Talking Pulpsploitation: Nicholas Ahlhelm on Airboy

All three of these characters will play a
part in future Airboy stories.

Why Airboy?

He certainly isn’t a character that went without a revival in the 1980s. Chuck Dixon and Tim Truman created a rather amazing series at Eclipse (now being collected by IDW) with art by the likes of Stan Woch, Ben Dunn, Ron Randall and Tom Lyle.

Flying Dutchman will be the first other Air Fighter to
make an appearance in the new book.

But that series didn’t tell the story of the original Airboy. Instead it focused on Davy Nelson Jr., the son of the original character and his interaction with a mix of the original Air Fighters and new “ripped from the headlines” adventures. Despite being written by well known Republican writer Chuck Dixon, it was even famous for being the anti-Reagan comic. But while it offered great stories, it wasn’t the take on Airboy I wanted to see.

I wanted to go back to the original, I wanted to make him a fish out of water and I wanted to update the Air Fighters in a very different way.

In my initial short story, Misery and the Airtomb play their part in the first story, but they are really a subplot as Airboy finds himself young and alive again in the early 1980s. He’s immediately thrust into a plot to stop the massive super-weapon that nearly killed him once before.

The tale will hopefully kickoff a new series of adventures starring the high-flying adventurer beginning in 2017.

Pulpsploitation is now available in print and ebook at Amazon.