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[MarkWarner]

Last week's Barker is still generating some comments, which is cool, but we also need to looks at this week's choice.

One comic book character that I am interested in finding more out about is the Heap! As my knowledge of Airboy is very basic I thought it would be a good idea (for me anyway) to choose an Airboy comic. This one looked the ticket.

Now for a bit of anarchy (which seems to come quite easily to many of us here). For those of you who just read the main story we concentrate on you, have a choice. Either the first Airboy story "Flight of the Robots", or The Heap story "The Black Boar of Mongolia" which starts on our page 26. If you are a cover to cover reader (like me) you can forget this added bit of complexity

Airboy Comics v9 3 can be found at https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=40178.

[SuperScrounge]

Airboy - Not bad. Given the type of story it was the outcome was predictable and the writer didn't go out of his way with any unexpected plot twists, but he did a good job of simply telling a story. Art seemed a bit rough, but did the job.

The Iron Fish - Nice little factoids.

Cold Timber - Meh. Kind of a lame joke.

The Return of Torrio - Okay. Although they tied up the sailors and then sank the ships... errrrr... did they just let the tied up sailors drown?

Big Boys of the Hills - Predictable.

The Heap - Different. I was expecting the Heap to be the focus of the story, but he just kind of shows up to be a deus ex machina.

[MarkWarner]

Blimey! Before I start we have had really few reviews for this week (well one to be precise), hope it's just a blip. For me it's double excitement, as I wait to find out more about Airboy and the Heap.

Have just read the first Airboy story and it was excellent! Humanoid robot's flying planes is not quite the way things have panned out, but from today's perspective the plot was not too wild.

The one page "The Iron Fish" with four factual snippets is rather good. That was very quick thinking by Lieutenant Gordon Campbell. Knowing zero about firearms, I guess his gun (and/or the ammunition) was waterproofed somehow?

Gold Timber = kid's joke that made me chuckle for 10 seconds. On the other half of the page there is an advertisement for model planes. They look good and also quite expensive, but boy if you had access to a few mint condition one of these kits I think they'd have proved a good investment. However, the statement "Genuine Balsa Wood (feather light and iron-strong)", really does need some pulling up! The quibble is not about the feather-light claim, as balsa wood is very light. But one thing for certain is that it is NOT iron-strong. It is weak! Feather-strong weak!               

Midway thoughts: This book is really good, I am really enjoying it!

[bowers]

Glad to see an Airboy comic- one of my favorites. This one is a bit later than most of the stories I've read. Looks like they pretty much replaced Nazis with Eastern-bloc dictators, much as the Blackhawks did. I found Schroeder's bold blacks dramatic and effective, but I do prefer Kida's rendition of Airboy. Good story, but a little tame compared to some of the earlier stuff. Enjoyed the robo-pilot angle. I kind of missed Birdie, his wing-flapping plane. Airboy had some great villains. One was Misery, who existed to kill flyers and trap their souls in his flying crypt, The Airtomb. Another was the cleavage-flashing Valkyrie and her all-girl squadron, although she did later become an ally.
The Heap story was well-written and moved along quite quickly. The ending was a little predictable, but still a fine effort. Fully agree with Mark's comparison to the Hulk.
With the holidays approaching, things are getting crazy at work and my reading time has been drastically reduced. This one was a hit with me- sorry it took so long for me to finish reading it! Cheers, Bowers

[Captain Audio]

I really like the cutting edge 40's and fifties aircraft, the real thing was often more fantastic in appearance than those pictured in the comic books. Such craft as "the flying flapjack" the rear engined tail less crank winged "black bat" and of course the "Gruman Skyrocket" flown by the Blackhawk Squadron.
The inherent difficulties of propellor driven craft called for even more imaginative designs than modern jet aircraft.
They were rugged beasts as well, sometimes surviving huge gaping holes in fueselage and sections of wings and tail torn away yet staying in the air for hundreds of miles to get the crew home.
America's first jet fighter was even designed in part as a sail plane, no one trusted the jet engine back then, and with good reason. A draftsman preparing blueprints for production of the British jet engine in the US had left out a tiny lubrication hole and most early P-59 test flights ended with the engine seized up and the pilot flying the beast home as a glider.

