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!!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, last week’s Flight Log was really short what with the holidays and all. It seemed like things were quiet in both the pulp and comics community. All of which is totally understandable.  But we trust things will soon start to pick up again real soon.

Which is as good a time as any to remind you Loyal Airmen that Chief Engineer Rob Davis and the Air Chief continue to record the Airship 27 Podcast once a month via the good folks at Zone 4. And we wanted to you know that all these shows are eventually available to listen on to on You Tube. Simply go to the main site, type in Airship 27 Podcast in the search bar and voila, all our previous 34 episodes will pop up. Note this past week we recorded number 35. It still blows our mind that we’ve been doing this now well over two years and as ever thanks for your continued support. If you want to keep abreast of what’s happening from month to month at Hangar 27, do listen to the show.

A few weeks ago we mentioned that we would soon be publishing the first ever full length Purple Scar novel as written by Gene Moyers with interior illustrations by Chris Kohler. We then went out recruited British artist Graham Hill to do our cover. Graham has done four other covers for us in the past and all have been stellar. Anyway, Graham has begun doing pencil roughs of pulpdom’s most frightening avenger and he just turned in the gruesome piece above. We just had to share it with you all you. This is the stuff of nightmares, Loyal Airmen, for sure.

Meanwhile our friends at Radio Archives continue to release our titles as audio books. This past week they put out the second Captain Hazzard novel Citadel of Fear, which the Air Chief co-authored with pal, Martin Powell. You can find it Audible.com at the link below. The reader is Stuart Gauffi and he does a fantastic job bringing the adventure to life. (https://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_hp_tseft?advsearchKeywords=Captain%20Citadel%20ofFear&filterby=field-keywords.)

A few months ago an artist on-line approached me about working together on any old classic comic hero from the 40s. The Air Chief agreed and did a little internet surfing until we found a character called The Invisible Hood. We then proceeded to write an 8 pg script for the artist in question. Who then promptly disappeared. Yup, just like that, gone. After several frustrating weeks, we opted to put out the word on our FB page that we had this script and no artist. Then, to much to our real delight, artist Mike Belcher replied almost immediately asking to read it. You may recall the Air Chief and Mike had worked together a little over a month ago on a very short 3 pg strip and both of us enjoyed the experience. We happily sent Mike the script and overnight he produced the gorgeous colored pin-up above. Yup, Mike is on board and we know you are going to love this one when completed. Stay tuned.

Finally the Air Chief has to believe that some of you Loyal Airmen do remember the days before Cable on how many of the networks actually produced original movies themselves.  Aptly called “made-for-tv-movies.” There were hundreds of these made in the 60s and 70s. One the Air Chief remembered fondly was “Sherlock Holmes in New York” which starred Roger Moore and Holmes, Patrick Macnee as Watson with John Huges and Prof. Moriarty and Charlotte Rampling as Irene Adler. We even then Holmes fans and the idea of Moore taking on the role was intriguing. We watched the airing with great expectations and it was a really well written, acted story with a great little mystery….which we humbly did solved before the Great Detective. This all happened in 1976 and ever since that one viewing, the Air Chief has longed to see it again. Well, among our wonderful Christmas gifts this year were several Amazon gift cards and we wasted no time ordering a copy of this movie. It arrived last week and this coming weekend we plan on making a batch of popcorn, seating ourselves in our comfortable recliner and once again entering one of Sherlock Holmes’ most unique cases on the busy streets of New York. Sometimes if you are lucky enough, you do get to revisit only memories.

And there you have it for this week’s Flight Log, Loyal Airmen. As ever thanks for stopping by and we’ll see you here next week.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen and Happy 2018.  The image above is the finished cover to a role-playing module called “Ron Fortier’s CAPE NOIRE RPG” and is based on my Brother Bones pulp stories. After two full years, T Glenn Bane and his team at Scaldcrow Games finally got her wrapped up. Poor Glenn had suffered some serious health issues in the past year which slowed the game’s completion. But one he was 100% again, he and wife Theresa Bane devoted themselves to getting it finished. Right now the Air Chief doesn’t have all the details as yet as to where and how you Loyal Airmen who are into gaming can pick up a copy. All this was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign and we have to assume their initial goal is to send out copies and rewards to all the people who supported the project. Note, Rob Davis and the Air Chief are planning on having copies of the book at the Windy City Pulp & Paper con this year. Both of us can’t wait to get our hands on it.  And all this was made to me on New Year’s Day. Now that’s what we calls tarting the year with a bang!!

