau Smith, art by Mitch Byrd,
Phil Jimenez, Howard Porter, Mike Parobeck, Jackson Guice, & Dan Davis)

Once the Blackhawk ongoing came to an end, and once Mike Gold (editor of both Blackhawk and Hawkworld) moved on, things get a lot muddier. The first sign of this, I think, is in Guy Gardner: Warrior (see # 12), where during the Crisis in Time, Guy meets up with Zinda "Lady Blackhawk" Blake—a character who, as far as we knew up until that point, did not exist post-Crisis. Her original appearance is a one-off, so you could blame it on Extant-induced timeline fluctuations, but then in a later issue, she materializes in the present day outside Guy's bar, and takes a job there. Is she a refugee from the past? Or from an entirely nonexistent timeline? We don't really know, because the stories don't go into it at all; she's just a bit of set dressing, basically.

Possibly you might posit that—and this is what the DC wiki does—that Blackhawk continuity was changed again by the events of the Crisis in Time itself. This is backed up by JLA: Year One (see #13)... kind of. This story shows that the Blackhawks are active at the time of the JLA's founding, and in a form much closer to their pre-Crisis history. They are wearing the red-and-green uniforms they got during their time working for the UN, and the line-up includes several characters who had died in the post-Crisis, pre-Zero Hour Blackhawk stories, like Stanislaus. This would mean, though, that the Blackhawks had continually operated without aging from World War II up to the almost-present-day of the DC universe! (I think JLA: Year One is set ten years prior to the "present," so around 1988.) Not impossible, I suppose; these are comics. But there is no hint of the way the Blackhawks were depicted in the present-day stories of the Blackhawk ongoing. Indeed, this story even reintroduces the Blackhawks' brief stint as superheroes, though under different circumstances than in the original "Junk-Heap Heroes" storyline.

from JLA: Year One #2
(script by Mark Waid & Brian Augustyn, art by Barry Kitson)

The wrinkle in all of this is that Lady Blackhawk is in JLA: Year One. But how could she be if she had been plucked out of time and brought to the present? Was she plucked out of time after the events of JLA: Year One? Well, then she would have been six years out of time at the most, which hardly seems significant (as far as being plucked out of time in superhero comics goes, anyway, I'm sure it would be much more significant if I was dumped in the year 2031 by a timeline fluctuation). So I don't think we can say the Crisis in Time changed the Blackhawks' history, because it seemingly did so in two contradictory ways: the Blackhawks, including Zinda, lasted all the way up to the founding of the JLA and Zinda was pulled out of time to the present at some unspecified point in the past.

Basically, after Zero Hour, elements of both the pre- and post-Crisis Blackhawks were maintained. When Blackhawk guest-starred in a Sandman Mystery Theatre story arc published in 1996, it was the post-Crisis Howard Chaykin version. But when Zinda joins the line-up of Birds of Prey in 2004, it's the same seemingly pre-Crisis version that appeared in Guy Gardner... and she says she's the last surviving Blackhawk. So what happened to all the other Blackhawks who were alive just over a decade ago in JLA: Year One? And what happened to Weng Chan?

It all doesn't matter, of course. Continuity is a game we play when it supports storytelling. I enjoy playing the game (hence this post, and hence my previous one about the pre-Crisis continuity), but I don't let it detract from my enjoyment of the stories themselves. When reading Sandman Mystery Theatre, you're not thinking about Guy Gardner: Warrior, and when reading Guy Gardner: Warrior, you're not thinking about Sandman Mystery Theatre. It especially doesn't matter, because from this point on, DC mostly treated the Blackhawks as a retro property; they would pop up in WWII-set stories (for example, in a time travel storyline in The Brave and the Bold), but that's it. So whether Lady Blackhawk was Zinda Blake or Natalie Reed was largely immaterial. (That said, it's been a while since I read them, but I'm pretty sure some of Zinda's Birds of Prey appearances eventually claim she was a member of the Blackhawk's during the war, as opposed to after it.)

from Batman Confidential #38
(script by Royal McGraw, art by Marcos Marz & Luciana Del Negro)

I did appreciate that in the otherwise terrible Blackhawk Down arc (see #15), it was basically treated as all true. Zinda is Lady Blackhawk, but knows the Janos version of Blackhawk (I don't think the two had ever been in a story together before), and this version of the team had been through adventures that originally took place on the pre-Crisis Earth-One and the pre-Crisis Earth-Thirty-Two and in the post-Crisis timeline, even if none of those things actually fit together.

