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.
Also, PS Artbooks is reprinting them in their "softee" (i.e., tpb) format from the beginning.
AIR FIGHTERS CLASSICS:
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.
VALKYRIE:
I am now up to the (first) three-issue Valkyrie mini-series by Chuck Dixon and Paul Gulacy, which falls between #24 and #25 (actually, Valkyrie #2 occurs concurrently with Airboy #24). In it, Valkyrie is kidnapped and put on trial for war crimes against Russia in 1944. She is innocent, because she had already defected to the United States by that time, but the case against her is strong (plus the court is rigged against her). I read this before but I didn't remember the outcome until midway through #3. But it wasn't the story itself that reminded me; it was the way Gulacy drew the body languange of one of the witnesses. Very subtle, but as revealing as a performance on film by a talented actor. It also occurs to me that this story goes a long way toward explaining (purposefully of not) the last "Airboy/Valkyrie" story reprinted in The Complete Golden Age Airboy and Valkyrie.
Jeff, I don't think it makes much of a difference in the continuity, but Valkyrie co-stars in "The Liberty Project" #6 alongside Cimarron. And of course they are all in "Total Eclipse" as well. Going by cover date (Nov 1987), Liberty Project #6 should have hit the stands at about the same time as Airboy #33.
Thanks, Luis. I didn't know about that one, and don't have any issues of Liberty Project in any case. I don't plan to include Total Eclipse in this discussion.
AIR MAIDENS SPECIAL:
Every once in a while I read (or re-read) something that causes me to ask, "When did they stop making comic books?" For example, Airboy #28-30 features a story in which one of Airboy's enemies returns from the dead to lead an attack on his estate with the help of an army of giant rodent bikers and zombie Nazi paratroopers. I think I know now why the details of these stories did not stick with me after the first time I read them years ago. In order to maintain its bi-weekly status, Airboy had a "Sky Wolf" back-up feature for its first 32 issues. Next time I read through these (and there will be a "next time"), I will read just the main feature (or just the back-ups). Similarly, I will be able to skip some of the crossovers and specials. Whereas the Airmaidens Special fits in nicely between issues #25 and #26, Airboy and Mr. Monster can well be skipped, and Airboy Meets the Prowler fits better into Prowler continuity.
SKY WOLF:
Speaking of back-up features (as I was yesterday), Sky Wolf graduated (temporarily) into his own three-issue limited series in 1988. His spot in the back pages of Airboy was taken over by "The Heap," by Len Wein and Carmine Infantino. The writer/artist pairing is interesting because Infantino drew the feature for a time back in the '40s, and Wein is not unfamiliar with writing muck-monsters himself. The Sky Wolf back-up feature was set in the Korean War era (or just after it), and the mini-series continued in that vein. The story took Sky Wolf to French Indochina where France was fighting in losing battle with the Viet Minh to hold onto a colony that would one day become Vietnam.
In Airboy, the stories continue to be "ripped from the headlines," including one set amidst the Central American politics of the Iran-contra era. A later story, which was set in Afghanistan and saw Airboy fighting alongside the Mujahideen, caused some strife between conservative writer Chuck Dixon and left-leaning editor cat yronwode. The Air Fighters Meet Sgt. Strike was a one-shot featuring the faux Golden Age version of Eclipse's character Strike, but similar to the Airboy Meets the Prowler one-shot, this one fits better in Strike! continuity.
The second Valkyrie mini-series and the Airboy vs. the Airmaidens one-shot slot in nicely between Airboy #44 and #45. Editor cat yronwode hired a tyro writer who "apparently had this one story burning to get out of him" to write #45, then had Chuck Dixon help him finish it. #46-49 comprises the four-part "The Airboy Diary" illustrated by Ernie Colon, whose style has never really appealed to me. That leads directly into #50, the series' final issue. Not only did Adam and Andy Kubert pencil and ink it, but Joe Kubert did the cover. It is open-ended and, when I first read it 30 years ago, I had a definite idea where I would have liked to have seen the story go from there, but I no longer recall what it was.
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