Greetings Loyal Airmen, as most of you know, the Air Chief’s favorite movie of all time is the original, 1938 movie KING KONG.  We saw at the age of 5 when it played in re-released in a local theater and it seared itself into our consciousness. Even at the age of 5, we somehow knew the giant gorilla really wasn’t a monster, but the actual victim and in the we didn’t want him to die atop that mighty Empire State Building. It wouldn’t be until years later that the movie’s moral theme became obvious to us as both an adult and adventure writer. Over the years we have seen the film well over a hundred times and we still love it. We have a deluxe-Blu-ray copy now and we also enjoyed Peter Jackson’s heartfelt remake, which comes in a second best. We do not even discuss the horrible 70s version with the guy in the gorilla suit. Please.

So in last week’s Log Entry we told you all about our visit to a Muscle Car show. What we didn’t tell you was that in their gift shop were hundreds of tins…including just one of the King Kong movie poster.  Yup!! And it now hangs on my office wall.  Wahoo.

At the same the Air Chief found this tin treasure, we remembered that still left undone back in the office as a spectacular King Kong resin model kit given to us for Christmas by writer pal, Michael Housel. Ergo we vowed upon getting back home, we’d make time to put that model together.  And today we did just that. Thankfully the kid itself came pre-painted and with only five pieces to glue together. Took us all of ten minutes to assemble, and yes, we should have done it months ago. Above is the finished kit, it highlights the scene from the original movie wherein Kong has bested a T-Rex in combat and is beating his chest in triumph. Thanks Michael, for a truly awesome piece which also gets a place of honor in the Air Chief’s inner sanctum.  LONG LIVE KONG!!!

One of the things the Air Chief loves to do is write short strips and then let his friends and colleagues have them for their own small independetn titles.  Such was the case several years ago when we penned, “Monster Vs Machine,” an eight page tale wherein Frankenstein’s Monster battles a steampunk robot. We were able to recruit super artist Erik Roman to draw the strip and our buddy WarrenMontgomery to letter it. It then appeared in issue # 5 of Redbud Studio’s RON FORTIER’S TALES OF THE MACABRE with a cover by Rob Davis.  A few months later, Todd Jones, another pal, asked if he could use in his own black and white anthology, and it appeared WICKED AWESOME TALES # 4 with a cover by Jeff Herndon. Now that was well over a year ago.

Now Warren, the same Warren who lettered the strip, is publishing it in the 6th issue of his own FUN ADVENTURE COMICS with a cover by Harrison Wood…and one major difference than the previous two printings, this one is in full color (see sample page #1 above) as rendered by colorist James Penafiel.  Only goes to show you can’t keep a good strip down. The idea behind all this exchange of strips between these small publications is simple enough, multiple publishing across the country expands the exposure of the strips and thereby the wonderful works of all the creators involved. The Air Chief plans on continuing writing and sharing these comic strips long into the future. We hope you enjoy them, whichever book you find them in.

And there you have it for this week’s Flight Log, Loyal Airmen. Thanks for dropping and see you back here next Friday.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, we hope all of you who were off last weekend, the traditional Spring Break for most students in the US, had a great time and maybe some of you even got away from the Norther Winters Blasts holding the North East captive. Valerie and the Air Chief headed for wonderful Ft. Myers, Florida where one of our first stop was at Jet Blue Park, better known as Fenway South where we had the pleasure of catching a Red Sox game and seeing our favorites take the filed once again.  We even got to meet Tall Minnie. How that woman gets along on those stilts is a marvel.

For those of who not in the know, when Jet Blue Park was built, they had it done to the exact specs of our beloved Fenway in downtown Boston. That way the new rookies coming to the park each Spring can actually play ball in a field that will mirror the one they hope to launch their careers on.  Joining us again on this Florida adventure were Val’s sister Barbara and her husband Gus, two of the nicest, most generous souls the Air Chief has ever known. Spending any time with this pair is always much, much fun and this trip was no exception. Sadly when headed back to Colorado, they were returning to endless winter plaguing New Hampshire still.