Fundamentally, the problem is that the Blackhawks are largely a concept rooted to a particular time and environment. Take them out of that time and environment, and there's a limited number of things you can actually do with them, so you're constantly going to be reinventing them, whether it makes sense or not.

This is the last in a series of posts about the Blackhawks. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1 (1941-42)
2. Military Comics #18-43 / Modern Comics #44-46 / Blackhawk #9 & 50 (1943-52)
3. Showcase Presents Blackhawk, Volume One (1957-58) 
4. Blackhawk vol. 1 #151-95 (1960-64) 
5. Blackhawk vol. 1 #196-227 (1964-66)
6. Blackhawk vol. 1 #228-43 (1967-68)
7. Blackhawk vol. 1 #244-50 / The Brave and the Bold #167 (1976-80)
8. Blackhawk (1982) 
9. Blackhawk vol. 1 #251-73 / DC Comics Presents #69 (1982-84) 
• Pre-Crisis Continuity 
10. Blackhawk: Blood & Iron (1987-89)
11. Blackhawk vol. 3 (1989-92) 
12. Guy Gardner: Warrior #24, 29, 36, 38-43 / Annual #1 (1994-96)
13. JLA: Year One (1998-99) 
14. Guns of the Dragon (1998-99) 
15. Batman Confidential: Blackhawk Down (2010) 

Batman: Blackhawk Down by Royal McGraw, Marcos Marz, et al.

The last pre-Flashpoint Blackhawk story was Blackhawk Down, which appeared in four issues of the continuity-light Batman title Batman Confidential. In this story, Batman investigates a theft at Blackhawk Industries only to run into Zinda "Lady Blackhawk" Blake who is investigating the same thing, and faces machinations of various Blackhawk villains... only to discover that the supposedly long-dead Janos "Blackhawk" Prohaska himself is actually alive!

It is, to be quite honest, pretty bad, full of twists for the sake of twists and an execrable ending where Blackhawk and Lady Blackhawk become a romantic item for no reason other than to demonstrate that old men deserve hot women as long as they are alive. Lady Blackhawk is particularly poorly done by here, serving as a damsel-in-distress and no more. The art is muddy and dull in a way that feels annoyingly typical of 2010s comics. It's one of those comics that's so bad but so uninterestingly bad, that I can't even must up any enthusiasm for writing a detailed negative review. Read it if you're a completist (I am) but know what you're in for if so.

Did not expect a Sky Skull reference in the year 2010! At least Royal McGraw read his classic Blackhawk issues. (Or perhaps the DC wiki.)
from Batman Confidential #38

The only to thing to like here, as far as I am concerned, is the book's catholic approach to Blackhawk continuity. Blackhawk is called Janos Prohaska, as he was post-Crisis, when Lady Blackhawk was Natalie Reed... but Lady Blackhawk is Zinda Blake, as she was pre-Crisis, back when Blackhawk was Bart Hawk. Obviously there have been post-Crisis stories with Janos and post-Crisis stories with Zinda, but I think this is the first story to mix the two. There's a lot of other pre-Crisis Blackhawk continuity thrown in here, too, like Ted Gaynor, the Chop-Chop substitute from the Evanier/Spiegle run (see item #9 below); references to the clone Blackhawk, also from that run; a subplot about Zinda's time as Queen Killer Shark (see #5); and even the Sky Skull from the short-lived late 1960s revival (see #6), the first time that's ever been referenced as far as I know. Post-Crisis it can be pretty hard to tell what "counts," but I appreciate any writer whose attitude is that it all counts.

The artist was so proud of this that on the full page, it's got their enormous signature emblazoned on it.
from Batman Confidential #38

Blackhawk Down originally appeared in issues #36-39 of Batman Confidential (Early Jan.–Late Feb. 2010). The story was written by Royal McGraw, pencilled by Marcos Marz, inked by Luciana Del Negro, colored by David Baron, lettered by Sal Cipriano, and edited by Mike Marts.

