#Janos Prohaska

[atomic-chronoscaph]

The Outer Limits - The Architects of Fear (1963)

[evilhorse]

Blackhawk (Volume 3) #2

[cantsayidont]

March through May 1988. While the Evanier/Spiegle BLACKHAWK revival was prompted by Steven Spielberg's interest in doing a BLACKHAWK feature film as a follow-on to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, this controversial Howard Chaykin miniseries feels a fair bit like RAIDERS: a slick, stylish, rather cynical adventure story about a square-jawed heel and a saucy, two-fisted dame who save the world from fascism when they're not too busy bickering, in a nostalgia-bait setting full of visual allusions to '30s and '40s advertising and propaganda art.

Although Chaykin was certainly familiar with the Blackhawks (and had done covers and a couple of backup stories for the Evanier series), he indulges in some obligatory late '80s revisionism, dismissing or discarding some familiar elements of the feature (for instance, the characters laugh off the possibility of a Blackhawk Island, a staple of the earlier series) and tinkering with some details. Perhaps his most significant move was to reaffirm that Blackhawk was Polish, as shown in the first Blackhawk story in MILITARY COMICS #1 (by Will Eisner and Chuck Cuidera) back in 1941. Later versions of Blackhawk's origin had claimed he was American and had merely been flying for the Polish Air Force at the time of the 1939 Nazi invasion, but Chaykin was having none of that: The Blackhawk of this series is Janos Prohaska (a name borrowed from a veteran Hollywood stuntman who'd worked on STAR TREK and other movies and TV shows), a broad-shouldered, left-leaning (and, this being a Howard Chaykin story, Jewish) schlub from Krakow who spends a lot of the story under fire for "premature antifascism" from a Red-baiting Southern senator who's also a secret Nazi agent.

(Special note needs to be made of the exceptionally creative lettering of Ken Bruzenak, without which this series would be much less than it is, and also the effective color work of Steve Oliff.)

Exactly when this story is supposed to be set is a little vague. One of the pastiche magazine covers suggests that it takes place in June 1941, about the time MILITARY COMICS #1 went on sale, but the story concerns the theft of an American atomic bomb, and the U.S. already seems to be at war, so who knows! Chaykin is not Roy Thomas, who would undoubtedly have sweated such details.

The villain is none of Blackhawk's past opponents, but rather a newly created character, British fascist and disgraced Hollywood star Sir Death Mayhew, a very thinly veiled pastiche of Errol Flynn, obviously informed by Charles Higham's muckraking 1980 bio ERROL FLYNN: THE UNTOLD STORY, which alleged that Flynn was a Nazi spy. Other biographers have challenged Higham's evidence and conclusions (although even the most generous accounts of Flynn's life are pretty seamy), but by the '80s Flynn was long dead, this was after all a comic book, and Mayhew is a pretty effective (and thoroughly risible) villain. Probably the biggest disappointment is that we don't ever actually see Mayhew's earlier encounter with Blackhawk, who he says had previously exposed him as a Nazi spy, and there's never really a clash between the Blackhawks and Mayhew's fascist White Lion squadron (which ends up basically carrying the water for Mayhew's mad plan to give himself "a Viking funeral").

The original BLACKHAWK series eventually introduced a Lady Blackhawk, blond adventuress Zinda Blake, but Chaykin creates his own version: a feisty American-born Communist expat, Natalie (Gurdin) Reed. She's a flight engineer as well as a pilot, although her primary function is to spar with Blackhawk. It's not hard to envision this scene with Harrison Ford as Janos and Karen Allen as Natalie:

One of the biggest complaints levied against this series is that the other Blackhawks get short shrift: They don't show up until well into the story, one of them is killed off-handedly, and they don't have much to do other than be exasperated with their boss.

Nonetheless, this was, believe it or not, the first time in their long history that all the Blackhawks actually got full names, including "Chop Chop" (Weng Chan), who subsequently became a supporting character in the John Ostrander/Graham Nolan HAWKWORLD series in the early '90s.

