Alternate World Comics

Blackhawk from Military Comics.

From the late 30’s to the early 60’s the Post Office insisted that all comic books have at least two pages of just plain text or they couldn’t ship comics via third class mail and without that the price would have gone up to something like 50 cents, and who would pay that much for a funny book?

Nobody read these pages, but there they were in comic after comic, just why the Post Office cared is beyond me. Before they found the need to start dodging bankruptcy it seems they felt the need to stick their noses in a lot of places there really should have been seen as none of their business.

I vaguely recall reading that after the two pages of text thing didn’t make the comics go away they came up with another rule even sillier the comics had to follow in the mid-40s saying that you couldn’t have a comic with only stories about a single character, so that Superman, Batman or Captain America Comics had to have at least 8 pages that were not about Supes, Bats or Cap.

Mind you I read this a long time ago and it sounds more than a bit ridiculous, so I can’t confirm that it’s really real or point to a reference. However all the single character comics did start doing just that thing in the mid 40’s, though by time most had enough secondary characters that they could do things like The Adventures of Alfred Pennyworth that they had in Batman, or the solo Lois Lane stories (not to be confused with the comic in the 60s, these were different and nether have ever been reprinted) they published at that time. In Captain America Comics they had stories about soldiers then fighting WWII.

Clean cover for First Wave by Rags Morales 

Blackhawk takes on The Bat, a blind villain who has been given bat senses in Modern Comics # 70, 1949.

Pencils:Reed Crandall

Inks: Chuck Cuidera 

From Military Comics # 8 in 1940, it seems someone set the Blackhawks song to music.

For the record these are the comic book Blackhawks, not the sports team Blackhawks.

Favorite Comic Book Clichés: Alien Me! on Flickr.

Glenn Beck is NOT going to be pleased

Fly Lady Blackhawk…. and watch where you’re looking fella!