Number 1575: Airboy fights the Ice People

A writer pulled out the stops when he wrote this Airboy opus. Airboy flies far north, then tangles with Ice-Incas, food gulls, and Vikings with no eyes. Really. What a crazy story. And I knew how truly crazy it was when I saw the panel where Airboy speculates the reason for the strange colors of the houses is because the sightless Vikings can’t see what they are painting! I stand all amazed, my friends...all amazed.

Writer unknown, artist is Ernest Schroeder. From Airboy Comics Vol 6 No. 5 (1949).

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Two more Airboy stories. I posted these both in 2010:

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Number 1521: Big wheels

Fans of both Airboy Comics and Blackhawk might have been surprised to see two similar contraptions on the covers of each, close together. Blackhawk was out first, cover-dated September 1952, while Airboy Comics followed shortly in an issue dated December 1952.

Blackhawk cover by Reed Crandall

So...is the Airboy wheel a retread? (Yuk, yuk.)

From Airboy Comics Volume 9 Number 11 (1952). Art by Ernest Schroeder.

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Number 1412: Airboy’s pyramid déjà vu

This story from Airboy Comics Vol. 9 No. 7 (1952) reminds me of another story. It’s from the previous issue of Airboy, and I showed it in January.*

Both stories have pyramid-shaped UFOs, both have tentacled creatures (one green, one pink), and yet the stories don’t appear to connect. If you are a fan of comic book continuity you may wish to skip this sort of thing. I have no idea why the stories were presented one after the other, why the similarities, and why Airboy seems to have forgotten what happened just a month before in his previous adventure. Alien memory wipe, perhaps?

Art by Ernie Schroeder.

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*Click on the thumbnail to read it.

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Number 1383: The not altogether-horrible Hillman horrors

Hillman Periodicals, publishers of Airboy Comics and other titles, had no horror comics in their line. But Airboy was known to battle some ghoulish foes, and because horror comics were popular in the early fifties some of the elements in that comic skewed toward the horror genre.

To wit, the non-Airboy contents of Airboy Comics Vol. 9 #5, from 1952. The stories are short, and all have some horror to them.

Gerald McCann,* was a fine artist moonlighting in comic books. His moody, dark style fits “The Wolf Boy of Krakow” very well. Ernie Schroeder did the Heap story, as well as the cover illustration from the tale. The Heap was a character like the later Swamp Thing and Man-Thing, inspired by Theodore Sturgeon’s 1940 short-story, “It!” Heap was a peripatetic, shambling mute who went from one town to another, involving himself in various horror scenarios. The tone of the series reminds me of Dick Briefer’s last and more serious incarnation of his Frankenstein character, seen in The Monster of Frankenstein. Last, longtime comic artist and journeyman Bill Ely* drew “The Crown of Coort,” which features a Lovecraftian monster and a classic last panel.

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*More McCann and Ely here. Just click the pictures.

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