Nazi-Punchers BLACKHAWK "Coward Dies Twice"

Last Week We Brought You Russkie-Smashing Blackhawk and his team...

...this week we bring you his younger self...when he and his crew were first organized to do some serious Nazi-Punching!

Added bonus: the first appearance of their distinctive aircraft, the Grumman Skyrocket!

Scripted/laid-out by Will Eisner, and penciled/inked by Chuck Cuidera, the second appearance of Blackhawk, from Quality's Military Comics #2 (1941) clears up a number of aspects, including the fact the team isn't operating openly as a part of the Allied forces!

(America hadn't entered the war at this pre-Pearl Harbor point in history,)
Besides the core group, we're introduced to Boris (Ukrainian/Russian) and Zeg (country unknown) along with numerous other unidentified personnel.
Zeg appeared several more times during the Golden Age, but Boris disappeared after this issue, popping up again in the Bronze Age as a one-shot villain seeking vengeance against the Blackhawks!
Trivia: Though this was the only appearance of the split-tail Skyrockets in the Golden Age strip, when the Blackhawks made their debut in the animated Justice League series in "The Savage Time", an episode set in post D-Day Europe, the original version of the aircraft was front and center!
(DC's 1980s revival of the WWII version of Blackhawk restored the split-tailed version to pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity, helping to define which WWII stories were Earth-One and which were Earth-X)!

Director/Animator Dan Riba even constructed a custom maquette of the Skyrocket and sent it to the Korean animation house for reference in animating aerobatics with the distinctive ship properly!

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Russkie-Smashers BLACKHAWK "Nightmare Cruise"

We're Winding Up a Month of Russkie-Smashing with the Busiest Russkie-Smashers of All...

...awww, you guessed!

Scripted by Robert Bernstein, penciled by Dick Dillin, and inked by Chuck Cuidera, this never-reprinted story from Quality's Blackhawk #105 (1956) showed no matter what environment (air, land, or sea), nothing stops the Dark Knights (yes, they were referred that way long before a certain Caped Crusader) from defending democracy!

Next Week: We're Back to Nazi-Punching...with Blackhawk and his team!
(He was around a loooong time!)

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by William Rotsler

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Russkie-Smashers PLASTIC MAN "Incredible Sleep Weapon"

 Though the Villain of This Tale is Named The Sandman...

...the foul fiend doesn't use sand or knockout gas, as DC's Golden Age hero did!

So, the one-shot Sandman, who used hypnosis, from Quality's Plastic Man #51 (1955) was a sandwoman!

Such a gender-swap has been a moderately-common trope in comics, usually detectible by any or all of the following...
A) villain wearing bulky or shapeless costume.
B) villain using voice-altering mask/filter.
C) villain usually not performing any sort of hand-to-hand combat.
In this story, written by Dick Wood, pencilled by Charles Nicholas, and inked by Chuck Cuidera...it was all three!

Nazi-Punchers MILITARY COMICS "The Coming of...Blackhawk!"

Before He Became the Ultimate Russkie-Smasher...

...he was the premier Nazi-Puncher!
Now witness his first bombshell appearance in Quality's Military Comics #1 (1941)

Written by Will (The Spirit) Eisner & Bob Powell and illustrated by Chuck Cuidera, the initial appearance of Blackhawk and his crew is slightly-different from all later stories!

• No trademark Grumman XF5F Skyrockets...which will premiere in the next issue! The planes we do see are rather...generic!
• The uniforms are different. Blackhawk doesn't have his distinctive hawk-head insignia on his chest, and all the Blackhawk uniforms are almost solid black, rather than blue.
• The Blackhawks themselves are not yet identified, and the only one who speaks has a British accent!

But all-in-all, a well thought-out first story, setting up the basis for the ongoing series!
We'll be rotating Blackhawk's Russkie-Smashing tales with his earlier Nazi-Punching adventures, so watch for them!

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Nazi/Russkie-Smashers BLACKHAWK "Hitler's Daughter"

With Don da Con and Muskrat's pseudo-Nazis seizing power...

...we're modifying our format to alternate between Russkie-Smashers and Nazi Smashers starting with this re-presentation!

World War II had ended only a decade earlier when this tale appeared in Quality's Blackhawk #97 (1958), and, if anybody did the math, Hitla (who appears to be in her mid-20s) would've 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.
Adolf's'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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