Are any posters here collectors of the Quality 'hawks? I myself only have a small handful, though I'm particularly glad to have some above-average originals by Crandall and Bill Ward. I've been looking at the GCD covers for Quality BLACKHAWK to see to what extent the depiction of the somewhat objectionable Chop-Chop changes over the years. It looks to me like even up to 1956 the Quality artists still made the Asian Blackhawk a little offensive, though not nearly as fat and dumpy. Then in 1957, shortly before the sale to DC, 'Chops' starts to look pretty decent, much as I think he did in the ongoing DC series. Thoughts? Input?
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The only stuff I have is the DC BLACKHAWK ARCHIVES Vol.1 book. Terrific stuff.
You know what i thought was SPOOKY-- but so far, not one person has agreed with me on? When I saw Reed Crandall's early-40's work, it looked familiar. I mean, AWFULLY familiar. And I realized where I'd seen it "before". JIM STARLIN. Jesus! For decades, I had no idea Starlin was "DOING" early-40's Reed Crandall-- the same way Mike Ploog spent decades "doing" Will Eisner, or painter Mike Hoffman regularly "does" Frank Frazetta. HOW do you "channel" another artist's style like that?
Later Crandall looks nothing like that, by the way...
For some reason, whenever I mention this, I get the online verbal equivale tof blank stares. (NOBODY else can see what is so painfully clear, to me.)
I bought the Blackhawk Archives Volume 1 when it was published, but recently I have started building up a collection of Quality Comics' Blackhawk (much better written than DC's on the whole in my opinion, at least until the 1970s or early 1980s).
So far I have been mainly concentrating on those issues with a preponderance of Reed Crandall art, but at the moment I have: Blackhawk #10; 11; 18; 21; 22; 23; 26 (one Wally Wood story in this issue!); 31; 32; 33; 36; 38; 39; 44; 46; 47; 48; 50; 54; 57; 59; and Modern Comics # 51 & 54.
There is a reasonable chamce of my picking up a few more at a convention this weekend.
My impression is that, in general, DC never really cared that much or put that much effort into books they acquired from other publishers. They were probaby just happy to get rid of competition (as most second-raters usually are).
The best run of BLACKHAWK I ever read was the early-80's "Earth-1" series by Mark Evanier & Dan Spiegle. That made me a fan of Siegle's art for life! Just about everything DC has done since CRISIS has been an INSULT to the characters.