Number 2467: Blackhawk, Dr Omega and “the world as we know it is doomed!”

The Blackhawks are flying around, but do they have a destination in mind? We don’t know. While in the air they intercept a powerful signal and land on an island with only two inhabitants. Human inhabitants, that is, Dr Omega and Moth.

Dr Omega dresses like Robin Hood. Moth is a beautiful woman, thanks to artist Reed Crandall. Her place with Dr Omega is somewhat mysterious. Dr Omega calls Moth his “beloved companion,” yet doesn’t seem affected by her fate (warning: that is a spoiler).

Then there are robots with light bulbs for noses.

Something about Dr Omega struck me, something he said: “The outside world will destroy itself...our civilization and the men who make it will disappear in the next hundred years.” He predicts “wars, plagues and famines” and further states, “the world as we know it is doomed!” Blackhawk is more optimistic but that is something of a postwar optimism; some naïve projection of the future. I am okay with optimism of others, but I can be a downer.  On bad days I believe more in “gloom, doom and rumors of boom!” as said in an old Pogo comic strip.

Oh, also there is an ugly racist panel on page 7 with Chop-Chop. Be aware. 

From Blackhawk #19 (1948):

Number 2429: “Let me in!” says Blackhawk

The Blackhawks are off to another country which will surely fall to the oppressive leader, Boorn, unless they intercede. Blackhawks are lucky. They can land their planes in any country (apparently). They aren’t shot at or shot down.

Boorn is a crafty wannabe dictator. He looks for the weak leak in the Blackhawk organization, and comes up with the Frenchman, André, who has an eye for beauty. They send Doria, high in the organization, to waylay André, which she does by leaning against a wall, posing as a prostitute (page 4). She tells André she is a secrent [sic] agent. Of course, the rest of the Blackhawks are too smart for that. They see the plot and go after Boorn. Blackhawk doesn’t just knock on Boorn’s door, he knocks the door down.

Reed Crandall did the artwork, and drew the door crashing scene twice, in the story and on the cover. Blackhawk must’ve gone for some liniment for his shoulder after the blow he used for that door.

The story comes from Quality Comics’ Blackhawk #23 (1949).

Number 2338: Steel Colossus

Looking through a copy of Blackhawk #91 (1955), an early Comics Code-approved issue, I counted three stories involving the Blackhawks and communists. There is only one other story in the issue, and that is of the racist character, Chop-Chop.

I am showing this story because I like mechanical giants like the Steel Colossus. What a delight to read on the Grand Comics Database that Batman co-creator and scriptor, Bill Finger, is the author. I probably got my love for those types of huge villainous devices in the fifties from reading Batman.

Artists are the regulars, Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera.

Number 2233: Blackhawks caught in communist time trap

The communists have finally got Blackhawk where they want him. They have caught him and his Blackhawks gang and taken them into the future, to 2100, a time when the commies have conquered the world. They supposedly took over the United States in 1965. The world in which they have taken the Blackhawks looks exactly like those magazine articles common in the 1940s and '50s, previews of “the world of the future,” replete with flying cars.The commies also wear abbreviated costumes, as if they stepped out of Planet Comics.

Blackhawk leads his tiny gang, still a potent force for Democracy, against the  sinister plot of world Communism.

The Grand Comics Database doesn’t know who wrote the story, but guesses Bill Ward penciled and inked the artwork for all three stories of the issue.

From Blackhawk #59 (1952):

Number 2197: Blackhawk’s asteroid war

In a column from the April 27, 2018 issue of the news magazine, The Week, we read this chilling paragraph: “. . . an asteroid nearly four times the size of one that leveled 500,000 acres of Siberian forest in 1908 missed Earth by only 119,500 miles last weekend. Startled astronomers had detected it less than a day earlier.”

Yikes!

I looked at the cover of Blackhawk #59 (1952) and it brought to mind fears of a huge object hitting our planet and making us like dinosaurs...extinct. I was able to shake it off. After all, a miss is a miss. In this tale it isn’t the fear that an asteroid is about to hit Earth that is the problem, it is that an “aggressor nation,” (and we all know who that is, don’t we?) has set up a base on said asteroid, ready to rain down death on America. America has only one rocket ship ready to fly to Asteroid X, and it can accommodate seven, just the number of Blackhawks! What luck!

Except for the out-of-this-world environment, it is a battle story. I don’t know who wrote “Beachhead on Asteroid X.” The Grand Comics Database gives Bill Ward ? (question mark means it is a guess) credit for the artwork.

I am torn by opposite opinions: even though I am for the exploration of space, I also tend to agree with Blackhawk’s opinion in the final panel.