This is the penultimate in a series of posts about the Blackhawks. The last installment covers their post-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) 
9. Blackhawk vol. 1 #251-73 / DC Comics Presents #69 (1982-84) 
• Pre-Crisis Continuity 
10. Blackhawk: Blood & Iron (1987-89)
11. Blackhawk vol. 3 (1989-92) 
12. Guy Gardner: Warrior #24, 29, 36, 38-43 / Annual #1 (1994-96)
13. JLA: Year One (1998-99) 
14. Guns of the Dragon (1998-99) 

"this peace, like any other, was a temporary thing" (Blackhawk, 1989–92)

The third and final (so far, anyway*) volume of Blackhawk comprised sixteen issues in 1989 and 1990, plus a 1989 annual and a belated 1992 special. It picked up from what artist Rick Burchett and writer Martin Pasko had been doing with Blackhawk in Action Comics (see item #10 below); Burchett would illustrate all sixteen regular issues of the title (occasionally with various assists), while Pasko would write the first eleven, with Grant Miehm taking over at the end.

Back when I began this series of posts, I said the question I was interested in was how various creators made use of the Blackhawks outside of their original context. Can a premise and set of characters originally anchored to a very specific time and place have any viability outside of it? The last couple incarnations of the Blackhawks have seemed to indicate "no": both Mark Evanier (see #9 below) and Chaykin returned the Blackhawks to World War II. 

Somewhat cleverly, Mike Grell and Martin Pasko followed on from Chaykin by making the viability of the Blackhawks outside of World War II the very topic of their stories. At the end of the Action Comics run, Pasko set up that the Blackhawks would be operating at the behest of U.S. intelligence, their cover story being that they were a charter air service. These warriors need a new war to fight, even if it's one they don't totally agree with themselves.

Glamorous even with one eye.
from Blackhawk Annual #1
(script by Martin Pasko, art by Rick Burchett & Bill Wray)

This is the topic of the first three issues and the annual, which see the Blackhawks go on missions like distributing anticommunist leaflets to influence elections overseas, but of course they get into fights and scrapes, and of course Janos himself gets into shenanigans with local women. There's lots of moral ambiguity here; it's a strong follow-up to what Pasko and Burchett were doing in Action Comics.

In that run, Pasko had also set up that Natalie Reed (the so-called "Lady Blackhawk") had a child she was unable to reenter the U.S. to see, thanks to increased anticommunist sentiments postwar. This is the main spine of those first four issues; from Mexico, Natalie is writing comics stories about the Blackhawks and sending them to a publisher in the U.S., who illustrates them with her name under a pseudonym. But the fact that Reed is a former communist means a right-wing member of the publisher staff informs on her, and soon the Blackhawks are battling enemies at home, not just abroad. I really enjoyed this subplot, particularly some of the revelations about who the father of Natalie's baby was, and what happens to him.

I agree, Janos.
from Blackhawk vol. 3 #1 (script by Martin Pasko, art by Rick Burchett)

(If you want, this subplot can also be used to kind of maintain previous versions of Blackhawk in continuity. Pasko and Burchett include interpolated bits based on the original Military Comics run [see item #1] and Chaykin's miniseries [item #10]. Any story you want to keep can be an in-universe fictionalized comics based on on actual adventure!)

After this, though, the comic moves into an ongoing plotline that runs from issue #4 to 12. This takes the conspiracy thriller tone of the whole thing to a new level: the government decides they want to the Blackhawks to go to China and stop them from developing an atomic bomb... so they kidnap them and make it seem like they're dead? Meanwhile, other members of the Blackhawks are being abducted and put in suspended animation. I can enjoy conspiracy thrillers, but one that bugs me is when the antagonists are so powerful in the way they manipulate the protagonists that it doesn't really make sense that they need the protagonists to do anything to begin with. If the government can force the Blackhawks to do all this, why can't they just do it themselves directly?

As the story goes on, it gets increasingly convoluted, with the villains trying to (I think) copy the Blackhawks' memories into other people's bodies for... reasons, I guess? I don't really know, and that's despite two different issues where the plot stops so that people can explain to each other what's going on! And like I said, this plotline dominates nine issues of the title! It's pretty bad, and feels like it must be the reason the title ended up cancelled.

Martin Pasko doesn't even see it all the way through; issue #12 is actually written by Doug Moench, who wraps everything up implausibly quickly. Oh, did the Blackhawks go through the most traumatic events of their lives? That's fine, they're back to work... for the same people who did all this to them to begin with! Natalie goes through some particularly twisted shit, and he writes her out rather than deal with it. On the one hand, I'm frustrated to lose one of the new Blackhawks' best characters, but on the other hand, I'm not sure what Moench could actually do with her given how much Pasko screwed up the character that he had made so interesting!

