Issue #1

March 1989

All in Color for a Crime: Set in 1947, the story opens with Natalie Reed, Lady Blackhawk, writing Blackhawk scripts for the comics to earn a meager living. The scripts are rewritten by the publisher to eliminate Blackhawk's Communist connections. Of course, they end up with the pre-Chaykin Blackhawk comic book. Burchett even does a fair job of imitating Reed Crandall's style for the "comic book" illustrations. The "real" Blackhawks see the comic books and are unhappy with the way they are portrayed. Meanwhile, the real story unfolds with somebody setting a McCarthy-like Congressman up for blackmail.

The "comic book" subplot is a clever way of explaining the original Blackhawk series in the context of this revisionist continuity, but I thought the tone was basically disrespectful. I doubt that's what Pasko intended, since in other places his comments suggest a genuine fondness for the original Blackhawks. It's too bad that didn't come across in this story.



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