The park itself also has some really cool features including a statue of retired slugger and Fenway favorite, slugger David “Big Poppi” Ortiz made entirely of Leggos. Then when Val saw this poster of ace pitcher Roger Clements, she just had to have a pix with it. Baseball season opens officially on March 29th and our beloved Sox will be back in Florida to take on their division rivals, the Tampa Rays.  GO SOX!!!

One of the things the Air Chief always makes sure to do when in Ft. Myers is to hooking up with his baby sister, Mrs. Ann-Marie Cormier and her husband Norm. New Hampshire transplants themselves, they love this city and have no intentions of ever return back north to the cold. Both of them looked great and the four of us, along with Barbara & Gus hit up a local Texas Longhorn for some good eats and loving conversation.

For those of you wondering, “Hey, no beaches?” Let us assure you, Ft.Myers has several great beaches, sad the temps never went of 71 degrees on the few days we got to visit them, whereas the actual water temp was 86. Meaning if you dared step out of the water, the breeze coming off the water would be very, very chilly. We opted to sit back in our fold out chairs and catch a few rays. Oh, and before we forget, the Air Chief, didn’t hesitate a second to jump on a bike and go riding with Gus when the offer was made. Although honestly we cannot remember the last time we actually got up on a bike. The photo above has Gus in the lead with the Air Chief hot on his trail. Guess what they say is true, you never forget how to ride one of those things. It was so much.

Now if you wanted some classier transportation, on the last day of vacation we all visited a place called MUSCLE CAR CITY with over 175 classic muscle cars on displays from several different eras. And while Gus was fawning over the sweet rides he’d had as a high-school teenager, the Air Chief was naturally drawn to the 30s vintage models, thinking of all those great pulp yarns these machines will inspire in the future.

A lime green 1935 Cadillac.  Check out those fenders, running boards and headlamps. Cars had so much style in those long ago days. All in all it was a great seven days that really came and went to fast. Hopefully we’ll be back there again many, many times.

And least you think because the Air Chief was gone all week, nothing got done at Hangar 27, nothing could be further from the truth. During our absence, Chief Engineer Rob Davis completed assembling out two latest anthologies and got them out to the market. SHERLOCK HOLMES – CONSULTING DETECTIVE, sporting a gorgeous Laura Givens cover, features stories by I.A. Watson, Lee Houston, Jr, Peter Basile & Greg Hatcher with Rob providing the interior illustrations. THE MOON MAN Vol 2 has stories by Gene Moyers, Greg Hatcher (he’s a busy guy) Terry Alexander & Tim Holter Bruckner with a cover by Mike Fyles and interior illustrations by Richard Jun. As ever we are extremely proud of them and hope you’ll check them both out.

And there you have it, Loyal Airmen. Traveling is always fun but then again it is also always nice to come home. See you all next week.
Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, as you are reading this, the Air Chief and Valerie are in sunny Florida enjoying the warm weather and sandy beaches. Will be there for an entire week for a much needed winter-break, rest and relaxation. Hopefully by the time we return home, Colorado’s Spring will have started.  Oh, yeah.

We also hope to swing over to Jet Blue Park in Fort Myers and catch a Red Sox spring training against the Baltimore Orioles. Sure sign of Spring when baseball is back.

Last Sat, being the first Sat of the month, was our monthly breakfast gathering at the local comic shop. Which offered us the perfect opportunity to snap a photo with our students in our new comics writing class and here they it is. Left to right we have Scott, the Air Chief and Olivia up front, with young Max smiling away in the background. All three of these wonderful people are really gifted writers. Our job is to show them how to apply those skills to writing comics. And we love doing that.

We are also thrilled to announce our latest Airship 27 book release, QUATERMAIN – The New Adventures Vol 3 – The Beast Men by writer Wayne Carey.  This is a full length novel featuring H. Rider Haggard’s classic hero, African hunter/guide Allan Quatermain in a brand new adventure. The book features a cover by British artist Graham Hill and interior illustrations by artist Clayton Hinkle. The book is now available at Amazon in both paperback and on Kindle. We hope you’ll pick up a copy.

