Pulp-Powered Comics: Airfighters #1

After a so-so revival of Airboy early last year, Moonstone finally presented the follow-up, their anthology Airfighters. The book clocks in at sixty-two pages of black and white classic flying action with revivals of eight different flying heroes of the thirties and forties. Well worth the $5.99 cover price in this author’s opinion.

Chuck Dixon continues his return to Airboy in “Iron Rain”.The twelve page story proves to be a rather disappointed done-in-one adventure of the hero fighting Nazis. But the greatest oversight is the lack of Valkyrie in the story despite her appearance on the great cover by Tom Grindberg.

Tom DeFalco’s Flying Fool takes a novel look at the genre, but tales of the Flying Dutchman and Iron Ace prove a little more lackluster.

The Bald Eagle tale’s conclusion clearly takes the character in a direction never used before, but only subsequent stories really will tell us how good the new Bald Eagle might be.

Ver Curtiss provides some stunning art to Martin Powell’s Black Angel, which gives us a slightly more heart warming story of beating back the Nazis.

Sky Wolf takes the biggest departure from the original character, or at least the version of that character I know from Eclipse’s Airboy series. The art by Oscar Celestini is unique, but quite solid. Unfortunately the character and his story seem rather flat in comparison to the exploits of the aforementioned Airboy-backup star.

The book concludes with what is clearly the best tale: Captain Midnight by Christopher Mills (Femme Noir) and Rick Burchett (Batman Adventures). While by no means an Eisner contender, the short takes the classic radio hero and shows just how exciting his swashbuckling adventures can be, even in eight pages. He drops in to the Aztec jungle, stops the Nazi plot, and swings out in the company of a beautiful damsel in distress. The series works on an adventure serial level to absolute perfection while avoiding the typical European setting of far too many Nazi stories.

All in all, I rate Airfighters #1 as a great package. Hopefully we will see another one from Moonstone Books soon. Recommended.

Pulp-Powered Comics: Femme Noir

Much like Athena Voltaire (a review you will see later this month), Femme Noir started its life as a web comic before transitioning its way to the printed page through the fine folks at Ape Entertainment.

Written by Christopher Mills (Primortals and drawn by the legendary Joe Staton (E-Man and just about every DC hero), “The Dark City Diaries” take us to Port Nocturne, a city dripping with the kind of noir storytelling only found in black and white cinema. But the full color comic somehow catapults that city in to a costumed vigilante’s world with the appearance of the comic’s mysterious namesake and Brother Grim.

One of the key factors in the series is the mystery of Femme Noir herself. No one knows her secret identity, not even the reader. We are given three choices to the character’s real world life, but all or none may be true. It’s certainly not a new concept: it’s been used everywhere from the animated movie Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman to Max Allen Collins’ Wild Dog to the Tangent version of The Joker. But Mills never lets us in on the secret, at least not yet.

Each issue gives a done-in-one that builds on top the mystery of the character even as she fights villains that take the noir elements and push them straight in to pulp, whether it be a jungle woman or an evil robot. All of it seems to fit in place in the slightly strange city of Port Nocturne. It all works incredibly well together, but I don’t want to give away too much of the fun of this book.

Several gorgeous pin-ups ordain the backs of the original issues, though I am unaware if they are included in the collection. As a web comics author, Christopher Mills is easily reachable through his Facebook page or through one of his numerous websites. He even has pages of the web comic version of Femme Noir up at Ape Entertainment’s comic site.

But I digress, this is about an amazing graphic novel, well worth the price of admission. Check it out. Highly Recommended.