Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Asians in American Comics MILITARY COMICS Blackhawk "Doomed Battalion!"

We presented the Silver Age origin of the Blackhawks' Chinese member, Chop-Chop HERE...

...but it's not the way he originally-joined the team during the Golden Age of Comics!
This is the amazingly politically-incorrect way he debuted back in 1941...

Quick background info:
Blackhawk was the leader of a multi-national team of aviators known as "Blackhawks" who were "black ops" before there was "black ops!
Debuting in the premiere issue of Quality's Military Comics, they quickly became popular enough to receive their own title (which was one of the company's best-sellers) while continuing as Military's cover feature!
The team members were ex-military from most of the Allied countries, including ones who had been conquered by the Axis...but there was no member from Asia, where Japan was rampaging though various countries, facing limited resistance!
So a Chinese national was introduced, albeit one who was running around Europe...
The team flies off, rescues the nurse and her allies, then returns to Blackhawk Island... 
There was one-more page featuring the Blackhawks' newest member...
Chop-Chop became the group's extremely-stereotypical cook/bottle-washer/mechanic/comedy relief, eventually participating in their adventures, sometimes saving their leather-clad butts!
(If you think this portrayal was insulting and disrespectful, you should see how American comics portrayed Asians, like the Japanese, who weren't our allies!)
He became thinner, lost the buck-teeth, and his English improved, but he wasn't given a uniform and plane of his own until the book was sold to DC by Quality when they ceased publication in the late 1950s.
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