Zinda Blake

* Zinda Blake
* Lady Blackhawk

**Lady Blackhawk (Zinda Blake)** is an ace aviator and gunhand. Originally a wealthy socialite, she managed to secure a place in the bastion of manliness known as the **Blackhawk Squadron**, a group of resistance pilots fighting the Nazis. Then Zero Hour happened, and she was displaced in time to the present. After short stints of work for Warriors and the Suicide Squad, she became the spokesperson for **Blackhawk Airways**. Not content with not being allowed to fly, she joined Oracle and the Birds of Prey.

## Character Origins

Zinda Blake is an All-American girl, born in the American heartland (in Smallville, Kansas actually). Zinda's father, John "Jack" Blake was a former war aviator turned rural pilot in the crop dusting field, taught Zinda how to fly almost before she could walk. Her mother, Laura Blake, was a Polish immigrant and language professor whose natural linguistic talents were passed on to her daughter. Zinda did well in school and got along great with her three siblings: John Jr, Eddie, and Mabel; but Zinda was not meant for small-town life.

Zinda was just fifteen years old when the second World War began with Germany's attack on the homeland of Zinda's mother. Of course at that time, women were not allowed to enter into the Armed Forces, nor was the United States involved in the conflict, but that did not stop Zinda from engaging in flights of fancy. Zinda has aspired to be on the front lines fighting the Nazi regime and began to make preparations to join the Polish resistance forces, somehow, someway.

A few months before her eighteenth birthday, Zinda heard the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and ran away that very day. Exactly where she went is unknown to this day as she did not show up again until three months later in Scotland where she was discovered impersonating a male aviator shortly before she escaped in a stolen British plane. Zinda used that stolen plane to make her way to her destination, Poland, where she joined the resistance and lived her dream of fighting the Nazis to win back her mother's homeland. Due to her ability to fly, Zinda was eventually selected by the resistance to transport important intelligence out of Poland via aircraft and deliver it to Allied forces in France. Zinda completed the mission and earned the attention of the ace mercenary flying squadron known as the Blackhawks who offered Zinda a place in their ranks, where Zinda became an 'ace' in a single day. After the war, Zinda stayed on with the Blackhawks and went on to score 27 confirmed kills before her sudden disappearance in 1949 while flying a prototype jet over the Bermuda Triangle.

### Lady Blackhawk: 2013 - 2017

Zinda Blake, affectionately known in the 1940's as the 'Lady Blackhawk', mysteriously vanished during a test run of an experimental jet aircraft off the coast of Florida. Zinda's famous disappearance was the first documented case of the phenomena which came to circulate in the area now known as the Bermuda Triangle. Over 130 search efforts were organized in the years following her vanishing, but nothing ever turned up; no body, no plane, not even a shred of debris or wreckage. For all intents and purposes, Zinda Blake was just gone.

But that is not the end of her story. We now know that Zinda had the misfortune of violating the airspace of Themyscira's temporal cloak in 1949, resulting in severe damage to her jet's engine and hull. She likely should have died in the resulting crash, but Zinda's superior piloting skills allowed her to safely crash land on Paradise Island... in 2013. (Note: I have consulted with Palmer, Kord, and Holt about this and the best theory they've come up with is that there was some sort of temporal vortex created due to the area's own dimensional anomalies. Zinda's experimental engine vibrating the aircraft's hull at just the right frequency, and Themyscira's cloaking enchantment; and that it was this vortex that tore Zinda's plane apart and sent her touching down sixty-four years into the future.) Lucky for Zinda, she was a woman, and was given the more hospitable welcome from the inhabitants of Paradise Island.

After about a week spent recovering from her injuries and being questioned by Requiem, Donna Troy was called upon to arrange for Zinda's escort back to the real world. Donna sent the Birds of Prey to bring Zinda back to civilization (I presume she chose us as an all-female team, we were less likely to cause a riot with the natives). As this was *the* Zinda Blake, we brought her to the Hall of Justice for a physical with Dr. Midnight. The doc learned that Zinda's remarkable reflexes and coordination were due to her being an unidentified metahuman with an adrenaline activated enhanced reflex system. Of course, ARGUS tried to recruit her, but tough cookies. I called dibs... because, well, we saw her first. She's been a Bird ever since.

## Powers, Abilities and Weaknesses

Zinda is an ace flyer, able to easily handle any type of aircraft. She is a fine markswoman, skilled in the use of a variety of weapons, and has superior abilities in hand-to-hand combat.

* Enhanced Reflexes and Coordination
* Enhanced Senses and Spatial Reasoning
* Extensive (albeit outdated) Military Training
* Natural Polyglot (fluent in over 30 languages)
* World-class Pilot and Vehicular Operator
* Remarkable Markswoman
* Incredibly Bold and Energetic
* Speaks Her Mind To A Fault

### Weaknesses

* **Any Weekness Just Like A Human Being**

## Notes and Trivia

### Notes

* To quote Rule #1 of Earth-27: "Time only ticks forward in Earth-27. The rates at which one experiences time can be slowed, accelerated, or even halted; but never reversed." People can go to the future, but it is a one-way trip. No one can go to the past. Zinda is not the first temporally displaced character. Zatanna experienced a different flow of time and returned to Earth without having aged a day despite being gone for many years.
* Zinda's address is a nod to her first comic book appearance: 133 Hoyt Street (*Blackhawk #133*), Apt 59 (she was created in 1959).
* Her alias Natalie Gurdin is a nod to another Lady Blackhawk from the comics.
* The relationship between Edward Blake and Zinda is unique to Earth-27.

### Trivia

* For space reasons, a line was cut about her marrying a Blackhawk pilot after the war and while the two remained married the relationship just sort of faded into the background of their lives, each knowing that flying was their one true love. Her pilot husband continued to live after Zinda's disappearance until he simply died of old age in the nineties.
* In Earth-27, the Bermuda Triangle is connected to both Themyscira's dimensional cloak and Atlantis' prison dimension Xebel.
* To the world Zinda Blake is dead, her identity is secret.