After that, Moench quickly moves onto a four-part storyline about the Blackhawks flying experimental planes... and possibly also there are UFOs? To be honest, I found this disjointed, confusing, and pointless. Again, it's not very clear what the conspiracy is or why the conspirators want the Blackhawks; there are several different parts to the story that don't go together. A disappointing conclusion to a series that had a very strong start.

Other stuff: The series contains a couple "Blackhawk Express" stories set in the present day of the DC universe (following on from "The Crash of 88" in Action Comics) starring Weng Chan. These have good writers (Elliot S. Maggin and John Ostrander) but unfortunately a terrible artist in Dick Rockwell, and to be honest, neither writer ever does anything with the premise that convinces me it was worthwhile. Finally, 1992's Blackhawk Special (script by John Ostrander, art by Mike Vosburg) chronicles 1963 to '68 for the Blackhawks (the main body of the ongoing covered 1948 to '50), mostly focusing on the Blackhawks getting involved in a conspiracy surrounding the deaths of JFK and RFK. It's decent enough but a bit too jumpy to be engaging; I feel like Ostrander was trying to do too much even if he had 57 pages to work with.

This is the eleventh in a series of posts about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers Lady Blackhawk in Guy Gardner: Warrior. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1 (1941-42)
2. Military Comics #18-43 / Modern Comics #44-46 / Blackhawk #9 & 50 (1943-52)
3. Showcase Presents Blackhawk, Volume One (1957-58) 
4. Blackhawk vol. 1 #151-95 (1960-64) 
5. Blackhawk vol. 1 #196-227 (1964-66)
6. Blackhawk vol. 1 #228-43 (1967-68)
7. Blackhawk vol. 1 #244-50 / The Brave and the Bold #167 (1976-80)
8. Blackhawk (1982) 
9. Blackhawk vol. 1 #251-73 / DC Comics Presents #69 (1982-84) 
• Pre-Crisis Continuity 
10. Blackhawk: Blood & Iron (1987-89) 

* There was a short-lived ongoing series that ran 2011–12, but it was called Blackhawks.

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.

Where on (the Infinite) Earth(s) Are the Blackhawks?

As covered in several posts I've already made, the Blackhawks were originally published by Quality Comics from 1941 to 1956, taking their adventures from World War II and beyond. Then, they were published (not quite continuously) by DC from 1957 to 1984. As you might imagine, this causes continuity problems—did it really make sense that the 1976 incarnation of the Blackhawks had somehow been active since World War II? From 1957 to 1966 there's no sign of superheroes in the Blackhawk milieu, but then come 1967 they're hanging out with the Justice League.

In DC's pre-Crisis continuity, they dealt with continuity issues by relegating character to different Earths. But which Earth do different versions of the Blackhawks belong to? Here's what I can figure out; I'll start from most obvious to least obvious. 

Earth-One: The Mark Evanier & Dan Spiegle Run (1982–84)

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

Earth-One was the original Earth of DC's Silver Age, the one the Justice League came from and the various superheroes associated with it: the Hal Jordan Green Lantern, the Barry Allen Flash, and the contemporary versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. In this timeline, superheroes emerged in the late 1950s.

That the 1980s Blackhawk revival is from Earth-One is very obvious, because the lettercol to issue #256 just tells you! Writer Mark Evanier claims that this is the never-before-seen Earth-One version of the Blackhawks, which means that there's no known endpoint for these characters. Evanier could kill off, say, Hendrickson and it wouldn't impact any stories written earlier but set later! I thought this was an interesting move, not the least because, as far as I know, there were no superheroes on Earth-One during World War II. For all intents and purposes, the Earth-One of WWII is our Earth.

That these comics were set on Earth-One is confirmed by DC Comics Presents #69, where the Earth-One Superman travels back in time and meets the Evanier Blackhawks during the war.

Earth-Two: The Original Quality Comics Run (1941–56?)

from Military Comics #16 (script by Bill Woolfolk, art by Reed Crandall)

Earth-Two was DC's home for its Golden Age heroes, the one the Justice Society came from and the various superheroes associated with it: the Alan Scott Green Lantern, the Jay Garrick Flash, and the contemporary versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. In this timeline, superheroes emerged in the late 1930s.

