Airboy / Air Fighters Comics

[Enigmatic Undead]

One of my all time favorite comic book runs in the Eclipse Comics Air boy run by Tim Truman and Chuck Dixon. IDW is collecting the run and here's a really interesting CBR interview they did a couple months ago. The cover artwork for the second volume looks great.




More recently I started reading the Golden Age Age Airboy and Air Fighter Comics which are available free to download from The Digital Comic Museum which also collects tons of other public domain comic books.

http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?cid=82

Chuck Dixon returned to the character a few years ago with a five issue mini series Airboy Deadeye by Antarctic Press. The artwork has a manga style vibe and in it the original Airboy teams up with an ex kamikaze pilot he met during the war to fight a mad scientist who threatens to destroy Japan with a giant robot. It's seriously a lot of fun.



Any other fans of Airboy and the Airfighters?

[foxley]

I've come quite late to Airboy and Air Fighters but I'm quite interested in the titles. I think I will have to invest in the IDW collection.

However, I would not recommend Airboy - 1942: Best of Enemies to anyone. Cluttered art and bad story

[teej]

Aaahhh, I love these comics. I first read them sometime during my senior year in high school due to my love of Dixon's superhero work. Good to see there's still some love for the series around here.

I still need to pick up the new collections. I was under the impression that they were going to be hardcover, but they're listed everywhere as paperback.

[hondobrode]

One of my all time favorite comic book runs in the Eclipse Comics Air boy run by Tim Truman and Chuck Dixon. IDW is collecting the run and here's a really interesting CBR interview they did a couple months ago. The cover artwork for the second volume looks great.




More recently I started reading the Golden Age Age Airboy and Air Fighter Comics which are available free to download from The Digital Comic Museum which also collects tons of other public domain comic books.

http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?cid=82

Chuck Dixon returned to the character a few years ago with a five issue mini series Airboy Deadeye by Antarctic Press. The artwork has a manga style vibe and in it the original Airboy teams up with an ex kamikaze pilot he met during the war to fight a mad scientist who threatens to destroy Japan with a giant robot. It's seriously a lot of fun.



Any other fans of Airboy and the Airfighters?

Yes ! I hadn't heard of him until Eclipse and loved him.

Had no idea this was out. Thanks !

[codystarbuck]

Airboy, at Eclipse, was a fantastic read. I had heard of the character, thanks to Maurice Horn's World Encyclopedia of Comics, which featured an entry for the character and an image of the hero and Birdie. It sounded and looked pretty cool. Eclipse gave us both an update and a reprint of the old Hillman stores, complete with the other Airfighters. Ken Pierce also gave us a reprint of some of the stories with Valkyrie, particularly the classic ones. The original drew a lot of inspiration from Terry and the Pirates (what comic didn't, in the 40s?), particularly the Dragon Lady.

Truman, Dixon, and artists like Tom Yeates and Stan Woch really went to town on the modern stories, plus things like the Skywolf back-up stories and the Valkyrie and Airmaiden and Airfighters minis and one-shots. Truth be told, the Skywolf stories, following his adventures post-WW2 and beyond were my favorites. They were a nice mix of a trip through actual post-WW2 history and a good character study. He ends up involved in the CIA coup in Guatemala (on the side of Arbenz), ends up in Korea, gets involved with treasure hunting in Indochina and finds himself alongside French Foreign Legion paratroops at Die Bien Phu. Dixon really excelled himself on those stories. There were even a couple that dealt with Skywolf's father, flying for Pancho Villa.