[The Australian Panther]

a Crucial episode in tthe Airboy Narrative here.
I find myself wondering what the reaction would be for a adolescent boy on spotting this cover. Or his mother's reaction when he took it home. Curious that Valkyrie and the AirMaidens are clearly women and all have the hots for 'AirBOY'?! And we even have a whiip on the cover.
Fredric Wertham would have loved this book.
Fred Kida's art is excellent. I've always wondered about the validity of the name of the inker, Bill Quackenbush?!

cheers!

Link to the comment: Air Fighters Comics v2 2

[crashryan]

There really was a Bill Quackenbush. I cribbed this from Lambiek:

William Quackenbush was a Golden Age comic book artist, who worked mainly on titles for Quality Comics. He did art on features like 'Atlantic Patrol', 'Espionage', 'Phantom Clipper', 'Quicksilver', 'Rusty Ryan', 'Sally O'Neil', 'Secret War News' and 'Spin Shaw', all between 1944 and 1946. Earlier, in 1943, he worked on the Hillman features 'Airboy' (inks) and 'Iron Ace'.

Quackenbush would have been the perfect name for a Disney Duck artist.

[Robb_K]

There really was a Bill Quackenbush. I cribbed this from Lambiek:

(1) William Quackenbush was a Golden Age comic book artist, who worked mainly on titles for Quality Comics. He did art on features like 'Atlantic Patrol', 'Espionage', 'Phantom Clipper', 'Quicksilver', 'Rusty Ryan', 'Sally O'Neil', 'Secret War News' and 'Spin Shaw', all between 1944 and 1946. Earlier, in 1943, he worked on the Hillman features 'Airboy' (inks) and 'Iron Ace'.[/i]

(2)Quackenbush would have been the perfect name for a Disney Duck artist.

(1) This is really several weird coincidences! I never knew of the GA comic book artist, Bill Quackenbush.  But Bill Quackenbush was well known to me, nevertheless.  He was an all star defenceman on my favourite National Hockey League team, The Detroit Red Wings (as they had Gordie Howe, my father's and my uncle's favourite player, Gordie Howe. As an avid hockey fan I followed his career, and had all his hockey cards.
Here's his card from 1951-52:

He was born in Toronto in 1922, and started his pro hockey career in 1942.  Quakenbush can't be a very common name in English.  It's a Dutch surname, and pretty rare, at that.  It is spelled : "Kwakkenbos(ch), meaning "Quacking Bush" (derived from large bushes or trees that marsh birds (herons) roost and chatter on their stopovers in Holland, on their way migrating to, and from, Central Africa). 

Bill Quackenbush, the artist, started his comic book career in that same year of 1942.  Having, myself been a hockey player in a fairly high level of Organised Hockey, and also a comic book artist/writer, I can vouch for the fact that it's not likely that one man could have produced as much comic book artwork between 1942 and 1946, as Quackenbusch is credited, unless he did it all in the hockey off-season.  As Lambiek lists the artist as having been an American, it seems more than likely, they were two different people.  And because they were about the same age, they can't be father and son.  Unfortunately, I could find no biography of the artist to confirm whether or not he really was American, as opposed to Canadian, where he was born, and if he was related to his Canadian namesake.

(2). It's also a weird coincidence that as a child and teenager, my two great loves and hobbies, which occupied most of my non-school time, were playing ice hockey and being a fan of the sport, and being a comic book fan and reader, and later, a comic art and story creator.  And on top of that, I also share with the 2 Bill Quackenbushes Dutch ancestry and I speak the language to know the meaning and origin of their surname.  And on top of that, I create Disney Duck stories, as you mentioned above, would have been a career that fit perfectly with the name Quackenbush. 

It's a small World full of coincidences that seem unlikely.  Or is it that such coincidences occur much more often than we think, but we only notice a few of them?

[The Australian Panther]

It's a small World full of coincidences that seem unlikely.  Or is it that such coincidences occur much more often than we think, but we only notice a few of them? 

That's what we call Serendipity, Robb!
"the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident"

How is serendipity used in other parts of speech?

Serendipity is a noun, coined in the middle of the 18th century by author Horace Walpole (he took it from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip). The adjective form is serendipitous, and the adverb is serendipitously. A serendipitist is "one who finds valuable or agreeable things not sought for."
   

[Robb_K]

It's a small World full of coincidences that seem unlikely.  Or is it that such coincidences occur much more often than we think, but we only notice a few of them? 

That's what we call Serendipity, Robb!
"the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident"

How is serendipity used in other parts of speech?

Serendipity is a noun, coined in the middle of the 18th century by author Horace Walpole (he took it from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip). The adjective form is serendipitous, and the adverb is serendipitously. A serendipitist is "one who finds valuable or agreeable things not sought for."
   

Thanks for the reference to 'serendipity" and its etymology, history and usage.  I knew the word as "fortunate discoveries by accident", and "the crossing of paths that was meant to be (happen)".  I remember the folk music singing group, "The Serendipity Singers".  As a big fan of ancient Middle Eastern History, I am glad to learn of the words origin from the ancient Persian town of Serendip.  When we were young children there was no Google search tool to quickly find the answer to millions of our questions from easy access to much of mankind's accumulated knowledge.  It took lots of time and effort to go to our local libraries and look up the clews (1940s spelling) that could potentially lead to tracking down the answers.  NONE of us had the spare time to do that for all the little questions and wonderments we had.  As we went through life AFTER such computer search tools existed, we had, over time, forgotten all those questions, and only find the answers (serendipitously) when a coincidence occurs (crosses our paths) to bring up that question again.