In that lettercol to Blackhawk #256, Mark Evanier suggests that all previous adventures of the Blackhawks were set on Earth-Two or Earth-X. (The lettercol also says the forthcoming twelve-part maxiseries The History of the DC Universe will answer this more definitively, but when this eventually saw print as Crisis on Infinite Earths, that was not the case.) There is one Blackhawk story we can definitively place on Earth-Two: The Brave and the Bold #167, where they team up with the Golden Age Batman, must be set there.

But if that Blackhawk story is set on Earth-Two, it means other ones certainly could be, and the original World War II run of the Blackhawks from Quality seems like the obvious candidate. I don't see any obvious reason to speculate that these stories are set on any other Earth; we also received confirmation that there were Blackhawks operating on Earth-Two from their guest appearance in All-Star Squadron #48-49. If there are Earth-Two Blackhawks, who could they be other than the Quality Comics ones? And if you include all the World War II stories, I don't see any reason to doubt that the postwar Blackhawk stories from Quality also take place on Earth-Two.

There is a bit of a wrinkle in this theory, though; see below.

Earth-X: ???

from Justice League of America vol. 1 #107
(script by Len Wein, art by Dick Dillin & Dick Giordano,
scan courtesy The Unofficial Blackhawk Comics Website)

In 1973, Justice League of America #107-08 established that the Quality Comics characters (by then owned by DC) existed on Earth-X. In addition to being home to a different set of superheroes than Earths-One and -Two, though, Earth-X had one key divergence: World War II had been won by the Nazis. With both Allies and Axis inventing the atomic bomb, the war had gone on until the late 1960s, when the Nazis developed a mind-control ray that allowed them to finally win. Only a small group of superheroes, the "Freedom Fighters," were immune.

I don't think there are any published Blackhawk stories we can definitively place on this Earth, however. JLA #107 has a one-panel flashback depicting the Blackhawks, which strongly implies they died during the extended version of WWII. All Quality Blackhawk stories published during World War II could be set on this world, but certainly none of the postwar ones (1946-56) could be, because on Earth-X, there was no postwar!

An extra wrinkle comes from All-Star Squadron #50. In A-SS, the Quality Comics characters had been depicted as existing on Earth-Two. I think until that point you could have simply assumed they existed on both Earth-Two and Earth-X, but A-SS #50 has the Quality Comics characters travelling from Earth-Two to Earth-X to help Uncle Sam battle the Nazis in that timeline. These characters include the Blackhawks! If we take this at face value, this means that there can't be any Blackhawk stories set on Earth-Two after April 1942, when issue #50 is set...

...but this would invalidate Brave and the Bold #167, which we know is set on Earth-Two in 1944! Oh, Roy Thomas, what was up with this needlessly complicated retcon? (Oh wait, you're Roy Thomas.)

My suggestion: A-SS #50 is set during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Thus, it is neither pre-Crisis nor post-Crisis. The multiversal whatsit that allows for the crossover in #50 is because of the Crisis, so it couldn't have happened in the pre-Crisis multiverse! We can suggest that in the pre-Crisis timeline, the Earth-Two Blackhawks stayed on Earth-Two, and thus the Earth-X Blackhawks were separate characters.

This does mean that the only known Blackhawk appearance on Earth-X is that single panel in JLA #107... but pre–A-SS #50, at least, all the 1941-45 Quality Comics Blackhawk stories could have happened on Earth-X as well as Earth-Two.

Earth-B: The Original DC Comics Run (1957?–66)

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

The obvious continuity error of "The New Blackhawk Era" (#228-41) is that they hang out with the Justice League in the opening story arc... but the Justice League is from Earth-One, and Evanier indicates only the 1982-84 Blackhawks come from Earth-One. But they can't come from Earths-Two or -X like he suggests other Blackhawk stories do, because there's no JLA on Earths-Two or -X.

(In the lettercol to issue #257, Evanier adds that he could write a story explaining how the JLA could guest star in a Blackhawk story even though he'd claimed there were no previous Earth-One Blackhawks... but he won't do it because that would be boring. This is an attitude toward retconning I totally approve of.)