The Air Chief is also thrilled to announce the release of ATHENA VOLTAIRE – PULP TALES.  She is the creation of artist/writer Steve Bryant and pretty much a cross between Indiana Jones & Laura Croft Tomb Raider. For years Steve has been doing comic adventures of the lovely Ms. Voltaire, a genuine pulp hero. Then about two years ago he invited a bunch of writing colleagues, the Air Chief among them, to write a prose short story for a collection and the result was this new anthology which was released the last week of December. You can find it on Amazon or at your local comic shop. The Air Chief’s story is called “The Austrian Prisoner” and we had a blast writing it. We hope you’ll check it out.

And so a new year is truly off to a great start. We hope as every you’ll continue to stop by every Friday morning and enjoying they year with us.

Ron – Over & Out!

Greetings Loyal Airmen, and here we are with our last Flight Log of 2017. Wow, has this year flown by at hyper-speed. And all in all in was a really great year with lots of great things happening to the Air Chief, his family and friends. Chief among these was obviously buying our new home and Val seeing we finally got out new office to display so many of our books, DVD movies and action figures that had been stored away in boxes for the past seven years.  Dang, we found books while unpacking that we had forgotten we even had. Now how cool is that?

The second awesome event was finally getting to teach a class on How To Write Comics at a local community. That’s been a dream for many years and realizing it was nothing but a blessing. My five students were incredible and we are so looking forward to next Feb. 21st when we launch our second class. Keeping fingers crossed we’ll have an even bigger turn out this time.

As most of you Loyal Airmen know, Val and the Air Chief love going to the movies and we see dozens over the course of the year. Earlier on Facebook this week, we reflected on what we considered the top five of the year.  (1) Wind River – an amazing crime drama set against a cold, unforgiving Wyoming winter.  Easily the best written film of the year. (2) Wonder Woman – finally, Warner Bros. puts out the film all we fans have been clamoring for and sure enough it is easily the best new DC movie in the past ten years. Gail Godat was awesome and setting the tale in World War 1 was pure genius. (3) Kong of Skull Island – What can we say, we’ve always loved the Big Gorilla and re-imagining him in the late 60s during the Vietnam era really worked better than we thought possible. In the end it was just a great summer popcorn movie. (4) Baby Driver – another throw back to 70s exploitation flicks, this one about a shy, quiet youth who, once behind the wheel of a car, becomes a bloody, fearless maniac. A crime thriller with a heart.  And finally, (5) Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie’s detective hero, Hercule Poirot has never been more cunning, clear and charming as portrayed here by Kenneth Branaugh. There was a time, primarily the 50s, when Hollywood gave us tons of mystery series ala Charlie Chan or the Thin Man movies. We’d so love to see such series make a come back. Happily Orient Express did well enough that a second with Branaugh is now in production, Death on the Nile. We can’t wait.

How our annual physical yesterday and we’re happy to report it was a very good one.  Doctor said vitals are strong. There are a few minor concerns. We need to drink lots more water to keep ourselves hydrated and avoid future kidneys issues. All in all, for being 71, we maintain a positive attitude, walk two to three miles a day, eat a healthy diet and get lots of good sleep. Now that’s a recipe for good health and we plan on sticking with it.

Knowing so many talented artists, it was nice surprise to get the above sketch just before Christmas from artists John Williams. John is our artists on the  PARADISE FALLS 3 issue mini-series and at present we’re are wrapping up the third and final issue.  Hopefully we’ll see it out in early 2018.

And finally, one of the most bizarre classic pulp avengers was the Purple Scar. To date Airship 27 Productions has done two anthologies featuring this horrific hero. Early in 2018 we will publish the first ever full length Purple Scar novel by writer Gene Moyers.  Believe us when we say this one is going to be special. And with that little tease, we’ll wrap up this final Flight Log of 2017.  All of us at Hangar 27 want to wish all our Loyal Airmen a truly awesome, wonderful and HAPPY 2018.  We’ll see you “next” year!

Ron Over & Out!