Number 826

Babehawk

Thirty years ago a bookstore coworker saw me grading some Golden Age Blackhawk comics. "Those guys," he said, "look like they'd fit into the leather bar scene in San Francisco." My coworker was gay. I'd never thought of the Blackhawks that way, but who knows? Maybe they needed Lady Blackhawk, Zinda Blake, to make them look a little less, well, involved with one another.

What am I saying? The Blackhawks, like all DC super heroes of the era, are totally sexless. Well, maybe not André, who has hot French blood running in his veins, but the rest of the Blackhawks, dressed like Nazis or leather lads, as my coworker opined, didn't live up to their sexy image.

Lady Blackhawk, who is still a character in the DC Universe, dressed pretty hot for 1961 when these stories were published. Hat, leather tunic with a mini-skirt and high boots. My kinda lady. "Lady Blackhawk's Deadly Romance" is from Blackhawk #163, and "The Creatures That Controlled the Blackhawks" is from #166. Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera did the artwork. The Grand Comics Database credits Dick Dillin and Sheldon Moldoff for the cover of #166.

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I can tell you exactly what I was doing on Thursday, June 4, 1961. When the local pharmacy opened at 10:00 a.m. my brother and I entered and waited for Gus the pharmacist to rack the latest comic books on the spinner so we could each get a copy of the Secret Origins giant, shown in this ad from Blackhawk #163. As the ad says, "you'll treasure it the rest of your life." I haven't lived my whole life yet, but yeah, I still have my copy. June 4, 2010 was 49 years since I bought it, and while I have a few critiques of it as a real "secret origins" issue I still like it.

The next two Thursdays Gus saw Rob and me again, waiting on June 22 for the Superman Annual #3, and then the most eagerly awaited on June 29, the first Batman Annual. I sold or traded the Superman Annual in one of my periodic collection purges, but held on to the Batman Annual, and yes, I treasure that one, also.

Guest Post: More Jack Schiff "Recycling"

Here's an solid post from commenter Jim building on some themes we have discussed here in the past:

In an interesting post (December 16, 2009), Pat pointed out how several Silver Age Superman stories appear to have been deliberately "synchronized" with Batman stories published around the same time, and he invited readers to send in other examples. His post inspired me to look more closely at something I'd noticed a few years ago, but hadn't bothered to investigate further. Here's what I found.

Submitted for your consideration: the cover of Blackhawk #151, dated August 1960 and edited by Jack Schiff.

Here we see Lady Blackhawk, with super-powers, "flying through the air -- and smashing [a] boulder" (as Blackhawk rather superfluously points out to the reader).

Now let's move ahead a few months and look at the cover of another comic edited by Jack Schiff -- Tales of the Unexpected #56 (December 1960).


I don't need to belabor the similarities between the two covers.

Now what might have given Schiff the idea of running two covers featuring female supporting characters -- pretty blondes in short skirts -- demonstrating super-powers to the consternation of their male counterparts?

For an answer, let's go back a year or so and take a look at the iconic cover of Action #252 (May 1959) -- the issue that introduced Supergirl:


It was obviously important for Silver Age editors to come up with eye-catching covers. There were a lot of comic books being published, and they were competing for the limited pocket change of their (mostly) juvenile readers. I'm sure Julius Schwartz wasn't the only editor who assumed that if a particular issue sold well, it was on account of the cover.

I'm guessing that Action #252 sold well -- at least well enough to justify keeping Supergirl as a regular "second feature." And I'm speculating that its strong sales inspired Schiff to put super-powered blondes on the covers of two of his titles at the earliest opportunity.

At this point, I began wondering about another book edited by Schiff -- Challengers of the Unknown. June Robbins was an "honorary Challenger" who regularly joined Ace, Rocky, Red, and Prof on their adventures. I didn't recall any story in which June gained super-powers, but I thumbed through my longbox and came up with this issue -- dated August/September 1960:


June's a brunette, but as a "lady giant" she has superhuman strength -- and she's using it to save her male partners from danger. (And we have another one of those charmingly redundant word-balloons that were such a common feature of Silver Age covers.)

As Pat said: "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and the third time it's a trend." I believe I spotted a trend -- and an example of the working of a comic editor's mind during the Silver Age.

Comments from Pat: This ties in with several of my past posts. I talked about Jack Schiff's habit of recycling covers and story elements between Blackhawk and Batman on two separate occasions. And I also talked about the sudden influx of women into the comic book superhero world of the late 1950s here.

Great job, Jim!

Why All the Women?

This came up as part of a discussion over at the Fortress Keeper's. Noting the strong female character of June Walker (from Challengers of the Unknown) the FK writes:

June Walker, the unofficial fifth Challenger, occupied a rather unique and definitely unheralded space in comics history – a strong female character that solved problems with her wits. Heck, she didn’t even wear a revealing outfit when springing into action!

And let’s face it, fan people, how many times have we seen a comic where the male leads marvel over a heroine’s prowess while she poses in a manner that states, rather powerfully, that she not only deserves but expects their respect!

(An aside: Actually June Robbins is the usual name of the character; the "Walker" used in this issue is a mistake by the writer.)

What is interesting is that June was hardly alone; there were a whole slew of female characters popping up at DC. Let's put together a timeline:

1956: Batwoman makes her first appearance in Detective #233 (July).
1957: June Robbins makes her first appearance with the Challengers of the Unknown in Showcase #7 (March-April) Lois Lane makes her solo debut in Showcase #9 (July-August) Queen Arrow makes her only appearance in Adventure #241 (October).
1958: Lois Lane gets her own title (March). Supergirl tryout in Superman #123 (August).
1959: First Lady Blackhawk appearance in Blackhawk #133 (February). Supergirl (Kara) launched in Action Comics #252 (May). First Mademoiselle Marie in Star Spangled War Stories #84 (August). First Aquagirl (Lisa Morel) appearance in Adventure #266 (November).
1960: First Miss Arrowette (Bonnie King) in World's Finest #113 (November).
1961: Batgirl (Betty Kane) debuts in Batman #139 (April).

Usually when something like this happens suddenly, I can point to overall changes in society that were driving the comics. For example, we see covers like this one and it's not hard to understand the cultural context:



Long-haired demonstrators carrying signs were not exactly a novelty in 1969. BTW, the trio attacking the Flash were aliens disguised to look like hippies.

But I have to admit that I'm not aware of an strong social movement of women that could account for their sudden emergence as independent characters in the DC universe in the late 1950s. Remember, beyond these examples you have the DC girlfriends of the Silver Age (all introduced in the same general era) who were also non-traditional females. Iris West was a reporter, Carol Ferris ran an aircraft manufacturing company, Jean Loring was an attorney and Shiera Hall was a policewoman/museum curator.

Why was this happening back then? It's not as if comics are often ahead of their time; in fact they're generally a lagging cultural indicator. Was DC simply trying to market more to girls while maintaining their core readership of boys? Was there a sense that the girls of the baby boom generation were going to be much more independent and achieve more in the outside world than their mothers?

It's not as if this continued. The first Aquagirl only had that one appearance; Julius Schwartz banished Batwoman and Batgirl when he launched the New Look Batman and Miss Arrowette disappeared along with Green Arrow. Lady Blackhawk did become a semi-regular in the Blackhawk series. Supergirl became the backup feature in Action but did not get her own mag until 1969.

I'm interested in your answers; feel free to blog it (I'll link in a followup post) or post some thoughts in the comments.