Military Comics #1 (1941)
written by Will Eisner & Bob Powell
pencils by Chuck Cuiders
cover by Will Eisner
One of the sad truths of comics history is that characters that used to be a big deal eventually fade out of popular culture, but some of them still manage to leave such an imprint that they are continuously referenced or resurrected even when they stand little chance of recapturing the old days. This is definitely the case for the Blackhawks.
I will take at their first story and attempt a brief summary of their history, but do remember that I’m approaching this as a rather casual Blackhawk reader.
Because make no mistake: Blackhawk history and lore are HUGE, and if had to go any deeper there’s enough material for something rivaling the Legion retrospective.
Co-writer and cover artist Will Eisner probably doesn’t need an introduction.
Bob Powell is snot as well-known to modern audiences; he wouldn’t receive full credit for co-creating Blackhawk until 1999. He’s probably best known for drawing “Sheena, Queen Of The Jungle” and for doing pencils for the “Mars Attacks” trading carts.
Penciler Chuck Cuidera is mostly known for Blackhawk itself and for the original Blue Beetle (although his credit of being the original Blue Beetle‘s co-creator is disputed, due to his pseudonym “Charles Nicholas” being used by multiple artists at the time).
Speaking of the pencils, this series proves to be WAY ahead of its time by starting with a full page teaser, showing Blackhawk himself.
We begin in Poland at the beginning of WWII, so you can already tell things start out serious.
The Nazis are decimating the Polish air force, with one exception: a black plane with an extraordinary pilot.
Well, the text keeps calling it black; I don’t know if it’s the scans or if it was like this in the original, but that looks pretty green to me.
The Nazis have an exceptional pilot too: Captain Von Tepp, who is such a Nazi that he decides to throw bombs at the Polish pilot who barely survived the plane crash.
As if that wasn’t enough, the bomb murders the Polish pilot’s brother and sister.
As you might have guessed, the Polish pilot is Blackhawk: we never learn his actual name (at least not in this continuity).
And he gathers quite the reputation!
We’ve already moved to France: Blackhawk comics really like to move around.
Von Tepp is not impressed, and decides to show his strength by ordering the execution of an English nurse.
She’s quite something!
It’s notable that Blackhawk is already a legend across Europe.
And so Blackhawk makes his entrance… with his own theme song!
Because never forget two things: the Blackhawks are WEIRD…
…and they are AWESOME.
Yes, this guy managed to sneak an entire squadron into a Nazi headquarters IN ENEMY TERRITORY.
I think you can already tell why Blackhawk ends up having strong ties to superheroes.
Also, no offense to Sgt. Rock and Nick Fury but this guy is the coolest looking war hero EVER.
He’s also ready to get some sweet revenge on Von Tepp.
He doesn’t kill Von Tepp, but instead takes him and the English nurse to Blackhawk Island.
It will be moved all over the place across the decades, and it’s far from the only Blackhawk base.
Why did Blackhawk take Von Tepp here? Not only to recap his origin story…
…but he wands a proper air duel.
Blackhawk, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job buy maybe DON’T TRUST THE NAZI!!!
WHAT DID YOU EXPECT????
Another thing to remember about Blackhawk: he comes up with COMPLETELY INSANE plans that have basically no chance of working, but he pulls them off anyway.
Not content with taking down the enemy plane with an impossible maneuver, Blackhawk then kills Von Tepp in an actual duel.
Blackhawk is DEFINITELY not the kind of hero that gets out of trouble without a scratch.
More on that later.
You’d expect the nurse to become a regular part of the cast, but Blackhawk sends her away.
I could not verify if she returns, but it seems she doesn’t.
Historical significance: 8/10
Despite lacking in popularity for modern audiences, Blackhawk is VERY influential.
Silver Age-ness: 1/10
Far less ridiculous than the rest of Blackhawk’s history, but what was up with the theme song?
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
It’s a very simple story, but other than being slightly lessened by its short length, it holds up remarkably well!
Before checking Blackhawk’s history, as promised: remember when I said Blackhawk is not the hero who avoids being hurt?
As mentioned I’m a Blackhawk casual, but just to give you an idea, here’s what DC Fandom has to say about this:
In this opening episode of his long and precarious career, 11 pages, Blackhawk survived one mid-air plane crash, and two plane-destroying “pancake landings.” Over the following fifteen years, Blackhawk lived through a truly amazing array of bludgeoning, bullet wounds, crashes, poisonings, stabbings, and other trauma.
