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).

 **********

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

More about →

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.

More about →

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.

**********

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

More about →

Number 1225: Mom alarmed by Alarming Tales

In 1958, when bringing home a stack of comics from my weekly trip to the drugstore, anything that looked like a horror comic went to the bottom or middle of the stack so Mom couldn't see it. Even though 1958 comics weren't horror comics like the pre-Code horror, if it looked like horror to Mom it was banned. I slipped up, and she saw me reading this when she came into my room. She snatched it out of my hands and I didn't see another copy of Alarming Tales #3 for several decades.

The cover was drawn by Joe Simon in Jack Kirby's style. I read an opinion by a religious person once about this cover, which the writer thought mocked Jesus walking on water. I wonder if Harvey Comics got any nasty letters over this cover. We’ll probably never know.

I'm showing three stories today, the cover story, “They Walked On Water,” “The Strange One,” both drawn by Doug Wildey, and “Get Lost,” drawn by Ernie Schroeder. Schroeder we know from several Airboy stories posted on this blog. These stories are all Code-approved, but even without being horror they are  moody and have a lot of atmosphere. The first two stories are swamp gothic, and “The Strange One” is set mostly in the dark, with deep shadows and dark figures.

This is the fourth Harvey posting this month. It's a coincidence and I didn't notice it until now. You have to admit, despite all being from the same publisher, the entries are very different from each other. I even have more Harvey Comics coming up in the next few weeks.

More about →