Cov e r by

Timothy Truman
O r i g i n a l Se r i es E d i ts by

Timothy Truman
Co l le c t i o n E d i ts by

J usti n Ei si n ge r and A lo n zo S i mo n
Co l le c t i o n D e s i g n by

G i l b e rto L a zc a n o

A I R B OY # 1
o n w i n gs o f d e ath
J U LY 1 5 , 1 9 8 6

A I R B OY # 2
the wolf and the phoenix
J U LY 2 9 , 1 9 8 6

A I R B OY # 3
m isery loves com pany
AUGUST 12, 1986

A I R B OY # 4
assault on villa miserio
AUGUST 26, 1986

PAGE 8

PAGE 22

PAGE 36

PAGE 50

A I R B OY # 9
b o dy co u n t !
NOVEMBER 4, 1986

A I R B OY # 1 0
to oth a n d c l aw
NOVEMBER 18, 1986

A I R B OY # 1 1
i am birdie
DECEMBER 1, 1986

A I R B OY # 1 2
g o n e to te xas
DECEMBER 15, 1986

P A G E 12 0

PA G E 14 4

P A G E 16 8

P A G E 19 2

ISBN: 978-1-61377-900-2
Ted Adams, CEO & Publisher Greg Goldstein, President & COO Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic Artist Chris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief Matthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial Officer Alan Payne, VP of Sales Dirk Wood, VP of Marketing Lorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services Jeff Webber, VP of Digital Publishing & Business Development

17 16 15 14

1 2 3 4

www.IDWPUBLISHING.com
IDW founded by Ted Adams, Alex Garner, Kris Oprisko, and Robbie Robbins

Facebook: facebook.com/idwpublishing Twitter: @idwpublishing YouTube: youtube.com/idwpublishing Instagram: instagram.com/idwpublishing deviantART: idwpublishing.deviantart.com Pinterest: pinterest.com/idwpublishing/idw-staff-faves

AIRBOY ARCHIVES, VOLUME 1. FEBRUARY 2014. FIRST PRINTING. 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.

A I R B OY # 5
m isery takes a holi day
SEPTEMBER 9, 1986

A I R B OY # 6
bac k i n th e u . s . a .
SEPTEMBER 23, 1986

A I R B OY # 7
pa rt y t i m e
OCTOBER 7, 1986

A I R B OY # 8
d own i n the dark ness
OCTOBER 21, 1986

PAGE 64

PAGE 78

PAGE 92

PA G E 10 6

A I R B OY # 1 3
tag-te am
JANUARY 12, 1987

A I R B OY # 1 4
a barrel full of sharks
JANUARY 27, 1987

A I R B OY # 1 5
caribbean rampage pt1
FEBRUARY 10, 1987

A I R B OY # 1 6
carribean rampage pt2
FEBRUARY 27, 1987

P A G E 216

PAGE 240

PAGE 264

PAGE 288

Wh y A i r b oy ?
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.

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.

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.

Airboy! He was the perfect fit for Eclipse. An adolescent who built a miraculous airplane with the help of a Franciscan monk in Californias

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-incheek or retro chic. Airboy would be revived intact with all the imponderables and silliness retained and presented for a new audience. 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 he happened 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 of Air-Fighters Comics. I wanted to write this book. I HAD to write this book. Id rather write Airboy 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 in Airboy Comics and Air-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, Thats where I come in. Well, actually, Tim Truman came in first.

the Lone Rangers horse Silver. Birdy was a character as important as Airboy 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 problem was, 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 AirFighter, 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 retrowild 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

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 rebooted 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 everything into 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 coffee mug 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 Dixon Tampa, FL

Cover by Timothy

Truman and Stan Woch

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