Airboy #1. May Your Conscience Be Your Guide.

Airboy #1 review

Airboy, the 4 part mini-series written by James Robinson, penciled by Greg Hinkle and published by Image. That was the easy part of this whole review, the rest of it, well, it’s hard to explain. Bringing back a hero from the Golden Age of comics always sounds like a good idea, “sounds” like a good idea, I’ll tell you in my experience it never turns out real well. Honestly if people didn’t grow up with the character they don’t care that that character is even coming back, and I’ll tell you, they were probably killed off for good reason and not having names like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, or Captain America. Aquaman you somehow staved elimination.

Airboy #1 though is not your average Golden Age revamp or reboot, and thus, this is where the interesting part of the story begins. It’s a parody and ironic take on the comic’s writers and possibly an exaggerated take on the comic book industry in general. James Robinson write’s in himself, struggling to find the right path to take a rebooted Airboy after Image Comics exec Eric Stephenson asks him too because well, he’s old. In attempt to shake things up he starts with his choice artists first, Greg Hinkle, and then try to The Shining it, minus the long winter by themselves in the mountains and ravenous murdering, by shacking up in a motel and forcing the creative juices out of them.

So, do you like drugs. No, um, do you like watching people take drugs. Wait, that doesn’t sound right either, do you think drugs are funny? Ok this is going nowhere, just know the two take a shit ton of drugs, ingest copious amounts of alcohol, may or may not indulge in some indecent behavior with a husky barfly (large woman, not some new species of dog), and are greeted by none other than the man himself, Airboy.

Airboy may be a hallucination, maybe he’s really the guys new conscious, either way, I think we found the new introduction to the Golden Age they were looking for.