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 "Mutiny of the Red Sailors"

Can you really, truly, ever trust a Russkie...

...especially when you want to do so because you fervently believe they're trying to do the right thing?

When DC bought the Quality Comics line (including both already-published stories and unpublished material) in 1956, Blackhawk was one of the few titles they continued without interruption.

DC's first issue, (#108, from which this tale is re-presented) was published the month after #107, Quality's last issue!
As a result, much of the first few DC-published issues featured stories already in various stages of production.
This particular tale, by writer Robert Bernstein, penciler Dick Dillin, and inker Chuck Cuidera had been completed before the transfer.
You'll note it's a straight adventure/espionage tale, without sci-fi/fantasy elements.
Once the inventory was exhausted, DC dropped the Communist/Russian plotlines until the very end of the original series...which you'll see next week!

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Blackhawk
by William Rotsler
The only novel based on the comic book!

Before the Ant-Man, there was...the Fly-Man! (Part 3)

When The Fly returned in 1965, he was revamped...

... in an attempt to mimic Marvel Comics.

The Archie Adventure Line was renamed Mighty Comics Group (with a corner box graphic similar to Marvel's), and a new writer-artist team took over the book trying to match Stan Lee's scripting and Jack Kirby's penciling...

Writer "Jerry Ess" was Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, who replaced Robert Bernstein, the initial scripter of the revamped Mighty Comics Group titles.
Artist "Paul Arr's" real name was Paul Reinman, whose one saving grace was that he was incredibly-fast since he became the primary artist for all the Mighty Comics titles* including Fly-Man (which became the anthology Mighty Comics Presents as of #40), Mighty Crusaders, and The Shadow!
Now if you thought this was bad, as soon as the Batman TV series hit in January, 1966, and "BatMania" swept the country, Archie Comics' editors forced Siegel to add exaggerated "camp" dialogue and plotlines to the titles.
Unfortunately, Jerry was no better at writing those elements, then he was at mimicking Stan Lee's style.
By mid-1967, the Mighty Comics Group and Fly-Man were gone from newsstands.
There have been several revivals of the characters since then, but The Fly was never called "Fly-Man" again.

When Belmont Books brought out a paperback reprinting some of the tales in mid-1966, Siegel wrote a new intro and finally received a credit for his scripting under his real name instead of the "Jerry Ess" penname.
BTW, you'll note that Fly-Man is not on the cover!
That's Turan, from the Fly-Man #36 (1966) cover at the top of this post, which makes some sense, since this tale from that issue is the only Fly-Man story in the book!

*Mike Sekowsky ghost-penciled a couple of stories, Joe Giella inked one.

Reading Room: THE SHADOW "Eyes of the Tiger"

The Silver Age Shadow can be found here and here.

The last story from the never-reprinted The Shadow #1 (The Silver Age version).
Script by Robert Bernstein.
Art by John Rosenberger.

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