Earth-B is a world that I don't think is ever actually referred to in a DC Comics story. It's only used in behind-the-scenes material to justify continuity errors. Basically, many Silver Age stories played it fast and loose with continuity in such a way that that couldn't "actually" take place on Earth-One. This article on Batman Universe lays it out pretty nicely:

By the late 1970s there were a handful of Silver Age DC stories that just seemed out-of-continuity no matter what. They just didn’t fit into Batman’s primary Earth (i.e. the DCU’s pre-Crisis Earth-1), violated characterization, had obvious continuity errors, or were just plain strange (even for Silver Age comics). Many of these stories in question were written by Bob Haney and E Nelson Bridwell and edited by Murray Boltinoff and Bob Rozakis. Thus, these out-of-synch tales retroactively became assigned to Earth-B. The assignment of the letter B came from the fact there were so many B names creatively-involved in the non-synchronous tales—Bridwell, Boltinoff, and two Bobs (three if you count Bob Hope)! Further reasoning for assigning the letter B was that many of these tales also took place in The Brave & The Bold. While it is rumored that Myron Gruenwald and Mark Gruenwald originally came up with the idea for Earth-B, the concept was first mentioned in a letters column by Rozakis in the 1970s.

Thus, Earth-B is a lot like Earth-One, but not Earth-One. It would indeed have a Justice League of America and all the other characters necessary to make the Junk-Heap Heroes! storyline work. And of course, the whole G.E.O.R.G.E. run is written by Bob Haney.

If issues #228-41 took place on Earth-B, then issues #242-43 did so as well, because they directly followed on from those stories. And probably so did many, if not most or all, of the pre-#228 Blackhawk stories published by DC, which got increasingly goofy as they went on even before the Blackhawks all became superheroes (and some of which were edited by Murray Boltinoff).

The origins of the Blackhawks in general and Chop-Chop in specific given in #198 and 203 aren't consistent with their original appearances in Military Comics, giving us further evidence that those stories take place on a different Earth than those stories, even if we do know (from various flashbacks) that the Earth-B Blackhawks did begin during World War II.

I haven't read it, but it would seem that JLA #144, which includes a cameo from the Blackhawks, also occurs on Earth-B, not Earth-One. Same for DC Challenge, which is another story including both the JLA and the Blackhawks. (Apparently, DC Challenge being set on Earth-B was confirmed by Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Compendium.)

Earth-Thirty-Two?: The George Evans & Steve Skeates Run (1976–77)

from Blackhawk vol. 1 #250
(script by Steve Skeates, art by Ric Estrada and George Evans & Frank Springer)

The one unaccounted-for run at this point is the brief revival of Blackhawk during the 1970s. The actual stories don't mention any wider continuity, but the text page in issue indicates the Blackhawks disappeared in the 1960s, they were rumored to have been superheroes, and that the Justice League exists.

Things we know:

• It's not Earth-One, according to Evanier's comments in Blackhawk #256.
• It's not any timeline where the Blackhawks were active during World War II, because the text page in #244 says they emerged in the 1950s: this thus disqualifies Earths-Two, -X, and -B.
• There is a Justice League, and possibly the Blackhawks were briefly superheroes.

I don't know what Earth that leaves us with: it needs to be one with the JLA (if we believe in the text page from #244, as they're not mentioned in the actual stories) but where the Blackhawks emerged later. Apparently, in the Crisis on Infinite Earths deluxe edition, John Wells split Earth-B into Earth-Twelve and Earth-Thirty-Two. So perhaps this run occurs on Earth-Thirty-Two to the previous run's Earth-Twelve?

(The other way to take this is that these stories could take place on the same Earth as the earlier DC stories, and any inconsistencies are just down to the usual "sliding timescale" approach to superhero comic books. We happily put, say, all pre-Crisis Legion of Super-Hero comics on the same Earth, even though twenty years of story time clearly do not elapse over twenty years of publication time. In which case, no need to come up with some "Earth-Thirty-Two" retcon.)

Closing Thoughts

I'm sure I've missed something here; in particular, I'm working from my memory of the All-Star Squadron issues because my copies aren't currently easily accessed. I hope I have at least a somewhat tenable set of theories here, and you can look forward to my even more complicated follow-up post, when I attempt to rectify everything we know about the post-Crisis Blackhawks!

What else this post makes me want to do is write a Crisis on Infinite Blackhawks story: what happens when the Earth-One Blackhawks meet the Earth-Two ones? That's probably not so dramatically different (except for Chop-Chop), but then chuck in the superhero Blackhawks of Earth-B and the mercenary Blackhawks of Earth-Thirty-Two and the beleaguered Blackhawks of Earth-X... and eventually, the cynical post-Crisis Blackhawks of the Howard Chaykin version. Forget Legion of 3 Worlds, why not Blackhawk of 6 Worlds!?

This is a supplement to a series of posts about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers Blackhawk: Blood & Iron. 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)

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!