Airboy

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My three favorite Eclipse titles are (alphabetically) Airboy, Miracleman and Scout. I didn't start reading any of them from the very beginning, but Airboy was the only one I collected entirely ex post facto. I bought the entire run all at once at a quarter sale, 12 and a half bucks well spent, and I did actually read them. Problem is, I crammed them into my eyeballs so fast I didn't retain many of the details, only a vague memory that I liked them. That's been 30 years ago now, well past time that I read them again at my leisure. 

The thing about Eclipse Comics is that they were averse to no genre. According to Airboy writer Chuck Dixon: "Horror, science fiction, funny animals, detectives, good girl art, adventure, westerns and mixes of all of 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 an 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." About Airboy, Dixon said: "He was the perfect fit for Eclipse... 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 what made Eclipse special."

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  • Eclipse was indeed very eclectic. The whole publisher had a charm all of its own. 

  • I liked Eclipse comics -- Zot and Miracleman were favorites, but I later discovered Crossfire, Beanworld, and more -- but never really followed Airboy. I've picked up a back issue here and there, but I should look into more of it.  

  • CHUCK DIXON ON THE ORIGINAL AIRBOY:

    "The original Golden Age Airboy's sheer zaniness and funkiness made it a perfect fit for Eclipse Comics. A more seat-of-the-pants, homegrown, urban guerilla operation has never existed in the comic book business. These were comics in the raw and made the way comics were meant to be, on the fly andno idea too crazy. Just writin' and drawin' and getting all down on actual paper and sharing it with a public thirsting for the new, the fresh, and the edgy.

    "Eclipse was simply the best home for David Nelson and his supporting cast of Air-Fighters to be revived in. the out-there concepts and somewhat subversive nature of hillman Comics stand out even in the goofy world of costumed hero funnybooks. The medium's first anti-hero monster character, the Heap, was a Hillman star and he makes his redebut in this volume. A wild character named Rackman appeared in several titles. Rackman was a dwarf who used an exo-skeleton suit to disguise himself as a six foot tough guy. He could return to his secret identity by climbing out of his costume!

    "And the Air-Fighters themselves! A teen-aged kid with an ex-Nazi girlfriend. A guy who flies around with a wolf's head for a helmet and was once put on trial by Satan. The Flying Fool, the Black Angel, the Bald Eagle came and went as back-up features and were all quirky aerial daredevils who rained down hell on badguys of all stripes."

    The Complete Golden Age Airboy & Valkyrie hardcover is readily available online in this, the current Golden Age of Comics.

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    Also, PS Artbooks is reprinting them in their "softee" (i.e., tpb) format from the beginning.

  • AIR FIGHTERS CLASSICS:

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    I have paused my re-read of Eclipse's Airboy to read (reprints of) some of the original Air Fighters comics. Just as Timothy Truman was inspired by The Steranko History of Comics to do a Spider comic book, so too was Chuck Dixon inspired by it to do an Airboy one. In 1987, Eclipse Comics reprinted the first six issues of the original Golden Age Air Fighters comics (actually #2-7; v1 #1 was something of a "false start"). I bought these six issues at the same quarter sale that I purchased Eclipse's entire Airboy series, but I haven't read them until now, inspired by Chuck Dixon's description of them. Air Fighters (not only Airboy, but Skywolf, Iron Ace, the Black Angel, the Bald Eagle, the Flying Dutchman) appeals to me in a way that Blackhawk never did.

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