Your reaction to this series will likely depend on how you feel about the Blackhawks. If you'd never heard of them beyond perhaps glancing past their WHO'S WHO entry, it's a pretty good time — the story has some missed opportunities (including surprisingly little aerial action), and marginalizing the rest of the team is definitely a flaw, but it's entertaining in its slick '80s way, and it's more cohesive than a lot of Chaykin's other work from this period (e.g., AMERICAN FLAGG!, THE SHADOW, BLACK KISS, TIME²). Hardcore Blackhawk fans (and I guess there are still a few) generally hate it, and certainly for purists, the Evanier/Spiegle series is likely to be far more satisfactory. Also, Chaykin's particular schtick is something of an acquired taste, and if you're not a fan, his customary abrasive cynicism may be a bit much. However, you can tell he was having fun, which counts for a lot. He even manages to work in the Blackhawks' "HAWKAAAAA" battle cry at the end, though not their jaunty theme song:

This miniseries, originally released in what DC used to call its "Prestige Format," apparently didn't sell as well as anticipated; for a long time, you could find copies in comic shop bargain bins for a fraction of the cover price, which is how I first read it. However, in 2020, DC finally, miraculously, reprinted the series in trade paperback (as BLACKHAWK: BLOOD & IRON), also tossing in the 1989 SECRET ORIGINS entry (by Marty Pasko, Grant Miehm, and Terry Beatty), which attempts, with fair success, to square Chaykin's version with the original Eisner/Cuidera story, and the now hard-to-find ACTION COMICS WEEKLY Blackhawk serial by Mike Grell, Rick Burchett, and Pablo Marcos, which is set after the war and is basically a straightforward pastiche of the early years of Milt Caniff's STEVE CANYON newspaper strip. I actually find the ACTION COMICS WEEKLY serial significantly more cynical and abrasive than the Chaykin series, although Burchett's art is nice. DC hasn't bothered to reprint the short-lived BLACKHAWK ongoing series of 1989–1990, by Pasko (and later Doug Moench) and Burchett, which is just as well: Also set in the late '40s, it follows on from the ACW serial, but is a pretty much unmitigated disaster, full of puzzling creative choices, including some bizarre (and misogynistic) abuse of Natalie Reed. The art is fine (although the interiors never live up to Burchett's excellent covers), but it can't save the muddy, mean-spirited storyline, which is often confusing and intermittently preposterous in a way that clashes with the intended gritty tone, making it highly missable even for completists.

[oldshowbiz]

Love, Unbearable Style

[nitpickrider]

Clark, I know worrying and sanctifying humanity is in your nature. But come off it. That's the goddamn Blackhawk Squadron. They're superhero royalty so grandfathered into the program that everything their grand kids touch turns to black leather tights.

[papermoonloveslucy]

Lucy’s PLANET OF THE APES

The Simian Citizens of the Lucyverse

During her long career on television, Lucille Ball worked with nearly every species of animal - but none more frequently than simians: monkeys, chimps, apes, gorillas, and even the rare (but fictional) gorboona!  

“The Amateur Hour” (1952) ~ Lucy says she’d babysit a baby gorilla for $5 an hour - but she hasn’t yet met the horrible Hudson twins!  Her words will come back to haunt her in future incarnations of the Lucy character. 

“Lucy Buys Westinghouse” (1958) ~ Desi Arnaz takes a Westinghouse representative on a tour of Desilu Studios (formerly RKO). At the props department Viv and Bill show off the model of Mighty Joe Young from the 1949 RKO film of the same name. 

In this promotional film for Westinghouse executives, however, they refer to it as King Kong, another RKO film about a huge gorilla made by the same creative team. Lucie Arnaz remembers playing with the model as a child when set loose at Desilu Studios to play. 

“Bilko’s Ape Man” (1959) ~ Lucille Ball guest stars in an 8 word cameo on “Sergeant Bilko” aka “The Phil Silvers Show” aka “You’ll Never Get Rich.”  In it, a fitness instructor is placed in Bilko’s platoon. To get rid of him (and to make some money) Bilko tries to get him cast in a Tarzan movie. Bilko tries to fix it so his man wins the Mr. Universe contest. First step: he hires a woman (Lucille Ball) to scream when his man goes on stage. When this fails, he dresses Private Doberman (Maurice Gosman) up in a gorilla suit to fight his ‘Tarzan’. Colonel Hall (Paul Ford) sees the 'gorilla’ and soon has the whole camp hunting for him.

“Lucy and Viv Take Up Chemistry” (1963) ~  At night school chemistry class, Lucy gets carried away trying to invent a youth serum.

LUCY: “Shouldn’t we test it on a monkey first?”  VIV: “If there’s one thing the world doesn’t need, it’s younger monkeys.”

