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"Secret Weapon of the Archer": An archery expert turns super-villain, and obtains a large, cross-bow-shaped aircraft, capable of firing huge rocket arrows. He adopts a moniker as "The Shaft" and commits daring robberies against passenger ships and airliners.

Blackhawk #121 is an issue of the series Blackhawk (Volume 1) with a cover date of February, 1958.

Synopsis for "Secret Weapon of the Archer"

An archery expert turns super-villain, and obtains a large, cross-bow-shaped aircraft, capable of firing huge rocket arrows. He adopts a moniker as "The Shaft" and commits daring robberies against passenger ships and airliners.

The Blackhawks are called in. By investigating several famous archers, they learn the identity of the Shaft, and his location, a castle on Sea Island. They travel there on the Hawksub and bring one of their jets along on the sub. When the Shaft traps them with his flying crossbow, Blackhawk flies the jet by remote control and rams the villain's aircraft.

Appearing in "Secret Weapon of the Archer"

Featured Characters:

Antagonists:

  • The Shaft (Single appearance)
    • his aircraft crew

Locations:

Items:

  • Blackhawk High-speed Jet Cameras

Vehicles:

  • five Blackhawk Lockheed F-90Cs (one destroyed)
  • passenger steamship "Queen Ann" (beached and looted)
  • several passenger airplanes: "Southern Clipper", others (landed and looted)
  • Hunter's Flying Crossbow (Destroyed)
  • Hawksub


Synopsis for "The Jinxed Blackhawk"

After Blackhawk breaks a mirror while fighting the Baron and his gang, he seems to have a streak of bad luck which is compounded by an encounter with a black cat. To prove to the rest of the team that he is not jinxed and that he doesn't believe in superstitions, he purposely violates all the traditional bad luck causes like walking under a ladder and opening umbrellas indoors, and he catches the Baron anyway.

Appearing in "The Jinxed Blackhawk"

Featured Characters:

Antagonists:

  • The Baron
    • his gang

Locations:

  • Blackhawk Island
  • Mainland
    • International Geophysical Year Rocket Exposition
    • Blackhawks Mainland Barracks
    • Aviation Show venue
    • Amusement Park

Vehicles:

Synopsis for "Siege in the Sahara"

The Blackhawks are called in to stop a villain called the Desert Tiger who has been raiding caravans in the Sahara. But things get more serious when the Desert Tiger uses a device to knock an Air Force plane carrying nuclear weapons out of the sky. The Hawks use their jets and the Safari-mobile to track the villain to his lair, an abandoned Legionnaire fort. They are captured but are locked up in the same cell and left unsupervised, so they escape, stealthily take the skeleton crew of guards, and take over the fort, which is soon under siege by the Desert Tiger and his tribesmen, who are mounted on propeller driven sand sleds. The Blackhawks use the wrecks of their plane and Safari-mobile to cobble together a giant sand sled to fight the bad guys.

Appearing in "Siege in the Sahara"

Featured Characters:

Antagonists:

Other Characters:

  • two Air Force pilots

Locations:

Items:

  • Atomic Weapons
  • Desert Tiger's electronic antiaircraft weapon
    • electrifies the air, kills the engine

Vehicles:

Notes

  • Secret Weapon of the Archer
    • Blackhawk Squadron patrol on this day was a "1000-mile sweep," from Blackhawk Island, so this story and these islands are set in the Pacific Ocean.
    • The Hawk-Sub was last seen in Blackhawk #118, in which it was pinned to the ocean floor by a landslide, forcing the Blackhawks to evacuate and abandon it. No mention was made of retrieving or salvaging it, so this issue's Hawk-Sub is probably a replacement.
    • The Shaft dresses exactly like Green Arrow, right down to the red gloves and hat-feather.
  • Jinxed Blackhawk
    • Blackhawk deduces that the villain is the Baron based on the description of a masked man directing the gangsters, but the Baron wears an ordinary business suit, with no mask, in this story.
  • Siege in the Sahara
    • Two Blackhawk Jets and one Safari-mobile are destroyed by enemy action. Pilots Stanislaus and Andre made pancake landings.
  • Also appearing in this issue of Blackhawk were:



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