In Blackhawk 138 (July 1959), the elite paramilitary team fought a “seething, unrecognizable mass.” But readers could recognize it.
It was the latest incarnation of the surprise hit film that had premiered on Sept. 12, 1958, earning $4 million on a $110,000 budget. The Blob featured the screen debut of Steve McQueen as a teenager fighting an amorphous extraterrestrial monster.
“Strong performances and ingenious special effects help The Blob transcend the schlock sci-fi and youth delinquency genres from which it originates,” notes the Criterion Collection.
“The picture is infamous for its theme song, written by none other than Burt Bacharach,” noted comics historian Jeff Rovin.
With Sputnik fresh in the public mind, the film tapped into a whimsical attitude toward space monsters prevailing at the time. Sheb Wooley’s novelty song The Purple People Eater had topped the Billboard charts during the summer of 1958.
In The Menace of the Blob, the Blackhawks’ jet engine test accidentally cracks a “weak spot in the fourth dimension,” freeing their own version of the Blob. The roiling black cloud radiates intense cold, heat and lightning, and even generates a tsunami before the Blackhawks hit it with various stimuli from four ways at once, vaporizing it.
Elsewhere in that issue, the Blackhawks encounter The Saturnian Blackhawks, an extraterrestrial team of alleged admirers calling themselves the Black Ravens, and an Invasion of the Rock Creatures in South America.
Blob-inspired beasts weren’t confined to DC Comics. Over at Marvel, Tales of Suspense 11 (Sept. 1960) offered a monstrous amoeba in I Created ... Sporr! The Thing That Could Not Die! Despite its advance billing, it did, in fact, die.
Bruce Kanin:
ReplyDeleteI always enjoy reviewing the evolution of DC's comic books in the 40s-60 especially in that many followed the same path, i.e., solid tales revolving around their time period and nature of the heroes; gradual introduction of fantastic elements like big gorillas, dinosaurs, and, er, blobs; aliens arrive; new costumes; Neal Adams arrives (heh); back to gritty, realistic stories before cancellation.
That applies more or less to BLACKHAWK, SEA DEVILS, CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, DOOM PATROL, and TOMAHAWK — perhaps others.
I replied:
Bruce Kanin Many of them what I call the "uncanny team" titles.
Vincent Mariani:
ReplyDeleteThere was an 1950s horror comic story (possibly EC) that predated The Blob with some kind of ever growing mold entity. It frightened the #### out of me as a small child. The comic was among a pile of comics that an older relative had given to my father for me to read. In this one, very specific case. Wertham was right! 😀
Johnny Williams:
ReplyDeleteDan, as a kid that movie scared the bejesus out of me, but a sort of analogous Japanese version, The H-Man frightened me even Worse. That one gave me nightmares.
Like the Challs, the similarly ‘unpowered’ Blackhawks routinely faced down opponents and menaces that could have given some of the heroes with powers a run for their money. The keys to both teams’ successful records were ‘ingenuity and team work’' Those were traits that we Boomer Kids appreciated, to once again tweak ‘That’ theme.
Paul Zuckerman:
ReplyDeleteI always liked the concept of the Blackhawks and enjoyed their stories when I was younger. In 1964, the book briefly took a turn away from the monsters with the New Look and red and green uniforms replacing the old black and blue leather, more down to earth foes, including turning Zinda into Lady Killer Shark, which was at that time a rather unique idea of having the heroine turned to the darkside for more than one story. They also restored the team to their World War II roots in a series of back-up stories that mostly took place before Chop Chop joined the team. Alas, that did not last, and the SF elements came barging back in, and the ZInda subplot kind of petered out. The new look did give Chop his own plane-finally!. One can trace the evolution of that character as reflecting a slow but gradual acceptance of Asian characters as full-fledged people in their own right.
As I got older and I read those older monster and alien issues, I now realize how far Blackhawk had strayed from his original roots. My friend's brother had collected Blackhawk in the early 50s and in the mid 60s, my friend sold me an issue or two for a buck each. What a revelation! The team were true cold war warriors but it felt so much more organic to the character as freedom fighters. Every issue seemed to have another eastern European country with a strange name with a threatened Communist takeover and every issue the Blackhawks would thwart the Reds. DC quickly ejected those storylines from the book when it acquired the strip from Quality but it must have still been strong enough to maintain a monthly publication status well into the mid 60s--unheard of for any non-anthology title at DC.
The super-hero phase proved to be the last straw it seems. Despite the JLA's brief guest starring appearance, the book seemed to stumble along its merry way. In the last two issues of the original series, new editor Dick Giordano restored the black and blue uniforms. Artist Pat Boyette's work seemed primitive compared to other art at DC, but it gave a rawness to the restored concept, and the storyline harkened back to the original origin tale of the team, which had been battered and altered in recent years. But the book wasn't given a chance and it was gone after two years.
The team never seemed to work in the modern era after that. Steve Englehart brought them back in their original uniforms for a one-off appearance in the JLA in a story that takes place just before the JLA's first actual team-up, but the modern day team that appeared in the 1970s was a group of mercenaries that did not appreciate the nature of the team. Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle in a brilliant series restored them to the Golden Age WW II roots while giving them a modern sensibility but after that, Howard Chaykin totally went off the rails with his post-war series. This summarizes that story: "Blackhawk, aka Jonas Prohaska a polish war hero, who has been granted honorary citizenship in the United States is disgraced when the U.S. Senate investigates his former communist connections. His citizenship is revoked, so he retreats to London where he proceeds to lose two weeks getting drunk. When he regains his senses, Chuck and Chop Chop brief him. Chuck, now working for the O.S.S., has gotten backing from a joint British and Soviet operation."
Sad. However, they did make good use of Lady Blackhawk in recent years, though with no resemblance to her former self!
Bob Bailey:
ReplyDeleteThis was one of the first Blackhawks I saw. It was coverless and it had been backfolded so instead of the The Blob story being first it had the Rock Men story was first. I loved it. I paid 5 cents for it at the Maysville Elementary Halloween Fall Festival.