And finally, thirty-five years ago this week, Valerie became my wife. She was and remains my best friend in this whole crazy world we live in. These past thirty-five years have been a blessing to both of us and the Air Chief thanks God for this amazing, loving woman every single day of his life. Here is praying for another thirty-five years with you, Valerie Fortier.

There you go Loyal Airmen for this Flight Log.   See you all next week. Till then, God bless,

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen. Let’s start with a question this week. Who doesn’t love robots? The Air Chief honestly doesn’t know anyone who doesn’t love those mechanical beings that have fired our imagination from the earliest science fiction stories to wonders of the first silent films.

From the weirdly garbed actor in the silent film above to Republic’s clunky threatening metal monster that appeared in several of their serials to include King of the Rocketmen and The Mysterious Doctor Satan, we’ve all been wowed by these artificial beings. It didn’t matter if they were good or bad, they were just cool. So you can imagine our delight when asked to be a guest at this years Comic Fest in Denver: April 20th to 22nd. The theme of the show this year is ROBOTS IN COMICS. Wanting to do our home work, we went on-line to find a few oldies in this vein.

BOZO THE ROBOT was pretty much the Iron Man of his day, i.e. his inventor creator rode along inside his metal chassis controlling his movements. One can only imagine all the other such bizarre heroes populated these golden age classics.

The Air Chief personally recalls with much fondness the 60s DOOM PATROL from DC Comics with Cliff Steele, the man whose brain was transplanted into a robot body thus becoming ROBOTMAN.  Then while doing this search, we tripped over a much earlier version of the exact same character and realized “our” ROBOTMAN was an actual reboot of this earlier version. Wow.

In one form or another, all with insanely odd origins, robots have proliferated comics pages. Who could ever forget the Transformers, those “heroes in disguise” from another world. From a hot toy-line to Marvel popularity and then ultimately scores of blockbuster movies.

And speaking of such, one of our earliest career gigs was writing the TERMINATOR series for Now Comics, based on yet another Hollywood sci-fi cinematic winner. It is for this series that we were invited to the con. We wasted no time in saying, “Yes.”  Thank you Rio Herrera. Then very recently we discovered that on the Saturday, April 21st, we will be moderating the GUESTS PANEL, sharing the table with three other very established comics creators, they being artists…and all having dealt with one form of robots or another.

Bob Hall worked on one of our favorite comics, ROM – SPACEKNIGHT, another big selling toy turned into a fun Marvel Comic.

Gordon Purcell who drew many DC Star Trek titles including Next Generation where he got to draw everyone’s favorite android officer, DATA.

And finally we have Arizona based Tone Rodriguez who, while drawing the comic adaptation of the cartoon series FUTURAMA, has gotten to draw perhaps the sassiest, wise-cracking robot of them all, BENDER.

As you can see, with this line up and amount of experience, this is going to shape up to be one hell of a fun panel discussion. We truly hope any of you Loyal Airmen in the Denver area on those dates, will make plans to come to this great show and join us. We’re going to have tons of robotic fun.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, we hope all of you who live in cold zones are surviving winter’s last few months and keeping warm.  This week we want to shine a light on a really amazing internet website, DeviantArt.com – It is a place where hundreds of amazing artists post galleries of their works and trust the Air Chief, if you bother to visit the site, you’ll end up spending hours just going through the various galleries and marveling at all that wonderful graphic art.  Anyway, every day the managers of the site pick one single piece of newly posted artwork and put it on the front page of the site, sort of giving it a special spotlight, if you will. It is a singular honor for any artist to get the Daily Deviation honor.

One day this past week that honor went to artist Chris Kohler for the above illustration. It is from the new Purple Scar novel we will soon be publishing, as written by Gene Moyers.  As in all our Airship 27 Productions novel, each contains 9 illustrations. The above was illustration # 4 and Chris posted it to his gallery at DeviantArt. Imagine his surprise when he saw it highlighted as their piece of the day.  And deservedly so. Chris is a truly talented artist and his attention to detailing out of this world. Last year he won the coveted Public Factory Award for Best Interior Illustrations and he continues to produce outstanding graphic art. So the Air Chief and everyone at Airship 27 tips our pulp fedoras to an amazing artist, Congratulations Chris.

