The major development for the Blackhawks post-origin is of course the introduction of more named Blackhawks, and they get on that almost immediately:

The second Blackhawks story, in Military Comics 002, introduces six new Blackhawks all in one go: Stanislaus, Andre, Hendrick, Boris, Zeg and Olaf. I wouldn’t call them especially distinctive personalities in this first appearance, particularly as the story’s focus is less on the Blackhawks and more on the fellow in the yellow scarf, an RAF flyer named Walt who fled from battle and whose role in the story is to have scorn heaped upon him until he finds enough courage to die heroically. It’s a classic war story but not one that allows the scorn-heapers (aka the Blackhawks) a lot of room for character development.

So what kind of character development do we see in the three remaining Blackhawks stories of 1941?

Olaf, we learn, is a very strong Swede or possibly Norwegian. As with many strong characters he is portrayed as

Andre is pretty French. He gets a bit of spotlight before taking a bullet for Blackhawk and then using his own body to start an avalanche and kill a bunch of Nazis in Military Comics 003. While this was probably pretty gut-wrenching for hard-core Blackhawks fans in 1941, it will come as little to no surprise to anyone who has read anything at all about them that Andre is not in fact dead and will return in 1942.

It’s not exactly characterization, but Hendrick starts to get more on-panel time after the death of Andre (and please ignore the Andre lookalike standing behind him, because it’s actually Zeg). He also gets a longer name, becoming Hendrickson. Boris, Zeg and Stanislaus just kind of fade into the crowd, however.

He never actually appears on-panel, but Military Comics 002 also features what might be the only reference to Vladim, the Blackhawk weapon designer, alongside the blueprints for the group’s iconic Grumman Skyrocket planes.

Finally and regrettably, Military Comics 003 introduces Chop Chop, the Chinese comic relief character who makes the bulk of the Blackhawk catalogue Hard to Recommend. Chop Chop shows up in a plane he built out of spare parts, looking for help for occasional Blackhawks ally and Red Cross nurse Ann and just never leaves.

Somewhat astonishingly considering the state of the character for the entire 40s and 50s, this might just be the most worst version of Chop Chop – it’s just a fractionally more hateful portrayal of a comic relief Chinese character than we subsequently get, but I guess that that’s the story Chop Chop: he gets just a little less racist a tiny little bit at a time until he finally becomes a regular character sometime around 1990 or so.