During their run for Quality Comics ALONE (1941-1956), DC Fandom also lists that:
-Blackhawk was shot down not less than twenty-two times.
-Blackhawk walked away alive from not less than twenty-two aircraft crashes. Six of these crashes were deliberate.
-Blackhawk has been knocked unconscious, or at least stunned, with a blow to the head, not less than sixty-eight times.
-On at least nine occasions Blackhawk has received bullet wounds.
-He once got a dose of phosgene gas and was bedridden for some time by that.
-Blackhawk has been subjected to prolonged severe torture not less than seven times.
And that’s not even BEGINNING the Blackhawk weirdness. More on that soon.
How close is this to the modern character? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sit down and get comfortable, this is going to be a long one.
Cuidera’s work as the penciler didn’t last long: he joined the Armed Forces in 1942, and starting from Military Comics #12 the pencils moved to Reed Crandal who was synonymous with the Blackhawks all the way up to 1953.
Blackhawk very soon gathered the rest of the Blackhawk Squadron, all from different nationalities.
And they proved to be very popular, possibly the best selling Quality series.
Their run on Military Comics (later renamed Modern Comics) lasted until 1950, when it was cancelled with #102.
But they also got their own title, which replaced “Uncle Sam Quarterly” after that series was renamed in 1943 after #8.
The Blackhawk series continued publishing under Quality Comics until 1956, with #107 being the last issue under Quality.
1956 is quite significant because, as mentioned many times in the retrospective, that’s when Quality Comics stopped publications and the rights to its characters were purchased by DC Comics.
Blackhawk is a unique case because it’s the ONLY Quality series that seamlessly transitions between publishers: DC Comics kept publishing from #108 onwards, without missing a single month, and even without changing the creative team.
The book was cancelled in 1968, then resurrected in 1976, cancelled again the following year, then resurrected again in 1980, and cancelled for good in 1984 with #273.
More on the ups and downs of the original series soon.
After its cancellation there was a 3-issue miniseries in 1988 by Howard Chaykin, then a 16 issue series in 1989-1990, a John Ostrander special in 1992 and an 8 issue miniseries in 2011-2012.
While the Blackhawk Squadron has mostly faded into obscurity, Lady Blackhawk (more on her soon) enjoyed some popularity in the 2000s when she was brought into the present day and even joined the Birds Of Prey.
Can’t imagine why she managed to stay popular.
Lady Blackhawk is from the DC run, but there were a couple of one-off equivalents in the Quality era.
In terms of adaptations, the Blackhawks go way back. Specifically to 1952, when they had a 15 part movie serial!
Blackhawk himself was portrayed by Kirk Alyn, who has quite the pedigree when it comes to comics adaptation: he played Superman in the 1950 movie serial “Atom Man vs. Superman”, therefore holding the distinction of being the first actor to ever play Superman in live action.
Blackhawk shows up in an episode of the Justice League animated series, together with most of the squadron.
Alright, so far I’ve been talking about Blackhawk and the Blackhawk Squadron pretty interchangeably, but there IS a difference. So let’s talk about them.
Blackhawk is the main guy. As mentioned he’s not given a name in the Quality run; later relaunches oscillate between him being called Janos Prohaska or Bart Hawk (seriously) and between him being either Polish or Polish-American.
The rest of the team takes up to Military Comics #11 to be fully established.
It consists of Stanislaus from Poland, Chuck from Texas (sometimes from New York), Hendrickson from the Netherlands (sometimes Germany), André from France, Olaf from Sweden, and Chop-Chop from racism.
So, uhm, I guess we have to talk about Chop-Chop.
He’s honestly a very clear indication of just how much things can change over time.
Because THIS is Chop-Chop in his first appearance in 1942…
…this is Chop-Chop from his last Quality Comics appearance in 1956…
…and this is Chop-Chop in the last issue of Blackhawk in 1984.
Lady Blackhawk is introduced in 1959 on Blackhawk #133. After a failed attempt to join the team, which goes exactly how you’d expect at 1959 story to treat her…
…but she did eventually get the team’s respect and join.
