Blackhawk had great splash pages!
Showing posts with label Blackhawk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blackhawk. Show all posts
Monday, May 28, 2018
Manic Memorial Day Triple Overtime--Blackhawk Makes A Splash!
You know who had great splash pages?
From Blackhawk #10 (1946). Art by Reed Crandall
Blackhawk had great splash pages!
From Military Comics #21 (1943). Art by Reed Crandall
From Blackhawk #15 (1947). Art by Bill Ward.
From Military Comics #31 (1944). Art by Bill Ward.
From Blackhawk #23 (1949). Art by Reed Crandall
From Military Comics #35 (1945). Art perhaps by Al Bryant?
Blackhawk had great splash pages!
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Dear Mr. Spielberg--The Blackhawks Had Damned Well Better Sing!!
I'm lazy today, so I'm reposting this. But it's an important point, given the recent news about a Blackhawks movie. Mr. Spielberg, the ball is in your court!!
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If you've ever read any old Blackhawk stories, then you know that one thing the gang did was sing...a lot.
Sometimes they would sing when taking off on a mission...
Most often, though, their song would reverberate throughout the last panel of the story...
And that song had an awful lot of lyrics...
Sing on, Blackhawks...sing on!!!
From Blackhawk #77, #9, #27, #21, #54, #57, #66, & #19....
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If you've ever read any old Blackhawk stories, then you know that one thing the gang did was sing...a lot.
Sometimes they would sing when taking off on a mission...
From Blackhawk #77, #9, #27, #21, #54, #57, #66, & #19....
Sunday, February 4, 2018
The Second Worst Comic Book Of All Time!
Of course, the worst comic of all time is Civil War: Frontline, by a large margin:
But that's not all! Everyone forgets that, in the back half of the issue, our intrepid reporters literally applaud Tony Stark for mind-controlling Norman Osborn into attacking the Atlantean ambassador in order to ramp up a threat of a war to convince heroes to register. No, that really happened.
But there's another abominable comic I stumbled across in the Quarter Bin the other day, and man, it's even worse than I remembered:
SPOILER ALERT: The Flash doesn't run in this story. And The Blackhawks don't fly. You never even see their planes.
So what does happen? Barry Allen is helping a scientist with a goofy experiment, and accidentally ends up thrown back in time to...
Wait wait wait...
Now, since the Germans occupied Belgium from May 1940 till February 1945, it's hard to understand how Barry comes up with Germans in Belgium automatically equals The Battle Of The Bulge.
Well, it turns out that it actually is the Battle Of The Bulge. I suppose we could assume that Barry is lousy at history but got lucky. Or that JMS used a really lazy storytelling shortcut.
Oh, and Barry broke his leg in the accident, so he can't run super-fast (but conveniently, he can walk...?):
Fortunately, he can still do super-speed stuff with his hands:
This eventually leads to a meeting with...
It turns out the Blackhawks were on leave when the massive German counter-offensive left them stuck behind enemy lines. And after several pages of Blackhawk being a dickweed, he takes Barry to their temporary base...
...just in time to face a Nazi platoon!
But Barry has a better idea than guns!
Now, this is the part where Blackhawk thanks Barry for ending the battle quickly, and saving ammo, and probably their lives, right? Right?
Really.
Really.
Really.
You can't incapacitate the enemy. You have to kill them, or you're a coward. (Leave aside the fact that bricks hurled at that speed may well have killed some of the Germans...) (Also leave aside that the story never establishes what was done with the incapacitated Germans. Did Blackhawk go out and execute them while they were unconscious?)
I imagine that if Superman had shown up and knocked out the Nazis with super-breath or something, Blackhawk would tear him a new one, as well. Super-heroes are all pussies!!
By way of contrast, though, how about normal soldiers? Like in Sgt. Fury #3 (1963)?
They take out a whole Nazi platoon. And instead of killing them, they capture them, and send them off to be questioned. And the prisoners get to ride in a truck while the Howlers walked back!! So according to JMS, Fury and company must all be cowards!!
