Russkie-Smashers BLACKHAWK "Red Timetable of Treachery"

Russkies and other Commies were everywhere in the 1950s...

...including the Near East, as shown in this never-reprinted story from Quality's Blackhawk #107 (1956)...the final, but not truly final, issue!

DC didn't miss a month when it bought the rights to Blackhawk from Quality Comics, which was closing their business.
Quality's final issue, #107, was published in December, 1956!
DC's premiere issue, #108 rolled off the presses one month later, January, 1957 with material already prepared for publication by Quality as shown HERE!
BTW, Quality also featured Russkies in other Near East countries like Iran...

Check out this Russkie-Smashing tale from Quality's T-Man #3 (1952)!

But, that's not all!

There's also this sanitized-for-your-protection, Comics Code-modified reprint from Quality's T-Man #31 (1956), which waters down all the kool hard-boiled elements from the original tale...and makes the Russkies into generic "Communists"!

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Blackhawk

by William Rotsler

Russkie-Smashers BLACKHAWK "Threat from the Abyss!"

For a bunch of aviators...

...Blackhawk and his team spend a lot of time underwater, as this adventure from their first DC issue demonstrates!

In fact, all three of the stories in this issue, DC's Blackhawk #108 (1957), feature aquatic, not aerial, action!

DC didn't miss a month when it bought the rights to Blackhawk from Quality Comics, which was closing their business.

Quality's final issue, #107, was published in December, 1956!

DC's premiere issue, #108 rolled off the presses one month later, January, 1957!

Quality had several completed and almost-completed stories ready to go, and DC used them in this issue to meet the already-established deadline with the printer!
Trivia: those "inventory" tales were the last ones featuring the Blackhawks singing triumphantly at the end of the story!
DC dropped that, along with almost all Communist-clobbering plotlines until the final issue of the original run, as we showed HERE, HERE, and HERE!

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Blackhawk

by William Rotsler

Russkie-Smashers BLACKHAWK "Hitler's Daughter"

You read the title and muttered "What the f@#c does this have to do with Russkies???

Well, it does have a lot to do with Russkies, as you'll see as you read this never-reprinted tale!

World War II had ended only a decade earlier when this tale appeared in Quality's Blackhawk #97 (1956), and, if anybody did the math, Hitla (who appears to be in her mid-20s) would have been born around 1930-32...when Hitler wasn't married, but he was involved with Eva Braun...who was never pregnant!
Curiously, at that time in real life, Adolf's half-sister, Angela Raubal, and her 21 year-old daughter Geli, moved into Hitler's home.
Hitler's relationship towards Geli, while initially kindly, eventually bordered on the obsessive, fueling rumors that they were romantically linked...which Hitler denied.
In late 1931, Geli was found dead at Hitler's flat in Munich.
Verdict: suicide.
Did writer Joe Millard know about this, and could he have used it as a cover story for the imposter daughter in this Dick Dillin-penciled and Chuck Cuidera-inked story?

We'll never know!

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Blackhawk

by William Rotsler

Russkie-Smashers BLACKHAWK "Doom in the Deep"

When you fail at killing just one Blackhawk (as seen last week)...

...try to kill all of them in one fell swoop!

Like last week's tale, this never-reprinted story by writer Joe Millard, penciler Dick Dillin, and inker Chuck Cuidera is from Quality's Blackhawk #96 (1956) features Russkies getting their butts kicked again by the Dark Knights!

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Blackhawk

by William Rotsler

Russkie-Smashers BLACKHAWK "Case of the Missing Blackhawk"

Easily the busiest Russkie-Smashers of the 1950s were the "Dark Knights"...

...who were using that phrase long before The Batman co-opted it in the 1970s!

They would fill entire issues, like the never-reprinted Blackhawk #96 (1956) from Quality with nothing but Commie-crushing comics tales like this!

You didn't think Andre was really dead, did you?

And why was he wearing that leather Blackhawk uniform under a business suit?
Written by Joe Millard, penciled by Dick Dillin, and inked by Chuck Cuidera...as were all the Russkie-smashing stories in this issue...as you'll see over the next two weeks!

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Blackhawk

by William Rotsler

Russkie-Smashers BLACKHAWK "Mission Incredible" Part 3

The "Magnificent 7" fight their final battle...

(BTW: note that this foreign reprint had to modify the cover artwork you saw yesterday since the logo was part of it!)

...as they attempt to rescue a dead scientist's daughter (without using any aircraft) from the Russkies and learn the secret her late father told her!

But the "Dark Knights" are nothing if not resourceful...

After this final Silver Age appearance in DC's Blackhawk #243 (1968), the team wouldn't appear in the DC Multiverse until a one-panel cameo in DC's Justice League of America #107 (1973), where it was revealed the Golden Age (Earth-2) team was killed after traveling with the Freedom Fighters to Earth X, a world where the Nazis won World War II.

Blackhawk was revived for a year in 1976 with the group as mercenaries battling corporate espionage, terrorists, and the occasional elderly Nazi...but no Russkies or Commies.

The Golden Age versions appeared with the Earth-2 Batman in a WWII-set tale in DC's Brave and the Bold #167 (1980).

The final pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths incarnation took place in 1982 when, due to rumored interest from Steven Spielberg in a feature film version, the series was revived, set during World War II...

...along with a tie-in WWII adventure with a time-traveling Superman in DC Comics Presents (1984).
There was also a prose novel by noted sf/fantasy writer William Rotsler (which you can order below from Amazon).
Shortly after this, DC did their first (but certainly not last) major reboot with Crisis on Infinite Earths.
While there have been several revival/revisions of Blackhawk since then, we're not planning on covering them.
But, since there's dozens of Russkie-smashing Golden Age Blackhawk tales, there'll be no shortage of Blackhawk tales in our saga!

Be Here Monday for

a Twice-Told Tale

About Two Heroines

Smashing Both Russkies and Nazis!

It'll Make Sense When You See It!

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Blackhawk

by William Rotsler