BLACKHAWK Volume 4

Bad girls (and even several good girls) abound in this new collection, highlighted by superb covers and usually two stories in each issue, all by amazing Reed Crandall. Within three years he'd be a lead artist at EC on their horror books. The team also fights flying jet-pack men, alien invaders in a rare sci-fi story, tin-pot dictators, the gorgeous bad girl Satana. And they switch in these issues from their old prop planes to jets. Bill Ward does several Blackhawk adventures too, as well as Chop Chop backup stories. Collects four 52-page issues complete with text stories and inside front and back cover ads. The fourth volume in this popular ongoing series that has become our best-selling PS Artbooks title. Crandall loved drawing action stories, he cut his teeth on superheroes at Quality during the war. As their best artist, he was assigned their best-selling book, Blackhawk. At this point Blackhawk was appearing not only in this, his own title, but also in Modern (formerly Military) Comics. Only Plastic Man got as much coverage as the Blackhawks in Quality's lineup. Additional artists include the amazing Jack Cole (humorous one pagers), Al Bryant and Paul Gustavson, the original artist/creator of Marvel Mystery's Angel and Quality's Human Bomb. (Alter Ego just devoted a full issue to his work). Here he is in his prime, doing superb work on the Chop Chop back-up feature, although most of the Chop Chop stories are by Bill Ward in his signature Torchy style -- which means there's some fine good-girl art even in the Chop Chop stories.