Hillman Periodicals?

[archersix]

Anyone read any of these? Air Fighters Comics is especially great. Looks like they also published other comics, mostly crime, sports and general adventure stuff. They are best remembered for Air Boy, the star of Air Fighters, but it also had characters like: Sky Wolf, the Flying Dutchman (great stuff by Bob Fujitani), Bald Eagle, and the Black Angel.
The book was centered around air adventure stories with the various pilots in different types of trick fighter planes taking down axis fliers. 
It's also notable for the introduction of the Heap, the prototypical comic book swamp monster, who inspired later comic swamp dwellers like Man-Thing and Swamp Thing. 
Since these are public domain stories (Hillman ceased comic publication in 1953) they are readily available on all the usual PD comic sites. I just recently got a reprint volume by Gwandanaland Comics that collects the first 4 issues. Since these things were around 65 pages, it's a good read.

These characters have been popular up to the present time. There was a revival by Eclipse comics in the 80's that lasted 50 issues. 


Neat little Midwest connection: Hillman's publication address was 4600 Diversey Ave in Chicago.  

[Adminenkainen]

I read some of the really early, pre-Airboy, Hillman features, and enjoyed Sky Wizard (who I then wrote up for Supplement IV).

I own a collection of all the Golden Age Airboy/Valkyrie team-ups. They vary in quality, but the Airboy and Valkyrie vs. Misery story was epic! I collected some of the early Eclipse issues (not at the time, but picked them up around 2000).

[order99]

I collected a few of the Eclipse issues years ago, but there was just Too Much Stuff in my life, so I didn't pursue it too far. I have no idea if Hillman was superior to the later Eclipse series, maybe I can find some online issues when I stop working these 50+ hour weekly shifts (i'm sure this is Per Degaton's work somehow, but subtlety of this magnitude just isn't his usual style...).

[archersix]

I plan on getting the rest of the series as I can afford them. I've read a few on comicbookplus, but I really do prefer dead tree comics.

The Eclipse books are pretty good, and it's neat that they attempt to keep the story going in the same universe (and with a lot of the same characters). Which is better? That is for each of us to decide, I think.

My main point is that these books are really well done overall. Sure, there are some clunkers (and cringe worthy 1940's racism (especially bad regarding our ally the Chinese)), but mostly very cool stories. And some darn good artwork.