We started our second HOW TO WRITE COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS this past Wed. night at the Front Range Community College.  We have three enthusiastic students; Olivia, Max & Scott and it looks to be a fun ten weeks for sure. The Air Chief loves sharing his love of comics with others.

One of the finest things we did last year with Airship 27 Productions was reprint the late Mark Justice’s weird western novel, the Dead Sheriff.  Above is a picture of that edition being held up by Mark’s widow, Norma Kay. At the time of his passing, Mark left an unfinished manuscript intended to be Dead Sheriff # 2. It’s subtitle is, Cannibal Carnage. This past week, the Air Chief began reading/editing through that manuscript with the intent, upon picking up where Mark left off and, with his guidance from on high, finishing this second book. So far we are thirty pages into the manuscript and it is as wild and crazy as was book one.  So do send along your good wishes that the Air Chief does this project the right way, honoring a dear friend we lost way too soon.

Lastly, we’ve a new Sherlock Holmes anthology on the way, volume 11 to be exact. Here’s a sneak peek at one of Rob Davis’ amazing illustrations. Hopefully book will be out in another week or two. Stay tuned.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, as most of you know, last Fall, the Air Chief began teaching a night class on How To Write Comics & Graphic Novels at the Front Range Community College here in Fort Collins, CO. In that class we five talented young writers, all of who were a delight to work with. They were hard working and enthusiastic and made our first teaching experience so rewarding. But the end of that eight week course, we asked each of them to turn in a 5 pg script, then without them being aware at the time, we went and recruited five professional artists to draw their stories….and ultimately put together, with the help of local friends Todd Jones & James Gaubatz, a comic called FRONT RANGE TALES.  Last Sunday afternoon the Air Chief assembled four of those students together at Gryphon’s Games & Comics and gave them their copies of their first ever published comic work. Above is the cover done by Rob Davis and the four along with the Air Chief, they are Bransen Gage, Melisa Nguyen, the Air Chief, Jon Bonjour and Adam Bruns. The missing member was Aaron Powers, who met we us separately the following Monday after noon. So here are the contents of that very first comic.

Bransen’s story was a sci-fi comedy called FED UP and illustrated by our good pal Gary Kato.

Melisa’s tale was a fantasy short about magic woods and strange wolves called SPIRITED AWAY. The artist on the strip was Kevin Wiggins.

Ironically the youngest of my students, Jon Bonjour, a high school junior, was the most experienced in comics. He and his sister Jaime have been making comics together for a long time. She writes then and Jon draws them.  But this was the first time Jon saw one of his own strips drawn by another artist, in this case Richard Jun. And he was thrilled by the results. His story, which kicks off the book is called MILD MANNERED. It’s a little twist on the whole superhero genre.

Whereas Adam Bruns, the oldest in our class, is a college grad with a degree in Film Writing. He truly appreciated learning the subtle differences between screenplays and comic scripts and is one hell of a storyteller. His grit and gritty story is called JAIL BREAK and illustrated by Earl Geier of Chicago.

Finally, unable to meet with us on Sunday afternoon, the Air Chief went back on Monday to hook up with the fifth member of our class, Aaron Powers who has a real love of sci-fi and that was really evidence in his twisty TIMEWALKER as illustrated by the amazing Ted Slampyak of “Jazz Age Chronicles,” fame.

And there you have it Loyal Airmen, five truly awesome creators and their first steps into the wonderful world of comic creating. It was both a joy and privilege for the Air Chief to be their teacher. Trust us, you will be seeing lots more from these talented folks. You can count on it.

Speaking of students, the Air Chief spent Wed morning at the comic shop meeting students from the Polaris Expeditionary Learning School. You may recall the Air Chief had visited their classes a few weeks back. Well today they all were at the comic shop to show off the various comic projects they were working on and we, along with local artist and store employee, Nat, sat with each of them in twenty minute sessions to discuss those projects and offer up some hopefully helpful pieces of advice.