Now, DC promoted JMS's run on Brave And The Bold pretty heavily. "If you love these Silver Age characters, JMS will remind you why you do!"
So how does Silver Age Barry Allen deal with his dilemma? When they come across some dead Americans...
...he takes the uniform and weapons off a dead soldiers body and proceeds to spends "weeks" killing people with guns and not using his super-powers.
Yay, Silver Age...?
Look, if you want to do a story about how great the "Greatest Generation" was, more power to you. If you want to tell us how heroic soldiers are, I'm down with that (although the "soldiers' only job is to kill" seems to belie that theme just a tiny bit). And if you want to make the point that super-heroes don't belong in war stories because their presence somehow ruins the realism and makes light of the heroism and sacrifices of normal joes, I hear you--and Roy Thomas took care of that decades ago, by using the Spear of Destiny to keep super-powered beings out of Axis territory during the war (which apparently JMS never bothered to look up...)
You also could have had Barry lose all of his powers (or chosen a non-powered hero...Batman? Blue Beetle?), so the choice wasn't "using a gun vs. using still pretty damn effective super-powers."
But no, they had t5 tell that story at the expense of humiliating super-heroes. By taking Barry Freaking Allen, who thinks his way around bank robbers using super-speed and science, and making him feel ashamed for using his powers, even when those powers were demonstrably more effective than anything the soldiers were doing!?! Is it necessary to denigrate super-hero comics in order to build up war comics? Did JMS seriously believe that the only way we could properly appreciate WWII soldiers and celebrate the anniversary of the Battle Of The Bulge was to make super-heroes believe they were cowards for not ditching their powers?
So a story, where the Flash doesn't run and the Blackhawks don't fly, that trashes super-heroes as cowards unless they pick up a gun and start killing as much as they can? Yeah, that's a terrible, terrible comic book.
Then again, this story was nominated for an Eisner award, so I probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
But there's another abominable comic I stumbled across in the Quarter Bin the other day, and man, it's even worse than I remembered:
So what does happen? Barry Allen is helping a scientist with a goofy experiment, and accidentally ends up thrown back in time to...
Well, it turns out that it actually is the Battle Of The Bulge. I suppose we could assume that Barry is lousy at history but got lucky. Or that JMS used a really lazy storytelling shortcut.
Oh, and Barry broke his leg in the accident, so he can't run super-fast (but conveniently, he can walk...?):
Really.
Really.
You can't incapacitate the enemy. You have to kill them, or you're a coward. (Leave aside the fact that bricks hurled at that speed may well have killed some of the Germans...) (Also leave aside that the story never establishes what was done with the incapacitated Germans. Did Blackhawk go out and execute them while they were unconscious?)
I imagine that if Superman had shown up and knocked out the Nazis with super-breath or something, Blackhawk would tear him a new one, as well. Super-heroes are all pussies!!
By way of contrast, though, how about normal soldiers? Like in Sgt. Fury #3 (1963)?
Now, DC promoted JMS's run on Brave And The Bold pretty heavily. "If you love these Silver Age characters, JMS will remind you why you do!"
So how does Silver Age Barry Allen deal with his dilemma? When they come across some dead Americans...
Yay, Silver Age...?
Look, if you want to do a story about how great the "Greatest Generation" was, more power to you. If you want to tell us how heroic soldiers are, I'm down with that (although the "soldiers' only job is to kill" seems to belie that theme just a tiny bit). And if you want to make the point that super-heroes don't belong in war stories because their presence somehow ruins the realism and makes light of the heroism and sacrifices of normal joes, I hear you--and Roy Thomas took care of that decades ago, by using the Spear of Destiny to keep super-powered beings out of Axis territory during the war (which apparently JMS never bothered to look up...)
You also could have had Barry lose all of his powers (or chosen a non-powered hero...Batman? Blue Beetle?), so the choice wasn't "using a gun vs. using still pretty damn effective super-powers."
