Aug. 1962: The Hawks Soar at DC

DC Comics had several hawks on hand, among them Tomahawk, Blackhawk and Hawkman.

The frontier hero Tomahawk and his boy sidekick Dan Hunter fought British troops, Indians and various more outré menaces such as aliens and dinosaurs. Like Batman, he occasionally gained super powers and encountered a female masked champion of justice — Miss Liberty. She was virtually a distaff Captain America.

“In 1960s DC comics, the superheroes were back — and lo and behold, one turned up in Tomahawk,” comics historian Don Markstein observed. “Miss Liberty, who represented that segment of the superhero population which wrapped themselves in the American flag like a cheap politician (as did, for example, the Shield and Fighting American), debuted in #81 (Aug. 1962), and was a frequently seen supporting character thereafter.”

Bess Lynn, a nurse, donned mask, wig, cape, tricolor costume and tri-corner hat to ride out on heroic missions. She armed herself with powder horns, essentially using them as frontier hand grenades.

Unlike many other superheroes, she had a credible reason for keeping her identity secret. Her brother was still in England, and reprisals would be taken against him were she to be exposed. And like the Shadow, she cleverly deployed a network of secret agents, her Women’s Underground.

Meanwhile, in their 21 years of existence, the Blackhawks had developed such a considerable rogue’s gallery that their friend Anthony Marvel found it profitable to impersonate them on stage (Blackhawk 174, July 1962). But when mental issues make Marvel start to act out as the Hoopster, Killer Shark and Gorilla Man, the intrepid aviators have to step in.

June 1962: Tarzan Meets Superman

By 1962, innumerable reflections of Tarzan and Superman had been cast in the funhouse mirror of popular culture. So why not just combine the two concepts?

That’s just what writer Dave Wood and artist Dick Dillin did in The Super Jungle Man, a nine-page cover story in Blackhawk 173 (June 1962).

Several iterations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ape man preceded even the creation of comic books. Pulp magazine readers had their choice of Bomba, Bantan, Jan, Jongor, Tam, Tharn, Kaspa, Ki-Gor, Kioga and Ka-Zar (who’d be reinvented as Marvel’s in-house Tarzan).

And versions of Tarzan were always popping up in comic books, once Superman got the industry off the ground in 1938. Batman and Robin, for example, not only fought Tarzan knockoffs, they — along with such unlikely others as Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane — temporarily became ersatz Tarzans themselves.

“After Tarzan showed up and hit it big in books, comics and movies, there was a wave of Tarzan clones,” noted the ERBzine blog. “They were raised by wolves, by apes, by ape-men, strange beasts of varying sorts, crazy old jungle coots, lost tribes, you name it. Probably the most ridiculous serious one was the Black Condor, a 1940s comic superhero who was raised by, you guessed it, condors, and went on to fly and fight crime in one of the most homoerotic superhero costumes ever created.”

Blackhawk’s super-strong, super-fast Jungle Man — seen outracing a gazelle and beating out a fire with a tree trunk — is Kim Craig, the lost son of a big game hunter. A verbally limited defender of animals, he gained superhuman powers after finding “a great cave with a glowing rock.” When criminals use the same rock to empower themselves, the Blackhawk team overcomes them with subterfuge.

This fun, silly story wouldn’t mark the low point for Tarzan iterations in superhero comics. That would come five years later, in a Showcase feature called B’wana Beast.

But that, as they say, is another story.

December 1960: Distaff Dangers

During the 1950s, DC heroes like Superman, Batman, Tomahawk and Blackhawk all had various cover-gimmick fake marriages, while remaining safely unattainable and aloof.

The antifascist aviator’s turn at the altar came in Blackhawk 155 (Dec. 1960), with Lady Blackhawk — Zinda Blake — as the bride. The other Blackhawks became jealous and broke up the team — and then Zinda awakened. Like Lois Lane, she’d only been having a dream about marrying her dream man.