It was so much fun, these young people are so talented. For our humble efforts, Assistant Principal Starr Hill, who orchestrated the event, presented Nat and the Air Chief these wonderful little note book. Here’s hoping our little talks will spur these young creators to keep writing and drawing.

Finally the Air Chief has no real baby pictures of himself. Something Mom and Dad probably never considered being parents for the first time with my arrival and the beginning of their family. But one picture that has survived is the shot above of me at the walking stage, holding on to Mom and Dad. No idea where the pix was taken though a strong hunch it could have been in Sanford, Maine, at my grandparents home. We love this picture, Mom and Dad look so happy together. They truly were wonderful parents and for a little while, we did have them all to ourselves.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen.  We’re sure all of you have heard the Beatles’ advice on how we all get by “with a little help from our friends.” Well that sage advice was never more apparent to the Air Chief than yesterdays first-Sat breakfast meeting of the Fort Collins Comics Coffee Clutch Crew. A monthly gathering of comic creators from all over Colorado we begun almost eight years ago when moving here from New England. As most writers and artists will tell you, creating is a lonely venture done in one’s office locked away from the rest of the world. Thus socializing of any kind with colleagues is always something to desire. Upon moving to Fort Collins, we were introduced to what we learned was a huge community of local comic people. Eventually, the Air Chief wondered if it might not be possible to arrange a monthly informal get together with those we’d had the pleasure of meeting. Thus eight years ago we began what we jokingly called The Fort Collins Comics Coffee Clutch Crew. At that very first meeting there were seven of us.

Yesterday twenty-four of us showed up at the local comic shop for this month’s meeting.  TWENTY-FOUR!!! Over the years we’ve watched the group grow bigger and bigger, with some members coming and going until our reminder’s list has over 30 names on it. These are writers, artists, young and old, amateurs and professionals, men and women. People from all walks of life and careers all bonding over one simple thing, their mutual love of comics. Now that’s pretty damn amazing. If you can spot the Air Chief in the pix above (taken at yesterday’s gathering by Rio Herrera) you’ll see me almost dead center wearing one of our Red Sox caps. We love hooking up with these great people and can only wonder at how much more the gang will continue to grow. We do indeed get by with a little help from our friends.

This week Warner’s Animation released its latest Batman animated movie based on a classic graphic novel; BATMAN – Gotham by Gaslight as written by Brian Augustn & illustrated by Mike Mignola. Since Bruce Timm convinced Warners to launch the animated Batman TV series, this studio has gone on to produced some truly amazing and wonderful projects, both as series and of course their DVD releases. The fun of this particular feature is that is based on one of the Elseworld line DC comics did years ago that re-imagined their classic characters in totally different settings and histories. With Gotham by Gaslight, we have a Victorian age Bruce Wayne trying to stop an American Jack the Ripper. We were always sad that for some reason, we never picked up the actual comics when they were released. Thus you can imagine our delight when we learned it would be adapted as a film. Now having watched it, we consider one of the finest Warner’s has done to date. Great story, great animation and wonderful characterizations from start to end. As always, whenever we enjoy one of these great Warner’s animated adventures, we’re left asking ourselves, why can’t they make their live action DC movies this good? Now that’s a mystery to ponder.

And finally we thought we’d leave you with a visual clue as to what new title will soon becoming your way from Airship 27 Productions. Thanks ever for stopping by and we’ll see you all here next week.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal airmen, the Air Chief is really excited to announce our first Airship 27 Productions title of 2018. As the book was released Wed night, 31st of Jan, we actually did get a book out in January. Now that’s what we call just in the nick of time. Those of you who follow this Flight Log will remember that 2017 also started up rather slowly and then picked up speed as the year wore on. So let’s see if 2018 repeats that pattern.

