...even if they're only as big as an action figure...or a doll!
Created by Will Eisner and Lou Fine in Quality's Feature Comics #27 (1939), Doll Man had a longer career than many other Golden Age characters, continuing in Feature Comics until #139 (1949) and his own book from the first issue in 1941 to #47 in 1953!
During that stretch, he battled Nazis, gangsters, monsters, aliens, ghosts, and finally Russkies, as shown in this never-reprinted story from Quality'sDoll Man #45 (1953), written by Bill Woolfolk, penciled by Chic Stone, and inked by Chuck Cuidera.
...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!
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!)
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!
Another story began on the very next page in the comic!
That's just how things rolled in the Golden Age. Written and illustrated by George Brenner using the "Wayne Reid" house pseudonym, this never-reprinted tale from Quality Comics' Hit Comics #19 (1942) is straightforward about the concept that spies and saboteurs didn't deserve the niceties of the Geneva Convention! And, though they didn't show it, it's implied the stolen scoutcraft was recovered.
