airboy archives, vol. 1 preview

8/12/2019 Airboy Archives, Vol. 1 Preview

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C o l l e c t i o n D e s i g n b y

G i l b e r t o L a z c a n o

C o v e r b y

T i m o t h y T r u m a n

O r i g i n a l S e r i e s E d i t s b y

T i m o t h y T r u m a n

C o l l e c t i o n E d i t s b y

J u s t i n E i s i n g e r a n d

A l o n z o S i m o n


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ISBN: 978-1-61377-900-2 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4

AIRBOY ARCHIVES, VO LUME 1. FEBRUARY 2014. FIRST PRINTIN G. Airboy 2014 Chuck Dixon. 2014 Idea and Design Works, LLC. The IDW logo is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. IDW Publishing,a division of Idea and Design Works, LLC. Editorial offices: 5080 Santa Fe St., San Diego, CA 92109. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes,none of the contents of this publication may be reprinted without the permission of Idea and Design Works, LLC. Printed in Korea. IDW Publishing does not read or accept unsolicited submissions of ideas, stories, or artwork.

Originally published by Eclipse Comics as AIRBOY issues #116.

www.IDWPUBLISHING.com

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Ted Adams, CEO & PublisherGreg Goldstein, President & COORobbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic ArtistChris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-ChiefMatthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial OfficerAlan Payne, VP of SalesDirk Wood, VP of MarketingLorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital ServicesJeff Webber, VP of Digital Publishing & Business Development

IDW founded by Ted Adams, Alex Garner, Kris Oprisko, and Robbie Robbins

A I R B O Y # 1

o n w i n g s o f d e a t h

J U L Y 1 5 , 1 9 8 6

P A G E 8

A I R B O Y # 2

the wolf and the phoenix

J U L Y 2 9 , 1 9 8 6

P A G E 2 2

A I R B O Y # 4

assault on villa miserio

A U G U S T 2 6 , 1 9 8 6

P A G E 5 0

A I R B O Y # 3

misery l oves c ompany

A U G U S T 1 2 , 1 9 8 6

P A G E 3 6

A I R B O Y # 1 2

g o n e t o t e x a s

D E C E M B E R 1 5 , 1 9 8 6

P A G E 1 9 2

A I R B O Y # 9

b o d y c o u n t !

N O V E M B E R 4 , 1 9 8 6

P A G E 1 2 0

A I R B O Y # 1 0

t o o t h a n d c l a w

N O V E M B E R 1 8 , 1 9 8 6

P A G E 1 4 4

A I R B O Y # 1 1

i a m b i r d i e

D E C E M B E R 1 , 1 9 8 6

P A G E 1 6 8


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A I R B O Y # 1 3

tag-team

J A N U A R Y 1 2 , 1 9 8 7

P A G E 2 1 6

A I R B O Y # 1 4

a barrel full of sharks

J A N U A R Y 2 7 , 1 9 8 7

P A G E 2 4 0

A I R B O Y # 1 5

c ar ibbean rampage pt 1

F E B R U A R Y 1 0 , 1 9 8 7

P A G E 2 6 4

A I R B O Y # 1 6

c arr ibean rampage pt 2

F E B R U A R Y 2 7 , 1 9 8 7

P A G E 2 8 8

A I R B O Y # 5

misery takes a hol iday

S E P T E M B E R 9 , 1 9 8 6

P A G E 6 4

A I R B O Y # 6

b ac k i n t h e u . s . a .

S E P T E M B E R 2 3 , 1 9 8 6

P A G E 7 8

A I R B O Y # 7

p a r t y t i m e

O C T O B E R 7 , 1 9 8 6

P A G E 9 2

A I R B O Y # 8

d o w n i n t h e d a r k n e s s

O C T O B E R 2 1 , 1 9 8 6

P A G E 1 0 6


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W h y A i r b o y ?

It was the Eighties and the direct market was blowing up. Comic book

shops were popping up everywhere in strip malls and main streets and

malls. Sales were humming and not just for Marvel and DC. Dozens of

independent companies were rising. It was a growing boom and

competition, real competition, was fierce.