Our first title of 2018 is Vol Six in our highly popular Secret Agent X series. As one of the classic pulp heroes of the 30s and 40s, Secret Agent X has always been a winner with us since we first began producing his brand new adventures for a new generation unaware of the original pulps. In this exciting entry, we have a full length novella by Fred Adams Jr, and then two regular shorts; one by veteran X scribe and the other by a new writer to Airship 27, Kaushik Karforma. In fact Kaushik’s tale, “Escape From Zakopane” is the featured cover scene as done by Art Director Rob Davis, who also did the black and white interior illustrations. Both of us love this character and are thrilled whenever we get a new book out. As ever, it is available at Amazon in both paperback and Kindle. We hope you’ll check it out and thanks for your continued support.

This next section is best described as TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES LOYAL AIRMEN.  Back in Dec. the Air Chief had his annual physical. At that time our Family Doctor noted it had been six years since we had our last colonoscopy. That being the case, and the fact that we remain in really good health and want to stay that way, she suggested it was time for me to have another done. The Air Chief is well aware of the extremely high rate of colon cancer in men in this country and the sad truth is, many die who could have been saved if they had had this test done. And so we wasted no time in making an appointment. Early this week we went to the local clinic and the Air Chief had his second colonoscopy done. As last time, a polyp was discovered…and easily removed. It has been sent to the lab for testing, but the doctor who removed it felt relatively certain it was a typical polyp men our age develop. And so, we were given a “well done” and sent on our way. We mention this because we still have good friends and colleagues past their 50s who have yet to have this simple text done. They are really risking their lives and that is truly sad. Ergo, this posting. Please, to all our Loyal Airmen, if you are beyond the age of 50 years old and have never had a colonoscopy, go schedule one right now. We’d like you to be around with us for a long long time yet.
Thanks, the Air Chief.

Finally for all you Brother Bones fans out there, last week the Air Chief finished his third collection of Brother Bones stories which will soon be published in book form as BROTHER BONES – CITY OF LOST SOULS. The book contains our longest Bones tale yet penned, “The Synthetic Man” wherein our Undead Avenger crosses paths with the legendary pulp villain, Doctor Satan. Also this week we were happy to announce that super artist Michael Stribling will be providing the cover for this new book. Stay tuned for me news as the project moves along.

And that’s it for this Flight Log, Happy February to you all,

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, and welcome to this week’s Flight Log. We start off this week with sharing a few photos from a local school appearance the Air Chief made two weeks ago at the Polaris Expeditionary Learning School here in Fort Collins at the invitation of arts teacher Ryan Grindel. We had visited Ryan’s class in past years along with comic artist Felipe Echevarria and once again, he joined us in this outing.

We spoke with two of Ryan’s classes back to back. In each hour, we broke the class in two groups. One speaking Felipe (see above) discussing comic art while the other half spoke with the Air Chief about writing.

Then after a half hour, we would swap groups. As ever the students were great, enthusiastic and eager to know more about what it was we did. We want to thank them all for having us, to Ryan also for sharing these pictures he took during the visit. Hopefully we’ll get to do it again next year.

Now for a super fun update on a project the Air Chief has been involved with. As most Loyal Airmen will recall, last Fall we taught a class on How To Write Comics & Graphic Novels at the Front Range Community College and had fie wonderful young writers as students. See image above. We had posted this picture at that time. Well before ending the eight week course, these five talented people each wrote a 5 pg script and the Air Chief went and recruited 5 professional artists to illustrate them. The idea being to publish a comic with their stories and it would be called FRONT RANGE TALES. So the artwork came in, first for Jon Bonjour’s tale, then Melisa Nguyen’s, then Aaron Powers, Adam Bruns and lastly Bransen Gage. All the while the Air Chief kept studying the comic pages looking for one image that might make a fun cover for this project. As it would turn out, the last art pages came in from artist Gary Kato who was drawing Bransen’s story FED UP.  (Bran is the young man in bottom row far left.) In that story was the panel above…and we fell in  love with it.  In the story our hero goes to a rather special hardware store that could only have existed in the Twilight Zone.  And so the Air Chief called upon his partner, artist Rob Davis to take that one panel….and use it as inspiration for our cover.

And here it is. As ever, Rob knocked it out of the ballpark and we’re delighted with it.  The comic itself is at the printers and we hope to have a small ceremony either at the college or local comic shop to debut it to these writers. You can well imagine how excited they are to see their first comic stories in print. We’ll be sure to bring our camera along and snap some pictures.