Continuing the theme of the Blackhawk Squadron members being hurt, in the Quality run ALONE (and again credit is to the DC Database):
-Stanislaus survived 3 plane crashes (one of those was on purpose), his plane was shot down 2 times, took a bullet once, was wounded by bomb shrapnel once, and was once believed dead for 3 months
-André survived 4 plane crashes, his plane was shot down 3 times, he was knocked out 16 times, and once survived being burned in a hangar fire
-Chop-Chop survived 6 plane crashes, his plane was shot down 2 times, he’s been knocked out 10 times, survived 3 gunshots, was once tortured on a medieval rack (!!!)
-Chuck survived 5 plane crashes, his plane was shot down 4 times, he was knocked out 8 times, took a bullet once, and was once made amnesiac when an alien machine emptied his brain (!!!)
-Hans survived 2 plane crashes, he was knocked out 8 times, was shot once with a machine gun, and was once remote-controlled by an electrode implanted in his brain by a Japanese war criminal surgeon (!!!)
-Olaf survived 6 plane crashes (one of those was on purpose), 1 limousine crash, his plane was shot down 3 times, he was knocked out 10 times, he was shot twice, he took shrapnel from a bomb once, and he was mind-controlled by electronic devices implanted in his brain TWICE. None of those is the same instance of Hans being mind controlled.
The Quality series had a surprising amount of femme fatales. The most important is definitely Miss Fear, a frequent ally.
But there’s lots more. And yes, most are before Quality adopted the Comics Code.
So you can see the Blackhawk formula was quite successful for years, but eventually sales dropped.
In 1967, there was an attempt to relaunch them as superheroes.
Specifically, THE WORST SUPERHEROES EVER.
This lasted 14 issues; reportedly, the book lost tens of thousands of readers per issue.
It returned to its roots for just one issue after that, being cancelled for the first time.
The 1976 revival was set in the present day as a contemporary adventuring team, but as I said earlier it didn’t last long.
The last revival in 1982 by Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle was back to being set in WWII and was critically acclaimed, but sold so little that Carol Kalish helped with the promotion… even if she was the marketing chief of Marvel: she did it just because she wanted the book to continue!
(source: Don Markstein’s Toonopedia)
So you can probably already tell that Blackhawk had a huge impact on a lots of other series you’re probably more familiar with, from Nick Fury to G.I.Joe.
But to finish the review, I absolutely must bring up just how completely insane the Quality run is, once again thanks to the DC Database listing the highlights.
Blackhawk is so vast, so complicated and so out of my comfort zone that I won’t be able to do a full retrospective, but I don’t exclude the possibility of reviewing a couple of their most bonkers stories.
These are just SOME highlights from the Quality run ALONE.
The Blackhawks have access to the advanced technology of the hidden Ancient Rome colony of Publius, after freeing them from a robot tyrant.
The Blackhawks have access to Polar City, an Arctic secret city full of mineral deposits ruled by a scantily clad femme fatale.
The Blackhawks have access to an underground hidden city in South America full of gold.
Technology taken from its enemies by the Blackhawks include, but are not certainly limited to: Shark Planes, the War Wheel, the Flying Submarine and the Sky Sleds.
The Blackhawks have “Semi-Atomic Bombs” which are used to stop an alien invasion.
The Blackhawks have transparent, fireproof, heatproof, radiationproof suits that they use to stop an invasion from underground people.
The Blackhawks have a robot dog that can track brains.
The Blackhawks landed on the Moon in 1950.
Once on the Moon, they fight Communists who wanted to dig for diamonds there.
Later in 1952, the Blackhawks fought Communists for control over an asteroid.
And once again, that is JUST the Quality run. Don’t expect the DC run to be less insane!
There’s another historically significant story in Military Comics #1, but I will review that one separately.
It should be mentioned that there was an attempt to “modernize” Chop-Chop during the ’70s run. He was renamed Chopper and became a master of martial arts (some stereotypes endured). He was also said to be the team’s most skilled pilot other than Blackhawk himself. It’s almost as if DC went out of its way to make up for perpetuating the ridiculous stereotype.
Fun fact! Stanislaus was named after writer Bob Powell, whose real first name was Stanislaus Pulowski.
It seems that the Blackhawks’ uniforms changed from black to blue by MILITARY COMICS #3. I can only speculate as to why. Perhaps they were seen as being too close a match for SS uniforms?
Perhaps. But I suspect it’s also due to coloring issues, it was hard to do because of coloring and printing tecniques. It’s one of the reasons why you don’t see too many characters with solid black features.