Eclipse Comics was unique even among the crowded field of start-up

publishers. Theyd been around longer having practically created the

independent market in 1978 with Sabre, the first graphic novel ever

published in the USA. Eclipse was a throwback to an age of comics

when redundant publishing was practiced. Simply put, redundant

publishing is finding something that sells and printing the hell out of it

before the trend dies and then jumping onto the next trend. Eclipse was

adverse to no genre. Horror, science fiction, funny animals, detectives,

good girl art, adventure, westerns and mixes of the all the above were

grist for their mill. The only proviso was that the material not be stale

re-treads. There had to be a twist in the tale, a fresh hook or unusual

outlook. The house style was no style. Wild and wooly was the only

rule. They published avant garde material but it was without pretension

or posing. This was a publisher that was as at home with Reid Fleming

the Worlds Angriest Milkman as it was with their own Ninja Turtles

knock-off (Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters).

This was the Eighties, remember? And superheroes were the only genre

that mattered. And Eclipse entered that game with Miracleman, originally

a UK title, that proved as successful for them as it was outrageous. They

also had Mr. Monster, a retro pastiche about a masked muscleman

slaughtering vampires and werewolves by the bushel load.

They wanted to add to their stable with a title of their own. Wisely, I

think, Dean Mullaney and Cat Yronwode decided that just creating a

brand new hero from scratch was a non-starter. The superguys with the

big sales had all been around a while with long legacies and ties to

the Silver and Golden Ages. Batman, Spider-man, X-Men, Teen Titans

and the rest of the cape and boots crowd went back decades. Sure,

there were new super characters being created but few of them were

catching fire, with the notable exception of Nexus by Mike Baron and

Steve Rude.

For whatever reason, Cat and/or Dean chose to resurrect Airboy, a

long-running costumed adventurer published by Hillman Comics

through the 40s and into the 50s until they threw in the towel rather

than publish under the new Comics Code Authority.

Airboy! He was the perfect fit for Eclipse. An adolescent who built a

miraculous airplane with the help of a Franciscan monk in Californias


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Napa Valley (not far from Eclipses HQ!) and then flew off to fight the

Axis to a standstill. The series was preposterous, funky, sexy, weird and

violent with strong horror undertones and the strangest cast of villains

ever to appear in a comic book. In other words, it was practically an

amalgam of everything that made Eclipse special.

Davy Nelson was actually no superhero. He wore a colorful costume

but no cape or mask. His only power was the intuitive ability to fly the

hell out of Birdy, his crazy bat-winged fighter plane. But all the

trappings of the genre were here; a ridiculous origin story, a femme

fatale, wicked recurring villains and fantastic settings.

Cat and Dean certainly saw all this in the series. They also knew they

wanted an earnest portrayal. There would be no snark or tongue-in-

cheek or retro chic. Airboy would be revived intact with all the

imponderables and silliness retained and presented for a new audience.

Thats where I come in. Well, actually, Tim Truman came in first.

Tim was producing Scout for Eclipse; his apocalyptic epic, under his own

studio set-up under the 4 Winds banner. Cat approached him about

putting together an ongoing Airboy comic for them, acting as editor and

packager. Im not sure if he had decided on taking it up or not when hehappened to mention it to me. I was relatively new to writing for comics

and had submitted scripts for Tales of Terror, Eclipses horror anthology.

So, Cat knew my work as shed edited all of my stories.

My reaction to hearing about Airboy probably took Tim back. I LOVED

Airboy! I found out about him in Jim Sterankos comic book history

and managed to hunt down a fair collection of his comics in bootleg

reprint form. Back when I thought I might want to be an artist I even

drew sample pages featuring Airboy and the cast ofAir-Fighters

Comics. I wanted to write this book. I HAD to write this book. Idrather writeAirboy than Spider-man. Fan-geek enthusiasm took over

from there and I think I left Tim really no choice. He didnt really want

to see some big bearded lug crying in his studio. Tim convinced the

folks at Eclipse that I was the man for the job and we went to work.

Everything about Airboy leant itself to being published by this

particular outfit. Chief among these elements was that, in his original

run inAirboy Comics andAir-Fighters Comics, Davy Nelson was

featured in topical adventures. He fought the Nazis and Imperial

Japanese to victory then gassed up Birdy to go hard at the commies. It

was a natural fit to drop him into the battlefields of the 1980s; Central

America, Afghanistan and the drug wars of south Florida.

And what about that crazy plane? I was concerned that, of all the

impossible things in the series, Birdy was the hardest to swallow. Tim

told me that I was dead wrong. Birdy was the key to the series. The

goofy bat-winged airplane was like the Batmobile or, more accurately,


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the Lone Rangers horse Silver. Birdy was a character as important asAirboy to the story. To change her to some sterile jet-powered

contraption was to leave the heart of the thing behind. I wasnt sure

then but I bowed to his instincts.

