BlackHawk

“Blackhawks” #8 could be considered the most merciful thing DC has done for this title. Due to suffering a few creative misfires with the relaunch, “Blackhawks” struggled to find its footing and found itself fighting an uphill battle to capture or re-capture readers. The high concept of a G.I. Joe-type attack squad in the DC Universe certainly had wings (sorry, had to be done), but “Blackhawks” was lost amongst the fifty-one other titles and the lack of consistency on art from the first issue really hamstrung the book. That said, the eight issues essentially served as a miniseries for the Blackhawks, reintroducing the name and crossing it with the concept of an international peacekeeping force. Mike Costa writes a cast of eight characters that have little variation in personality, but that could easily have been truncated as storylines were trimmed. Kunoichi is the one character that has the most spotlight in this issue, but even the development and transformation poured into her do

This title started off with a bang, but has been pretty silent since. There have been little bits of excitement, sure, but there are bits of excitement in a trip to the grocery store, too. The excitement in this book has been centered around one of the Blackhawks — Kunoichi — being infected by nanocites (little viral bots designed to supplant the “human” in human beings) in a maneuver from what is becoming the nemesis of the Blackhawks, Mother Machine. Mike Costa is deliberately building the Blackhawks world up in this series, and just as it was getting to be time where I was standing up to walk away from the slower-than-slow burn, things start exploding. Literally. Mother Machine’s lackey, Titus, makes a siege on the Eyrie, with thunderous results. Costa keeps the cast in this issue tight: Lincoln, Lady Blackhawk, Kunoichi, Irish, Canada, Wildman, and various red-shirt equivalents. This helps the issue feel balanced and thorough, without being overwhelming or slow. It also helps

I was surprised to see “Blackhawks” among the collection of solicitations for the DC relaunch. My experience with Blackhawk has been mostly shaded by Howard Chaykin’s 1980s miniseries and the appearances of Lady Blackhawk in “Birds of Prey.” There were occasional mentions of Blackhawks in other comics, including during the “Our Worlds at War” event spearheaded by Jeph Loeb back in 2001. My dad and I have had conversations about Blackhawk, as that is a comic he fondly remembers from his childhood. This just seemed like a perfect confluence of events to me as the relaunch offered up an opportunity to meet the Blackhawks and check out something that I’d been personally clamoring for from DC Comics. After all, they had done such a great job giving “Jonah Hex” a chance to find a market, shouldn’t “Blackhawk” get the same chance? This comic is “G.I. Joe” meets “Sgt. Rock” plus “Checkmate,” with a whole mess of Blackhawk stickers slapped on everything. There are a number of characters intr