But no, they had t5 tell that story at the expense of humiliating super-heroes. By taking Barry Freaking Allen, who thinks his way around bank robbers using super-speed and science, and making him feel ashamed for using his powers, even when those powers were demonstrably more effective than anything the soldiers were doing!?! Is it necessary to denigrate super-hero comics in order to build up war comics? Did JMS seriously believe that the only way we could properly appreciate WWII soldiers and celebrate the anniversary of the Battle Of The Bulge was to make super-heroes believe they were cowards for not ditching their powers?
So a story, where the Flash doesn't run and the Blackhawks don't fly, that trashes super-heroes as cowards unless they pick up a gun and start killing as much as they can? Yeah, that's a terrible, terrible comic book.
Then again, this story was nominated for an Eisner award, so I probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Dial E For Eternity--Truth Or Fiction?!?
It looks like someone forgot to give cover artist Ruben Moreira the memo on what Kid Eternity is all about!
AIEEE!!! The Kid is packing heat!!
Fortunately, the splash panel has a convenient recap to reassure the gentle Golden Age reader that they haven't stumbled upon an issue of The Punisher by mistake:
The villain this issue is the rather forgettable...
Well, he's carrying a cat, so of course he's evil!!
Anyway, Doctor Pain wants to be a Dr. Frankenstein, but he discovers that Mary Shelley was totally wrong: you can't use parts from dead people! No, to create your own homunculus, you need to take parts from living people!!
Which results in scenes like this:
Ewwww!!
Anyway, one again it takes Kid and Keeper an...eternity...to get involved in the case. They don't even show up until the end of page 6. A few more pages, and we finally get around to the Kid showing off the power we already knew about...
Hey, guys...invisibility doesn't work to well when you leave tracks in the snow!! Sheesh!!
But we get another new power unveiled here:
Somehow, and it's never really explained what's happening, he can "visualize" the last hour or so of Pain's latest victim. Can he do this for anyone? Only the recently deceased? We'll have to keep an eye out to see if this ever shows up again.
This does lead him to Pain's lair, and after more invisibility (and intangibility!!), Kid at last confronts Pain! But Pain stabs him!!
Again, we're in mysterious unexplained powers territory. Kid is supposedly alive, but just shrugs off a knife in the chest!
Rapid healing? Can't be killed because his time isn't up (75 years, remember?) ? Dull knife?!?
And although Kid Eternity isn't supposed to have any powers of his own...
...he takes a full swing of a mace to the head without flinching?!? It breaks against him? Is this invulnerability? Super-strength?
I mean, really, if Kid can do all of this, why would he even need to summon dead heroes?!?
Any, finally...
...more than 2/3 of the way through his second story, in the 26th page of his comics career, Kid Eternity at long last uses the power he's famous for!
So...wait. Dr. Pain knows what Achilles looked like? Doesn't look anything like Brad Pitt to me...
We should note that, at this early phase, Kid is still physically becoming the heroes, not just summoning them.
And Kid is definitely just showing off here--Achilles does literally nothing except stand there.
The next guy is more useful:
Woo hoo!! Arrows and everything.
Now, things are going to get really weird.
From Mr. Keeper's description in the first story, Kid can call upon "all the great men of the past," which he later clarifies as "you shall be able to call upon any person in mythology or history."
Well, that's pretty broad. And the "mythology" allows for calling persons whose historical provenance may not exactly be 100% airtight, like Robin Hood.
But, as Dr. Pain tries to escape, Kid really may be bending the rules by summoning...
Blackhawk?!?!
BLACKHAWK????
OK, let's see if we can dope this out.
Is Kid summoning an actual living person (from his perspective)? I think not. There was little "crossover" in Quality titles, little indication of a "shared universe." Most of the came later, via DC absorption/retcons. Also note that Kid specifies "the hero of Military Comics" and not, say "famous real-life Nazi fighter Blackhawk." The implication, then, is that in Kid's world, Blackhawk exists only in comic books. Note: some more recent versions of Dial H For Hero have posited that the Dial "borrowed" actual powers/identities from actual heroes of other dimensions. Could that be the case with Kid Eternity's shtick? Did people somewhere die because Kid took Blackhawk away from some battle?!?
