For Your Consideration: IDW’s Airboy Omnibus Volume 1

Airboy Omnibus Vol. 1

Airboy Omnibus Vol. 1


by Robert Greenberger

 In the first decades of the 20th century, flying was a fascinating new invention, leading to fanciful stories about aviators, fueled by the exploits of flyers on both sides of World War I. This led to a series of successful pulp magazines so it made perfect sense that when comic books arrived, high-flying adventures followed. It was therefore a short jump before publishers added teen pilots to the mix beginning with Hop Harrigan. When a second wave of aces took to the skies, they were accompanied by Hillman’s Airboy.

Air Fighters Comics #1, November 1942, introduced the world to David Nelson, raised by an expert aviator. Among his friends was the Franciscan monk, Br. Francis Martier, who was also an engineer. He invented a plane with wings that flapped, mimicking a bird which eventually was dubbed Birdie. When Martier died during a test flight, Nelson inherited the plane and perfected it, becoming Airboy. He quickly grew in popularity and became the title’s cover feature for the next several years, a testament to the creative spark and storytelling ingenuity of his creator, Charles Biro, best known for the first Daredevil and Crime Does Not Pay. He wrote the tales which were first illustrated by Al Camy and later by Tony DiPreta, Dan Barry, and Fred Kida.

Airboy #1

Airboy #1


Despite David’s youth, his most interesting recurring opponent was the sexy Valkyrie, a not-much older Nazi flyer. Their half-dozen meetings proved memorable even after the series vanished in 1953. Just over three decades later, Eclipse Comics acquired the rights to the Hillman heroes and quickly tapped the two-fisted writer Chuck Dixon to revamp the characters for a new era while recruiting rising artist Tim Truman to illustrate the series. Stan Woch would eventually come onboard as artist. Most innovative was the format: a full color bi-weekly of 16-pages. In short order they brought back Valkyrie and added in Skywolf, Airboy’s fellow Air Fighters feature, creating a shared universe.

So successful was the series that miniseries and spinoffs soon followed until the plug was pulled after 50 issues in 1989, leaving fans like me wanting more. Well, Todd McFarland is sitting on the rights so the next best thing will be IDW’s forthcoming Airboy Omnibus, collecting Eclipse’s issues #1-16 including the Skywolf back-ups.

From his Florida home, Dixon explained, “From my end, all I know is that Tim mentioned it to me and I kind of went ape. I was a big fan of Airboy and the Air Fighters since reading about them in Steranko’s History of the Comics. Airboy comics were about the cheapest Golden Age comics around and I had quite a few purchased for less than five bucks each. So, I was well informed and enthusiastic and I think Tim used that to sell cat [yronwode] and Dean [Mullaney] on letting me take it on.”

Airboy #5, one of the best-remembered covers from the series, featuring Valkyrie by Dave Stevens.

Airboy #5, one of the best-remembered covers from the series, featuring Valkyrie by Dave Stevens.


Despite the passage of time, the amount of updating required proved to be fairly minimal. “When Tim Truman and I were given the green light on a new Airboy comic we wanted to update it in certain ways. I was all for updating Birdy, Davy Nelson’s bat-winged fighter plane. But Tim insisted that Birdy, as goofy as the idea is, was at the heart of the charm of Airboy. He was absolutely right. Keeping Birdy as a crazy plane built by a monk and a little boy was the key to the whole thing and we wound up building the first arcs around keeping that retro-goofy feel in a completely earnest way.

“Just as Airboy was set against the real conflicts of WWII and the Cold War, we set Davy and the Air-Fighters against the battlefields of the ‘80s. He mixed it up with Contras and Marxists in a mythical Central America country that was obviously Nicaragua. Davy also fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan on the side of the mujahedeen. We also embraced the strong horror elements in the series. We took that great story about man-eating rats and upsized the rats and put them on motorcycles. We brought the Heap back into the continuity. And Misery, with his flying graveyard, was left pretty much as he was conceived in the ‘40s.

“Our tone was grimmer than the originals and there was also the extremely perverse relationship between Valkyrie and Davy Jr. I think we did a purely ‘80s comic, in hindsight, but kept all the elements that made it such a success in the Golden Age.”

The notion of a weekly comic was still seen as radical when the biweekly arrived but that didn’t faze Dixon, who commented, “You know me, Bob. I run through deadlines like a student driver running over those orange cones. I got the assignment and wrote the hell out of it until I was six months ahead of schedule. At first it was like writing one 26 page monthly. With the addition of the Skywolf back-ups it became the equivalent of writing three monthlies. But I’d just keep writing until they hollered ‘Stop!’

Airboy #3

Airboy #3


What can readers expect to find in the first Omnibus?

“The series moves fast,” Dixon admits. “You’ll see the fate of the original Airboy, the resurrection of the femme fatale Valkyrie, the return of that tough old bird Skywolf, a Nazi werewolf, the threat of global nuclear massacre, drug runners, commies, rats on Harleys, the Heap and a whole lot more. This was my first shot at anything like a super-hero ongoing and I crammed it with everything I could think of!”

Purchase

Airboy Omnibus Vol. 1

Classic covers from the Grand Comics Database

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