The only question left for us after that was Valkyrie, the femme fatale

of the original series who was a sometimes foe and sometimes love

interest for Davy Nelson. Valkyrie was the sexiest character of Golden

Age comics bar none. A cross between a Milton Caniff siren and

Veronica Lake, she was a stone Nazi and Hitlers favorite pilot. Say

what you want about the Third Reich they were equal opportunity

employers when it came to war. There were many famous German

aviatrixes who flew for the Luftwaffe even if just for propaganda

purposes. But Val was a tigress, a one-woman flying death squad in

her jodhpurs, riding boots and a neckline that plunged low enough to

show the boys that this fascist she-wolf flew commando. Her many

recurring appearances in the Hillman comics and her slinky seductive

appearance demanded that she play a big part in this new book.

Okay, simple enough to resurrect her. I mean, I wanted the original

Val; the reformed Nazi bitch with all her baggage intact. Easy to

concoct a device where shes been in stasis all this time. The problemwas, what would her relationship be to this new character who was

Davy Nelson Jr. the son of the original Airboy. Would Val awaken and

have the hots for this young man who looked and sounded and was

the same age as the lover she left behind before her decades-long

nap? And how would Davy Jr. react to hooking up with his dads

girlfriend? It all seemed pretty damned perverse. It also seemed pretty

damned cool. Tim and I realized that we might just have lightning in a

bottle here. It was so comic booky, so twisted and so Eclipse that there

was no question of how to go. After all, Val and Davys relationship

was pretty weird to start with. We doubled down on it.

Im not sure who came up with the idea of Hirota, a former Zero

pilot modeled after Japans top ace Saburo Sakai, who served

kind of like Alfred to Airboys Batman. It strikes me as Tims sense

of irony, thinking back.

Tims other big contribution to the longevity of our run was, fellow Air-

Fighter, Skywolfs new costume. We were in agreement that his

original outfit was pretty cool but a guy wearing a wolfs head for a

flying cap was a conceit that was too much even for a comic as retro-

wild as this one. The other consideration was that the wolf cowl could

look awesome when drawn by one artist and really stupid when drawn

by another. To protect the character from this potential ridicule, Tim

designed a functional leather flying tunic and mask that, frankly, looks

awesome. The mask leaves Skys lower face revealed as well as his

graying hair. He updated the characters look to give us that


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superhero glitz we needed on covers and promos without sacrificing

the originals coolness factor one iota.

The rest of Charles Biros original creation we kept. Misery and his

flying graveyard was unchanged from the WWII years. The Heap (the

original swamp monster) shambled in looking as he did in his last

appearance more than thirty years before. The infamous man-eating

rats returned only now they were man-sized and riding Harleys. We re-

booted the series without re-inventing it.

The rest, for me, is delirium. I dove into this book and wrote the leads

and back-ups in a fever. It was my first ongoing so I threw everythinginto it never knowing when it might end. It was all crazy fun and pure

comics. I had a marvelous cast of characters to draw from and no

story was too outlandish to explore. Cat Yronwode took over as editor

after Tim and she pushed me even harder to keep the book unique

and fresh. To say that Cat and I were diametrically opposed politically

would be a gross understatement. From those differences the book

took on a controversial tone that managed to offend people at either

extreme of the political spectrum. More on that if they let me write

another intro in a future volume. And Dean was always there cheering

me on each time we spoke. Dean even produced an Airboy coffeemug just because he wanted one for himself. Their level of enthusiasm

for the whole project spoiled me and Ive only experienced that same

camaraderie between editorial and creator a few times in my career.

And the artists! I cant name them all here. But first Tim and then Cat

reached out for anyone I requested for the pencils and inks. Dean

even contacted Frank Robbins, retired down in Mexico, about

contributing a cover or two. Stan Woch, Graham Nolan, Ben Dunn,

Tom Lyle, Ron Randall, Bo Hampton, Dan Spiegle and that colossal

50th issue featuring art by two generations of Kuberts. I have to thank

Beau Smith for wrangling Joe, Adam and Andy for that one. Okay, I

said I couldnt name them all so Im going to stop there before I

offend anyone by omission. Too late, right?

Keep em flyin!Chuck DixonTampa, FL


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Cover byTimothy Truman and Stan Woch


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