Still, this opens a whole kettle of fish, doesn't it? Copyright concerns aside, why couldn't Kid just summon Superman every time out? Or Luke Skywalker? Or Harry Potter? Summoning a contemporary fictional character strains the definition of "mythology," and breaks the hell out of "heroes of the past."
Or is worrying about the thin line between "mythology" and "modern day fiction" just being too anal, in a way that would cause Golden Age creators to laugh at us?
Anyway, back to comic book fighting...
YOW!! Great product placement, Quality!!
This would not be the last time that Kid summons another Quality hero to aid him...
So, after finally getting to use his much-ballyhooed powers, the roster after 2 stories looks like this:
Achilles 1
Blackhawk 1
Nobody 1
Robin Hood 1
What's next? New powers, the egregious misuse of them, new recurring villains...and don't piss off Mr. Keeper!!
From Hit Comics #26 (1943)
Fortunately, the splash panel has a convenient recap to reassure the gentle Golden Age reader that they haven't stumbled upon an issue of The Punisher by mistake:
Anyway, Doctor Pain wants to be a Dr. Frankenstein, but he discovers that Mary Shelley was totally wrong: you can't use parts from dead people! No, to create your own homunculus, you need to take parts from living people!!
Which results in scenes like this:
Anyway, one again it takes Kid and Keeper an...eternity...to get involved in the case. They don't even show up until the end of page 6. A few more pages, and we finally get around to the Kid showing off the power we already knew about...
But we get another new power unveiled here:
This does lead him to Pain's lair, and after more invisibility (and intangibility!!), Kid at last confronts Pain! But Pain stabs him!!
And although Kid Eternity isn't supposed to have any powers of his own...
I mean, really, if Kid can do all of this, why would he even need to summon dead heroes?!?
Any, finally...
We should note that, at this early phase, Kid is still physically becoming the heroes, not just summoning them.
And Kid is definitely just showing off here--Achilles does literally nothing except stand there.
The next guy is more useful:
Now, things are going to get really weird.
From Mr. Keeper's description in the first story, Kid can call upon "all the great men of the past," which he later clarifies as "you shall be able to call upon any person in mythology or history."
Well, that's pretty broad. And the "mythology" allows for calling persons whose historical provenance may not exactly be 100% airtight, like Robin Hood.
But, as Dr. Pain tries to escape, Kid really may be bending the rules by summoning...
BLACKHAWK????
OK, let's see if we can dope this out.
Is Kid summoning an actual living person (from his perspective)? I think not. There was little "crossover" in Quality titles, little indication of a "shared universe." Most of the came later, via DC absorption/retcons. Also note that Kid specifies "the hero of Military Comics" and not, say "famous real-life Nazi fighter Blackhawk." The implication, then, is that in Kid's world, Blackhawk exists only in comic books. Note: some more recent versions of Dial H For Hero have posited that the Dial "borrowed" actual powers/identities from actual heroes of other dimensions. Could that be the case with Kid Eternity's shtick? Did people somewhere die because Kid took Blackhawk away from some battle?!?
Still, this opens a whole kettle of fish, doesn't it? Copyright concerns aside, why couldn't Kid just summon Superman every time out? Or Luke Skywalker? Or Harry Potter? Summoning a contemporary fictional character strains the definition of "mythology," and breaks the hell out of "heroes of the past."
Or is worrying about the thin line between "mythology" and "modern day fiction" just being too anal, in a way that would cause Golden Age creators to laugh at us?
Anyway, back to comic book fighting...
So, after finally getting to use his much-ballyhooed powers, the roster after 2 stories looks like this:
Achilles 1
Blackhawk 1
Nobody 1
Robin Hood 1
What's next? New powers, the egregious misuse of them, new recurring villains...and don't piss off Mr. Keeper!!
From Hit Comics #26 (1943)
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