Section: Photos
Terry McCombs posted a photo:
When I was a kid the Blackhawks struck me as a little odd, what with their uniforms and their over the top accents and the like.
Of course when I encountered the characters it was during the 60’s when they where uncomfortably wedged in among all the Silver-Age superheroes, dealing with supervillains, not the wartime of their creation.
Years later I’ve at last found the hidden true secret of the Blackhawks…
they were comedy.
No really, according to Blackhawk co-creator Chuck Cuidera when the call for items for the soon to be published new comic to be called Military Comics came out in 1941 (and back then more strips only lasted from 6 to at most 12 pages to fill out 64 pages) all the responses sent back seemed to be in the goofy humor in the military genre.
The editor felt there had to be something that was serious to lead and be the cover feature, and the non-military Blue Tracer about a civilian in a super fast car, that he had grabbed from being put in one of their more general comics would not do, he wanted military.
So he gave Chuck a copy of one of the humor features that would be in number one, a thing by Jack Cole (Plastic-Man) called Death Patrol about 5 escaped convicts, each an exaggerated stereotype such as a cowboy, old man, oily con-artist, American Indian, etc who join a millionaire to fight Nazi with stolen airplanes, and told him to do something like that…. Only not as a comedy, and so the Blackhawks were born.
I think their being based on such an item had an effect, because let’s face it they were kind of goofy, which fit in well enough with the rest of Military Comics and their later home Modern Comics before they went solo.
Which besides the Blue Tracer, and the short lived “Sniper,” was all goofy comedy, none of which ever made it on the cover, other than as such items as the ones above where Blackhawk seems to be getting ready to give the Elephant in the title a rectal exam, “Madame Butterfly” seems to be giving Blackhawk’s allergies a hard time by dumping pollen out at his feet, and the big Swede of the group needs an amateur operation because of “the Evil of Mung” (beans?)
The lower right hand of the panel is made up of just a few of the items that made up the rest of the magazines that always had Blackhawks and Company on the cover.
They being, Death Patrol in the background, with Ezra the Archie clone, Private Dogtag, Will Bragg, and Torchy the Blonde Bombshell, floating about over them. Left out are the other long running features such as Johnny Doughboy, P.T. Boat (that was the character’s name, not what he served in), Dave of the Navy, Noodles Poodles and others.
otisarchives4 posted a photo:
While processing a collection from a former deputy director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, I came across these two memoranda about dying on the job. I guess this kind of idea hangs around - they're more than 10 years apart. Selected by Kathleen.
otisarchives4 posted a photo:
While processing a collection from a former deputy director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, I came across these two memoranda about dying on the job. I guess this kind of idea hangs around - they're more than 10 years apart. Selected by Kathleen.
otisarchives4 posted a photo:
While processing a collection from a former deputy director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, I came across these two memoranda about dying on the job. I guess this kind of idea hangs around - they're more than 10 years apart. Selected by Kathleen.
