Number 2345: Airboy re-tells his origin story

Airboy’s story is as an orphan, raised in a monastery by a Franciscan monk who also happened to design and build trick aircraft (hey, it’s a comic book, where stuff like this is easier to swallow). It was first told in Air Fighters #2 in 1942. The character was created by Charles Biro, and was a hit. Airboy’s wing-flapping plane, Birdie, apparently never runs out of fuel, and can go just about anywhere. As we see in this story it even flies into the famous Paris sewers. (Remember, it's a comic book.)

The artwork was done by Dan Barry, who had a very slick style. Barry is one of my favorite comic artists of the period. He worked on comic strips and comic books, doing Tarzan and Flash Gordon in newspapers and working in crime comics for Charles Biro while also drawing for DC Comics. He poured a lot into his work. Whatever the page rate he got in those days, it probably wasn’t enough.

From Airboy Volume 11, Number 4 (1948):

Number 2169: Airboy vs the rats, part 1

I have held off showing the two part Airboy story from 1948 for a good reason. It more properly belongs as one of my Thanksgiving Turkey Award winners. But at 30 pages of story over two issues, I have decided it is too long for that award.

It’s a science fiction story about rats declaring war on humans. That would be silly enough, but throw in a little mouse named Cheesie(!) that owes allegiance to Airboy for setting its broken leg, and the jaw drops another few inches.

This cheesy story is from Airboy Comics Vol. 5 Number 11 (whole number 58, 1948). Cover by Dan Zolnerwich (“Zolne”), and artwork on the story by Ernest Schroeder. Grand Comics Database doesn’t know who is to blame for the script.

Come back on Friday for part 2.

Number 2057: Airboy’s mad monkeys

Maybe I’ve watched too many zombie/walking dead-type movies because this Airboy story reminds me of a familiar story: the infected bites a healthy person, and that person turns into one of...them. So it is at Custer University, with studies of a deadly disease in monkeys by Airboy’s soon-to-be-married friend, Hal. When an infected barrel of monkeys gets out, they aren’t looking for bananas to bite into: they are spreading “malobia” to humans. In our computer era any word that begins with “mal” is a good hint that whatever infection it is, it’s bad.

The story is from Airboy Comics Volume 7, number 10 (1950). The Grand Comics Database credits script and art to Ernest Schroeder.