[crashryan]

Time flew past and I didn't realize I hadn't commented on this comic until the next one was already out.

I haven't read tons of Airboy stories, but I've liked those I've read. No real surprises in this story, but it's fun and the writer keeps it moving. The story makes the age-old assumption that robots designed to do human jobs like flying a plane will look like humans. There's really no need for arms, legs, or even a head on a robot pilot.

The Eastern Bloc villain is about as generic as they come, but Ernie Schroeder's designs bring him and his minions to life. Schroeder is really what makes the story work. I love his aircraft designs, especially the enemy's single-seat fighters. The bomber is of course based on the B-36, but with the wing-mounted jet pods it predicts the B-52. To me Schroeder has always been a frustrating artist, walking a fine line between stylish and sloppy. He obviously draws well and his prop and costume designs suggest he puts a bit more thought into his art than the average artist. But his finishes are often sketchy to the point of non-existence, and he lets sloppy bits like skewed eyes and misplaced mouths stand even though he's capable of drawing them correctly. I end up wondering whether he really gives a damn about his work or not.

I'd heard most of the "Iron Fish" factoids before, but I didn't know they were still making wooden submarines in the 1890s.

"Cold Timber" wastes four panels of decent art to tell a joke that was old two weeks after the first match was manufactured. Back to Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, boys.

"The Return of Torrio" is okay, with solid art and an acceptable story. Like SuperScrounge I get the impression the sailors are tied up and left to go down with their ships.

Heap stories have always bugged me because The Heap usually just shambles through a story, staying long enough to get it to work out right. Because the stories are short and The Heap is incidental to the plot, no one in them gets time to be surprised by the critter or to wonder where he comes from. This makes the character seem even less substantial. While on the subject, this particular story sure wraps up in a big hurry.

Overall I give good marks to the book, mostly on the strength of Schroeder's Airboy.

[Captain Audio]

The Heap, Swampthing, and Manthing remind me of a very old story I found in a comic book where an elderly man out hunting died of some natural cause and his body slowly became part of the forest floor. Later when a young girl was in those woods and in danger the decomposed body with roots dirt and other stuff taking the place of muscle rose up to protect her.
Don't remember much else. I think the girl was his grand daughter who came to the woods hoping to find his remains.
The story was very well done and possibly by a big name author.
Could it have been the inspiration for other such creatures?

The story makes the age-old assumption that robots designed to do human jobs like flying a plane will look like humans. There's really no need for arms, legs, or even a head on a robot pilot.

From comments made by the supervillian about turning Airboy into a robot I think these creatures were a sort of cyborg animated corpse rather than fully robotic.
Also a manlike robot could fly any standard aircraft while a fully robotic machine built specifically to fly and nothing else would have to be connected directly to all instrumentation and controls, which would require many modifications to an aircraft before it could be used.

[jimmm kelly]

Also Solomon Grundy.

All the swamp monsters seem to have their origin in "It," a short story by Theodore Sturgeon published in the August 1940 issue of UNKNOWN.

Perhaps the story you read was based on that.

[Captain Audio]

Yep thats it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It!_(short_story)
I knew it was a name author.

[paw broon]

Even though I've only read relatively few Heap stories - this version, I mean - I have always been intrigued by the beast.  This story was a decent read and, as is often the case, The Heap is more of a passing through character rather than the main protagonist.  Here, as well as simply shambling onto the set, he plays a vital role in killing the boar.
I used to get confused between this Heap and the later Skywald Heap, but I realise I prefer this one.  The Skywald Heap was in Psycho and I think there was an issue of his own title.