“Lucy and the Monsters” (1965) ~ Lucy and Viv have a dream about monsters after seeing a horror movie. In the dream, the maid of a haunted house is a gorilla named Loretta, played by George Burrows. Burrows played a gorilla in his very first screen credit, Tarzan and His Mate (1934). He donned the gorilla suit 18 more times from 1954 to 1978. His final simian character was on “The Incredible Hulk.”

“Lucy and Art Linkletter” (1966) ~ Lucy is picked from Art Linkletter's studio audience and challenged not to utter a sound for 24 hours to win $200. Linkletter arranges for various shocking events to occur at her apartment to get her to speak, including the attack of a giant gorilla named Hilda. George Burrows returns to play Hilda. 

“Lucy and the Monkey” (1966) ~ Mary Jane warns an over-worked and over-tired Lucy that she could start having hallucinations. Meanwhile, Mr. Mooney gets a visit from his old college friend who has a monkey for a show business partner. Lucy sees the monkey and thinks it is Mr. Mooney!

Janos Prohaska played Max the Monkey. He was an actor, stunt man, and animal imitator who is probably best remembered as the talking cookie-mad bear on “The Andy Williams Show” (1969), although due to his thick Hungarian accent, his voice was dubbed. 

He returned to play animals in three episodes of “Here’s Lucy.” Prohaska died in a plane crash in 1974.

“Lucy Goes to a Hollywood Premiere” (1966) ~ On the red carpet posing as an usher, Lucy meets a variety of clelebrities, including Mimi Van Tyson (Beverly Powers) and Coconuts Mulligan (George Barrows), stars of the movie “Love in the Jungle”.  This is Barrows’ third and final female gorilla on the series. 

Coconuts goes rogue when she sees Lucy’s yellow autograph book and thinks it is a banana! 

“Lucy the Babysitter” (1967) ~ Lucy takes a job as a babysitter not knowing that they are baby chimps!  They are played by The Marquis Chimps.

The rambunctious chimps tire out Lucy with their antics. Lucille Ball was forced to improvise based on the behavior of the chimpanzees. 

The Marquis Chimps began appearing on television in 1955. They appeared in several TV commercials and on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”  The chimps were the stars of the sitcom “The Hathaways” (1961-62) in which a suburban couple kept three performing chimps as their children. The program lasted just one season on ABC. The act's last TV appearance was in 1976.

One of the toys in the chimp’s bedroom is Clancy the Great, a plastic-cast roller skating monkey, not unlike the Marquis Chimps, who also roller skate. Clancy had pose-able arms and a removable cap to accept tips! It was manufactured by Ideal Toys in 1963.

“Viv Visits Lucy” (1967) ~ On the Sunset Strip, Lucy and Viv track down a wayward Danfield boy to a hipster club named The Hairy Ape. 

“Lucy Gets Jack Benny’s Account” (1967) ~ Lucy sets out to convince notorious miser Jack Benny to become a depositor at the bank. But first, they have to build a vault secure enough to satisfy Benny. One of the extreme methods of guarding the vault is Irving the Gorilla (who is managed by Benny). Although the actor inside the gorilla costume goes uncredited, it may be inhabited by George Barrows. 

“Lucy’s Safari” (1968) ~ When a rare ‘Gorboona’ escapes from The Topanga Zoo, the Carters help a big game hunter (Howard Keel) trap him.

A ‘gorboona’ is a rare, nearly extinct, cross between a GORilla and a baBOON. Janos Prohaska returns to play the Gorboona.

“Lucy, the Helpful Mother” (1969) ~ Kim and Craig babysit for an entire pet shop - transporting all the residents to Lucy’s living room - including Irving, a baby chimpanzee. 

Lucy sings a lullaby to the chimp:

“Rock-a-bye Irving Hark to my chant. You’re kinda cute But you’re no Cary Grant.”

“Lucy and Viv Visit Tijuana” (1970) ~  Lucy, Harry and Vivian go sightseeing in Tijuana, but are stopped at the border after agreeing to take back a plush monkey that turns out to be carrying contraband!  

“Lucy Cuts Vincent’s Price” (1970) ~ Lucy visits horror maestro Price to get a painting appraised and he thinks she is auditioning for a part in his new horror film. This monkey corpse is one of the most unusual props in the mansion - if not all of the Lucyverse!