And there you have it for this week, Loyal Airmen, as ever thanks for stopping by and see you next week.

Ron – Over & Out!!

Greetings Loyal Airmen and welcome to this week’s Flight Log. One of the things we get asked all the time in regards to our Airship 27 Production pulp books is…”Where do you find your artists.” As most of you already know all Airship 27 titles use two artists on each book; on to do the cover and the other for the black and white interior illustrations. The thing is, over the years, we’ve met and recruited some of the most talented artists out there and some from really surprising occupations, i.e. day jobs.  Let’s show you a couple examples.

As most of you know, one of the Air Chief’s dearest friends is artist Jeff Butler, with who we produced the Green Hornet comic series for Now Comics long ago. Thing is Jeff is now teaching a local community colleges where he lives. Primarily courses in graphic art. Several years ago he wrote us about a student named Richard Jun that he was really impressed with and suggested we contact Richard; that he might be willing to work with us. So on that strong recommendation we reached out and discovered Richard is actually Dr. Jun, a practicing optometrist who just happens to love comics and drawing. Thus our conversation ultimately led to his doing illustrations for us and to date he’s done several books and is currently working on our second Moon Man anthology. See image above.

And then there’s the story of Brian Loner. Two years ago we were guest at our local comic shop on Free Comic Book Day and during the course of that fun event, a man approached us and said owned a landscaping company here in the city, but had always had a passion for drawing. His name was Brian Loner and when he looked through several of our Airship 27 titles on the table, it was easy to see this was something he dreamed of doing. So we asked him to send us a sample of his work.  A few weeks later Brian sent along a pin-up of Captain Hazzard which was really great and showed us he had the skills to be an illustrator. And so we gave him our first anthology featuring 1930s private eye, Marty Quade (see illo above) and as of today, Brian is half finished his illustrations for it. They are all beautiful. See what we mean about these talented draftsmen coming from all walks of life. Simply amazing and wonderful.

Finally we want to end this week’s Flight Log with a little fun story relating to Pulp History. Way back when the Air Chief began writing new exploits of the one-hit-wonder Captain Hazzard, we simply went along what most pulp historians believing for years, that “Captain Hazzard – Python Men of the Lost City” was the only Captain Hazzard novel ever penned by writer Paul Chadwick using the house name Chester Hawks. It wasn’t until we began the new adventures of Captain Hazzard that long time pulp fan Don O’Malley asked us if we had any plans to adapt the second Hazzard book as well? What second Hazzard book we asked? O’Malley then related this story. By the time the first and only Captain Hazzard book hit the newsstand, Chadwick had already penned a second. Which makes sense when you understand how writers had to keep up with the fast pace of monthly schedules. But when the Hazzard book was considered a flop, the publisher was left holding an unused manuscript…which they then returned to Chadwick and instructed him to turn it into a Secret Agent X adventure. Which shouldn’t have been to arduous a task as Chadwick was the primary writer of that popular series and the pen-name of Brant House. And so he did just that, with lots of tweaking turning this Captain Hazzard adventure into a Secret Agent X yarn called, “Curse of the Crimson Horde.” (See original cover above.) Upon hearing all this, we confessed to O’Malley it would be a fun challenge to tackle and so he actually sent us a copy of the entire Secret Agent X book to go by. Over several months, with it on our desk beside our PC, we pounded away taking the story hopefully back to where it had begun. By the book’s last quarter it really was if we were channeling Chadwick’s spirit as we began to deduce what scenes would be coming up long before we read them. In fact, at one point, we decided to take a villainous character and have them become a noble figure by the book’s climax. Lo and behold, upon reaching those lost chapters, it was the exact same ploy he had used…though not to the extremes we did. In the end, we opted to change the book’s title as well, having made it into something else altogether and Airship 27 released what was then our third Captain Hazzard adventure, “Curse of the Red Maggot.”  From Hazzard to Secret Agent X and eventually back to Hazzard. Only in the world of pulps, Loyal Airmen.

Ron – Over & Out!!