In the past the Blackhawks were a team of special adventurer soldiers.  They would fly in and fight the bad guys.  The concept has been updated for modern days.  It seems like they are aiming more for the action and adventure crowd.

I found the opening action scene a bit confusing.  Since I’m not familiar with the characters, it didn’t help that they were referring to each by name.  Is she talking to the guy in the plane? or the guy on the ground? or some guy on the radio?  It took too much effort to sort out for an action comic.  I just want them to punch and shoot bad guys, not to think about dialogue references.

I know this an action comic set in the super hero universe, but because they are using modern type weapons, it does ground it in the normal universe.  So some scenes just felt unreal and comically wrong.  How did she toss the guy off the plane so he could land on a pile of suitcases?  Unless that plane was moving 10 miles an hour, that would be impossible and probably kill him.  And she was able to ‘soften up’ the water by shooting it before she hit it?  I’m no physics major, but that does not seem possible.

The art however is very nice for the most part.  Faces and objects looks very solid and there is some good story telling moments.

C-   — Don

When this title was first announced, I was hoping for a World War II era book about the original Blackhawks, or at least a modern-day version that was more “Blackhawk” than G.I. Joe. Instead, we got the latter of the latter, and while it’s not bad, it’s one of the books I’ve enjoyed the least so far.

I’m in total agreement about the art – it’s serviceable, but some sequences are more confusing than they should have been, and this could have been fixed in either the art or the dialogue stage.

And yes, shooting at water before hitting it will not stop you from splattering if you fall from high enough – at best, it would be like diving into a pool of already-broken glass instead of letting it break when you hit it and either way you’re on your way to being a new disfigured Batman villain if you somehow survive. I can accept that all of these physics-defying powers exist, but if a comic is going to bring in real-world physics terms, they should be less insipid than this. Static Shock did a much better job of melding the impossible with textbook physics terms and not looking stupid in the process.

Reading Blackhawks is like reading a mediocre issue of G.I. Joe. Now, I really liked most of the G.I. Joe comics that came out, even the mediocre ones, but I’d rather see a first rate Blackhawk book instead.

C- —- Ed