Number 1539: Blackhawk and the hatchets of Hongo

This is day two of our Week of Quality, today featuring Quality’s long-running and successful leatherboys, Blackhawk and his gang.

Sinister “orientals” who use hatchets for murder (shades of the lurid tales of Tong wars and hatchet killers from tabloids and pulps of the first half of the twentieth century!), and who extort honest silk dealers are the villains. But unlike the grotesque stereotype of Chop-Chop, the comedy relief of the Blackhawk team, these Asians are at least presented as looking human. Or at least more human than Chop-Chop (or the stereotyped Connie or Big Stoop from Terry and the Pirates.) The Chop-Chop caricature was later toned down, but when this story was published in Blackhawk #15 (1946), he was a clownish and freakish little fat man speaking pidgin English. My apologies to those among you who may be offended.

The Grand Comics Database credits Harry Harrison for the pencils, but doesn’t make a guess as to an inker.

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Number 1521: Big wheels

Fans of both Airboy Comics and Blackhawk might have been surprised to see two similar contraptions on the covers of each, close together. Blackhawk was out first, cover-dated September 1952, while Airboy Comics followed shortly in an issue dated December 1952.

Blackhawk cover by Reed Crandall

So...is the Airboy wheel a retread? (Yuk, yuk.)

From Airboy Comics Volume 9 Number 11 (1952). Art by Ernest Schroeder.

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Number 1452: The Blackhawk team’s transition

When Everett “Busy” Arnold sold his Quality Comics characters to DC (then called National Comics Publications), how did it work? Comic books were in the doldrums, several companies had gone out of business. There wasn’t really a huge market where Arnold could have his rivals bidding for his successful titles, like Blackhawk. Did Arnold contact DC and offer to sell, or was it the other way around? What do Blackhawks go for, anyway? What was the price? I don’t know, and have never read anything about the business transaction that sent Blackhawk from Quality to DC. (Quality sold other titles and characters, but for this post I’m only concerned with Blackhawk.)

For the readers the transition was seamless. One month they were reading Blackhawk #107 (dated December 1956) under the Quality label, next month they were reading DC’s Blackhawk #108 (January, 1957). There were some cosmetic changes. In my opinion DC’s coloring looks kind of muddy compared to Quality. I’m showing the very last story in Blackhawk #107, and the first story from #108. The art team remained the same, and that must have been a good deal for Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera, who were the Blackhawk artists. In those days comic artists were lucky to pick up work, so they probably jumped at the chance of a steady gig at DC as opposed to scrounging for work in the wasteland that was left after the comic book crash of the mid-fifties.

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Number 1401: Blackhawk and Torchy

These two stories are from the next to last issue of Modern Comics. The title had changed from Military Comics, and it was in issue #1 that Blackhawk was born of World War II. The character and his gang survived the war, and became international troubleshooters and soldiers of fortune. [SPOILER ALERT: The Blackhawks also came up against plots where some fantastic trickery is involved, including this one where a spaceship and creatures from outer space are faked. Stories like these ignore the costs of such deception, which include creating and building, and in this one, the technology involved in making functioning robots with built-in microfilm cameras. Even if such a plot were to work the end result could not be worth what has been put into it. We accept the ridiculous flim-flam because it's a comic book. Just sayin'. END OF SPOILER] The artists are unknown to the Grand Comics Database, but William Woolfolk gets the nod for the script.

I’m also including the Torchy story from the issue. It’s drawn by Gill Fox. Torchy is fooled by an antique word and comedy results. The word, “gaiters,” I didn’t know, and I spend a lot of time with my nose in old books. See, comics can be educational as well as entertaining.

From Modern Comics #101 (1950):

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