“Lucy and the Raffle” (1971) ~  At the permit bureau, a stone-faced woman at the back of the line (Jody Gilbert) gets snide with Lucy.

LUCY: “Thank you Mrs. Kong. Give my regards to your son, King.”  

King Kong (1933) was a Hollywood film about a giant gorilla that attacked Manhattan.  A sequel titled Son of Kong was released that same year. 

“Lucy in the Jungle” (1971) ~ The Carters swap houses with a couple from the African jungle. The house comes with pets Fido and Rover - not dogs - but baby chimps. 

When Harry sees Fido and Rover, he reminds Lucy and Kim that King Kong started out as a baby, too! Fay Wray, one of the stars of the original film, also made The Bowery that same year, which was the uncredited screen debut of Lucille Ball.  

“Lucy’s Lucky Day” (1971) ~ Lucy goes on a TV game show and is challenged to teach an untrained chimpanzee to do a trick in order to win a thousand dollars. Jackie the Chimpanzee is the seventh chimpanzee to work with Lucille Ball on television.

Harry dresses up as a gorilla to try to coax Jackie into performing. In his DVD introduction to the episode, choreographer Jim Bates recalls that the chimpanzee only knew one trick – to cross its legs – so the entire routine was built around that. He also recalls that when Gale Gordon took off the gorilla head in the presence of the baby chimp, the chimp went into hysterics and had to be taken off set to calm down.  

Finally, on “Milky Way to Riches” Lucy, Harry, Kim, and Jackie perform “Tell Me, Pretty Maiden” written in 1899 for the musical Floradora. They finish with “Daisy Bell / Bicycle Built for Two.”

The Planet of the Apes franchise began as a 1963 sci fi novel by Pierre Boulle. Boulle was also responsible for The Bridge Over the River Kwaii in 1952, which was referenced in “Lucy’s Summer Vacation” (1959). The first Planet of the Apes film was made in 1968. It was followed by four sequels, a television series and an animated series, as well as a several film reboots. 

Charleton Heston (Taylor) was referenced in “Lucy Fights the System” (1974). 

Roddy McDowell (Cornelius / Caesar / Galen) attended (uncredited) the “All Star Party for Lucille Ball” in 1984. 

Claude Akins (Aldo) appeared on “I Love Lucy” and “The Lucy Show.” 

Ricardo Montalban (Armando) appeared as a Prince on “Here’s Lucy.” 

Victor Buono (”Beneath the Planet of the Apes”) appeared on “Here’s Lucy” as a suspected international spy. 

Background players from the Lucyverse who appeared as humans or apes in some iteration of the franchise include: Jerry Maren, Jack Berle, Paul Bradley, Gail Bonney, James Gonzales, Shep Houghton, Arthur Tovey, James La Cava, Joyce Haber, Victor Romito, and Monty O’Grady. 

[professionalbookhoarder]

Silver Age: Showcase (2000)

Barbara realizing that she’s about to embark on a mission with a bunch of men with egos.

[coverpanelarchive]

Sandman Mystery Theatre #46 (1997)

[ronmerchant]

Janos Prohaska, circa 1959

[the-antiapocalyptic-man]

I didn’t like how this one turned out and meant to redraw for a while, but I still haven’t and I’m reorganizing my files, so might as well hit the big notes (for Earths 0 and 10/X):

Hans Von Hammer aka Enemy Ace was a WWI German pilot who flew again in WWII, but abandoned the war effort after learning of Hitler’s Final Solution. His granddaughter, Ilsa, became a member of Batman Inc. as Leatherwing. On Earth-X, Hans was rendered immortal by [redacted] and continues his war against his own country, particularly his grandon, that Earth’s Leatherwing. He has a pet wolf.

Del Van Dyne was a millionaire who formed a personal suicide squad called the Death Patrol. The group unsurprisingly had a high mortality rate, though the unexplained reappearance of several members after their deaths suggests Van Dyne was either faking reports to make the Patrol’s adventures sound more exciting, or making use of any number of uncontrolled super-science to bring his deceased compatriots back to life and back to work. His Earth-X counterpart also founded a Death Patrol, but they function as their Earth’s Doom Patrol.

