The Blackhawks

First Era: Quality Comics / Earth-X

1: Quality Comics 2: DC Silver Age 3: 1970s 4: 1980s 5: Post-Crisis 6: New 52

Created by Will Eisner and Chuck Cuidera

FIRST APPEARANCE: Military Comics #1 (Aug. 1940)

On this page: Lady Blackhawks • The Planes • Femmes Fatales • Membership Roster

In the post-war era, Blackhawk himself got Americanized. Originally his family was from Poland, but it was changed so that the family who were killed were in Poland as volunteers. The change first took hold in a text story of the Blackhawks' origins in Blackhawk #50 (March 1952), then Blackhawk's siblings were illustrated in the flashback above, in Blackhawk #71 (Dec. 1953); art by Dick Dillin & Chuck Cuidera.

Blackhawk, along with G.I. Combat, were the most successful properties to be transferred from Quality Comics to DC Comics in late 1956. In terms of continuity and what was established by DC Comics, these wartime adventures could be considered to have occurred on "Earth-X" (home of Quality heroes) or "Earth-Two" (home of DC's own Golden Age heroes). The multiple Earths concept was not introduced until 1961's The Flash #123. In the 1976 Blackhawk revival, it was suggested that the Golden Age Blackhawks' adventures were fictional. This was most likely for practical reasons—the more recent the Blackhawks' debut, the younger they were. If the team had formed in the 1950s (aka the DC era), it was much more plausible that they'd still be youthful. Roy Thomas treated the Blackhawks as denizens of Earth-Two in All-Star Squadron, but this was not until 1985, just before the Crisis on Infinite Earths changed everything anyway.