A good part of Blackhawk’s unique appeal had to do with the fanciful, heavy-duty military hardware that his super-team so frequently encountered.
For example, in The Flying Tank Platoon (Blackhawk 106, Nov. 1956), the ace aviators confront armored fighting vehicles with wings in the skies over western Germany.
At the subsequent Wiesbaden military conference, Blackhawk reveals what he has learned: “Gentleman, I have unpleasant news for you! The Reds have achieved three-dimensional weapons! These Red accomplishments foreshadow a new kind of war! Airborne armies … totally unstoppable!
“I told you about the flying tanks. There is nothing to stop the Reds from developing flying artillery, flying personnel carriers, flying anything and everything!”
The Communist flying tank platoon chooses that moment to attack the military base. When they land to confront the military officials there, Blackhawk and his crew are able to grab onto the bottoms of the flying tanks and, in a desperate attempt, successfully disable and commandeer them in flight.
“The Blackhawk team continued to fight Nazis as long as there were any to fight,” noted comics historian Don Markstein. “When there weren’t anymore, they switched to commies and other would-be world conquerors.”
“Most of the war machines the Blackhawks encountered were tools of the Communists,” wrote Mike Kooiman and Jim Amash in The Quality Companion. “No device was too fantastic. It began with the King of Winds, who made fierce tornados. Later the Storm King did similar things with a giant wind generator.
“The Valkyrie employed the Hell Diver, which burrowed out of the ground and took to the air! A Red army used a giant Flying Octopus filled with noxious gas. The most recognizable machine was probably Prof. Dekker’s giant War Wheel.”
The Blackhawks faced such challenges with highly impressive hardware of their own, from their original Grumman F5F Skyrocket prop planes to their needle-nosed Lockheed XF-90 fighter jets. To master other environments, they had their Hawkmarine, their Aerocycles, and their Safari-Mobile, among other vehicles.
Tucked away on the aviation team’s island as a souvenir exhibit, the Flying Tank reappeared in The Raid on Blackhawk Island (Blackhawk 109, Feb. 1957); The Saboteur of Blackhawk Island (Blackhawk 113, June 1957); The Blackhawk Housekeeper (Blackhawk 141, Oct. 1959) and The Blackhawk Alien Chief (Blackhawk 142, Nov. 1959).
“As a kid, I was really a big comics fan,” recalled comics historian Vincent Mariani. “My friends were more casual readers of comics, but they all seemed to like Blackhawk a lot for some reason. This was just a few years before DC took over the title. As a long-running title, it had reflected the ever-changing tides of the business. From WW II fighter pilots to Cold Warriors and science fiction. And then the slow-accelerated-to-rapid decline in the DC years.”
I’m always amused at the way the Blackhawk feature subtly mirrors the Wonder Woman title. Both focus on a sexually segregated band of heroic individuals based on a mysterious hidden island.
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