Hillman 〉Airboy
Airboy debuted in Air Fighters Comics #2 (cover-date Nov. 1942), an omnibus series featuring a variety of aviator heroes. The series was renamed Airboy Comics with vol. 2, #11 (Dec. 1945), and ran 89 issues, through vol. 10, #4 (May 1953).
In the early issues, Biro wrote the scripts with Dave Wood and drew the covers, Al Camy was the initial story artist. He was followed by Tony DiPreta and, beginning with Air Fighters No. 10 (July 1943), Fred Kida, who would become closely associated with the series. Ernie Schroeder became the regular artist with Airboy Comics #vol. 5, No. 11 (Dec. 1948), through the end of the series’ run, with Dan Barry, Maurice Del Bourgo, Carmine Infantino, and others supplying an occasional story. The two consecutive series contained backup stories about other aviators, including Skywolf, Iron Ace, the Black Angel, the Bald Eagle, the Flying Dutchman, the Flying Fool, and the prototypical comic book swamp monster, the Heap. Airboy’s most frequently recurring supporting character was the German aviator Valkyrie, who fought on the side of the Axis but then defected to the Allies.
Hillman stopped publishing comics in 1953. Two issues were reprinted in 1973 and a trade paperback entitled Valkyrie!: From the Pages of Air Fighters and the Airboy was published in 1982 with five stories from Air Fighters Comics vol. 2, #s 2 and 7 and Airboy Comics vol. 2, #12, and vol. 3 #s 6 and 12.
Fictional Biography
Airboy was David (“Davy”) Nelson II, the son of an expert pilot and, despite his youth, a crack flyer himself. His friend, inventor and Franciscan friar Brother Francis Martier, had created a highly maneuverable prototype aircraft that flew by flapping its wings, like a bird. Martier, however, was killed while testing it, and Davy inherited both the plane and a uniform, which had apparently been in Martier’s family since the French Revolution. Davy soon christened himself “Airboy”, and in his seemingly sentient new plane, “Birdie”, helped the Allies during World War II.
Airboy confronted such weird antagonists as intelligent rats, the mysterious Misery – whose Airtomb imprisoned the souls of dead pilots – and his cleavage-baring Nazi nemesis, Valkyrie, a German aviator who later became his ally.
After the conclusion of World War II, David Nelson II continued to work as a freelance pilot and mercenary for a time, but he eventually retired from combat flying and stored Birdie in a barn outside his California estate. He had a son, whom he named David Nelson III, and founded an aircraft manufacturing company, through which he became very wealthy. In the mid-1980s, David Nelson II was assassinated by mercenaries from the South American nation of Bogantilla. When David Nelson III discovered that his father had been assassinated, he began to investigate the circumstances which had led up to his father’s death. He soon discovered his father’s mothballed plane and uniform and teamed up with a number of the surviving Air Fighters to face many of the same enemies as David Nelson II, as well as South American dictators, Soviets, pirates and corporate criminals.
