Showing posts with label Military Comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Military Comics. Show all posts

Monday, May 4, 2026

Nazi-Punchers BLACKHAWK "Coward Dies Twice"

...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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Blackhawk

Monday, February 17, 2025

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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Blackhawk