Death Mayhew was a British lord and pilot, leader of the White Lions, as well as a Nazi Sympathizer who later defected and joined Germany itself. On Earth-0, he died in a dogfight with the Blackhawks and is rarely remembered today. On Earth-X, he lived into the 21st century, training an entire fleet of White Lion pilots to assist the New Reichsmen (colloquially known as the “JLAxis”) and generally maintain Germany’s tenuous “global” regime even as Overman’s abandonment of Earth and his cybernetic replacement’s descent into madness was tearing the regime apart.

Finally, Blackhawk himself is a cryptic figure who’s real name and origins remain unclear. Popular understanding built the Blackhawk mythos around Polish pilot and stuntman Janos Prohaska. As such, while Janos (simply referred to as “Blackhawk” in contemporary publications) is rendered more like film star or Superman than he actually appeared, he avoided the broadly stereotypical and offensive portrayals given to his fellow pilots. The worst hit with this was the true Blackhawk, a brilliant young Chinese pilot who seemed to excel at anything he tried. There is some speculation he may have been another Century Baby (or that he was a recorded one, namely Hark) but without even a confirmed name, Blackhawk’s origins are a mystery. More mysterious yet is Blackhawk’s reappearance in the modern-day, seemingly unaged, living under the name Wu Cheng.

On Earth-X, the Blackhawk does not exist and is not to be spoken of. There is not and never has been a seemingly immortal warrior who soars across the sky on wings of living darkness. Were such a man to exist, the Emperor’s Holy Wind Dragon would have destroyed him long ago...

[ronnymerchant]

Janos Prohaska, circa 1959

[evilhorse]

Who’s Who in the DC Universe style pages from Blackhawk Annual #1 (circa May 1989)

[cantsayidont]

October 1982 to November 1984. Among the segments of DC's voluminous archives that they ought to properly reprint but probably never will is this early 1980s revival of aviator hero Blackhawk by Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle. Created by Will Eisner and Chuck Cuidera for Quality Comics back in 1941, the Blackhawks were a multinational paramilitary squadron, with vaguely kinky black leather uniforms and special aircraft they operated from their own secret private island. They fought the Nazis during WW2 and later branched out into anticommunism and international supervillains. The original series was for years defined by excellent artwork (in particular by Reed Crandall), broad characterization, exaggerated ethnic accents, and some egregious racism (much of it directed at the Blackhawks' Chinese cook/mascot, "Chop-Chop"). In the late '60s, there was a brief, ludicrous attempt to turn the characters into superheroes, which hastened the demise of the original book, but the Blackhawks still had their fans — including Steven Spielberg, whose interest in developing a BLACKHAWK feature film occasioned this revival.

Probably the best word for this 23-issue run is "solid." It returns the characters to their original WW2 milieu, dials down the racism (the Chinese character eventually even gets a proper uniform), and offers some very competent storytelling from Evanier and Spiegle. The individual plots are seldom outstanding, but there are only a few real duds, and it's significantly more consistent than most monthly books of its era. Evanier and Spiegle were a good team, as further evidenced by their charming creator-owned CROSSFIRE series, launched through Eclipse toward the end of this run, although it wasn't enough to keep the BLACKHAWK book alive after Spielberg's interest lapsed.

The 1987–1988 Howard Chaykin miniseries (later collected as BLACKHAWK: BLOOD & IRON) is flashier and more fun, although it remains controversial. Chaykin made Blackhawk (whom Chaykin named Janos Prohaska, after a real-world Hollywood stuntman best known today as the guy who played the Horta on the STAR TREK TOS episode "The Devil in the Dark") an abrasive dick, and sidelined most of the rest of the group in favor of a new Lady Blackhawk, a brassy American Communist named Natalie Reed. (Chaykin did at least give "Chop-Chop" a real name — Weng Chan.) The Evanier/Spiegle series was not intended to reinvent the characters so much as to present a palatable median version that could provide the foundation for a feature film, so while it's not as dynamic or as stylish, it's also much less confrontational. For some, that makes it the definitive modern treatment of this venerable franchise.

[oldshowbiz]

Janos Prohaska need not apply

[nitpickrider]

See Hitler, in the DCU, there WERE "supermen" It just so happens each and every one of them hates your guts on principle :)

[tvpromopod]

Sci-Fi 5: Janos Prohaska - October 10th, 1919

He was the maker of monster and animal suits, as well as the man inside them. Sci-Fi 5 chronicles the far-too-short career of the man inside the Horta from #StarTrek, costume designer and stunt performer Janos Prohaska. https://sci-fi-5.libsyn.com/janos-prohaska-1919 Read the full article