“Blackhawk, much like Batman, succumbed to an invasion of weird and alien menaces as the issues progressed through the end of the decade,” recalled comics historian Bill Schelly. “A bright spot for teen male readers was the introduction of Lady Blackhawk, perhaps harkening back to a much earlier adventure. Military Comics 20 (July 1943) presented a story about an unnamed woman who attempted to become the first female Blackhawk.”

Two other proto-Lady Blackhawks — Eve Rice and Sheila Hawke, a/k/a “She-Hawke”— appeared during the 1940s and early 1950s.

“In The Lady Blackhawk (Blackhawk 133, Feb. 1959), Zinda Blake trained to qualify for induction to the team, but discovered that the Blackhawk code restricted membership to men,” Schelly said. “Lady Blackhawk returned occasionally as an honorary member, looking fetching in her short skirt and bare legs.”

Like the Blackhawks, the Challengers of the Unknown had their own female quasi-member, June Robbins. In Challengers of the Unknown 17 (Jan. 1961), June came in particularly handy because only she could fight off a genie commanded by the evil magician Malvolio.

Ace Morgan finally figures out that it’s June’s opal ring that the genie fears. He knew that opals were believed to have protective powers and to ward off evil in some ancient cultures.

December 1959: How the Blackhawks Evolved

Part of my fascination with comic book house ads is seeing what was inside the titles I did not get to buy, but only caught intriguing glimpses of in advertisements.

For example, what was the Blackhawk team doing fighting a huge theropod dinosaur on the cover of Blackhawk 143 (Dec. 1959), and how would they manage it? They didn’t have superpowers, after all (except every now and then).

The answer to the dilemma in The Time-Monsters involved a steam shovel and a giant spool of telephone cable, as it turned out.

In the issue’s other two stories, we learned that Lady Blackhawk had a rival in Queen Penelope of the island Kingdom of Xenovia, and how Olaf and Hendrickson found themselves in a feud.

“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,” recalled Paul Zuckerman. “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.”

Bruce Kanin observed, “I always enjoy reviewing the evolution of DC’s comic books in the ’40s-’60s, 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.”

July 1959: It Came from the Drive-In Movie

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.

December 1958: Those Gaudy Crimefighters

Gorillas, sphinxes, doppelgängers and rainbows — they all sold comic books, according to DC’s thinking.

Color was a particularly important factor in Silver Age comics aimed at children. “(K)ids prefer bright colors as they are easier to discern with their still-developing sight,” wrote Thomas Boyd.  “As they use the colors to make sense of what is what, they find bright colored objects more appealing and stimulating.”

When I first saw the Justice League at age 5, I remember being almost mesmerized by the bright colors of the superheroes’ costumes (and in one case, bare skin) — scarlet, emerald green, jet black, a shiny scaled orange and the good old red, white and blue. On that score alone, The Brave and the Bold 29 was irresistible.

In The Rainbow Blackhawks (Blackhawk 131, Dec. 1958), the bald-pated, lab-coated Mr. Beam uses his “color gun” to control the Blackhawks by affecting their blue costumes. In the ensuing flamboyant battle of wits, the super-team keeps changing their brightly colored costumes in their attempts to capture Mr. Beam.

We also had a rainbow-costumed Superboy (Superboy 15, Sept. 1951) and a rainbow-costumed Batman (Detective Comics 241, March 1957). Batman and Robin also fought a giant rainbow creature (Batman 134, Sept. 1960), and Superboy faced a Rainbow Raider who could seemingly control him (Superboy 84, Oct. 1960). Green Arrow fought the Rainbow Archer (Adventure Comics 246, March 1958), the Vigilante battled the Rainbow Man (Action Comics 156, May 1951) and the Scarlet Speedster fought another Rainbow Raider (The Flash 284, June 1980).

Not to be outshone, Superman projected a “rainbow doom” (Superman 101, Nov. 1955), glowed like a rainbow (Lois Lane 3, July 1959) and acquired a rainbow face (Action Comics 317, Oct. 1964).

The most poignant of the multicolored lot was Superman’s New Power! (Superman 125, Nov. 1958), in which the Man of Tomorrow lost his other powers but gained the ability to project rainbow beams that created a super-powered miniature duplicate of himself.